January 10, 2025
Lessons in the yoga postures are very good training of the body and often overflow to include training of the mind. The body has a rather remarkable intelligence built into it. If it is not dulled by unhealthy eating and living habits, it is capable of dealing with all the physical situations that may arise from moment to moment: in fact it seems to function almost always from moment to moment.
If you're able to observe yourself carefully, it is not difficult to see that whereas life is no problem, food is no problem, not even the animals and the people around you pose a problem, but your own prejudice (‘I like this', and 'I don't like that') creates incessant problems.
Is it possible for you, without judging, without condemning or condoning, to see for yourself how this prejudice arises and operates, and where it exists in you? Surely, it is not in the body: even when it appears to be physical, the operational prejudice is seen to be in the mind, the physical body acting only as a docile tool of the mind. When you learn to see this, and when you learn to observe yourself, you are in meditation.
What is needed first of all, is the keen interest to observe the mind. If this is not there, any attempt to meditate or to observe oneself leads to dullness, sleep or frustration.
Secondly, most of us need just a little help in our effort to turn the mind upon itself. One of the very best methods suggested is 'listen to your breathing' or mentally repeat a mantra, synchronizing it with the breath and be aware of it. When the mind thus turns its attention upon itself, you will discover what distracts such attention! It is not always an extraneous factor which disturbs the attention, but your own reaction to it. It is your predisposition that tempts temptation to tempt you.
If you have discovered this, then it is not only possible to avoid the operation of prejudice, but to go to the very source of prejudice, and thus to the very source of fear, anger, hate, jealousy, infatuation, etc. . All these are mental aberrations which do not exist as such in nature.
If we learn to live without creating these prejudices, we shall be human beings! Otherwise we shall continue to look like human beings intent only on destroying all others and ourselves.