AN OCCUPATION FOR THE MIND

I can give the mind a meaningful occupation wherein chain thinking is broken. Then the interval that obtains between successive thoughts can reveal a great fact about myself- that I am the silence that obtains between two thoughts.

Logically, we can see how restlessness requires a buildup, whereas peace is something very natural for which we need not to do anything. We do not create peace; we create only restlessness.

In japa, you deliberately create a thought. Because you have a will, you can choose. In this way, you become the author of a given thought. A specific thought is created by you because you choose it, whereas the silence that ensues is not created by you. In fact, the silence is the basis of all thought.

THE MIND AS A DANGER

In the text pancadasi, the mind is likened to a dancer on a lighted stage. The dancer portrays a variety of aesthetic sentiments-love, helplessness, anger, cruelty, wonderment, frigfht. The light on the stage lights up the dancer with all her moodsand changes and when she makes her exit, it lights up the empty stage. The dancer may be performing various dance forms, or may not be on the stage at all, yet the light remains uninvolved. It merely illumines.

The light itself is not a "doer," much less an "enjoyer," of the dance. Nor does it light up the stage as one of its jobs. The nature of light is to illumine and it illumines; the verb " illumines" involves no action or motive on the part of the light. Therefore, the light has no doership. Similarly, when I have a thought and the thought goes away, what remains is silence, which is likened to the empty stage without a dancer.

THE NATURE OF THOUGHT AND SILENCE

Absence of thought is generally looked upon as peace, something to be achieved. Thought can be suppressed or negated by certain external means, such as the practice of breath control. Here, however, we are interested in the absence of thought but in understanding the nature of thought and silence. The whole approach, therfore is cognitive. Thought sometimes happens without my sanction and sometimes it happens with sanction. In japa, thought is deliberate; it occurs with my sanction. And when the thought goes, I understand its absence as the nature of silence.

I AM SILENCE

When I experience, or am aware of, between two thoughts is silence.If I see the silence after every thought, should I take myself to be the silence? Thought arises and thoought falls. Before the rise of the thought I am silence and after the departure of the thought I am silence. I am silence first and I am silence last. Thus, in spite of thoughts, I am silence.