Of Mindfulness, Meditation and other Aliases
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~Jiddu Krishnamurti
They were sustaining themselves on destruction. They had to be mindless to do that.
They were destroying everything and converting it into a human mass. All the forests, all the soil, all the animals, all the fish, entrails of the earth as well. They had to be blind to do that.
Still, when a very big animal would be about to be wiped off the face of the earth, some of them would suggest that the animal should be saved from extinction. (They were too blind to see smaller beings.)
They created sanctuaries, but continued with their way of life.
Such a life gathers momentum. Machines mean business; their business being speeding the people up.
They were finishing off everything at a great pace. They had to work many hours a day, to accomplish their goal. They had to work at night too. They just couldn’t live with this sense of dissatisfaction. They felt their rate of consumption wasn’t good enough.
They created sanctuaries, zoos and museums, but continued with their way of life.
They needed a scheming mind to continue with this way of life.
Some of them would sometimes remind others of what they called mindfulness.
But even they had forgotten, that what they called mindfulness was a way of life. A way of life that depended on mindfulness, not a scheming mind.
Just the way, mindfulness depended on that way of life, to survive.
If that way of life dies, mindfulness dies.
And vice versa.
Just like the life of the big animals they were trying to save depended on a way of life to survive.
If that way of life dies, animal dies. And vice versa.
But they were happy with their sanctuaries, zoos and museums.
So they wanted to retain a scheming mind, which was the very condition of their survival, in their way of life; destruction was the very condition of their survival.
A scheming mind had to be in the future, as well as the past. Their survival depended on it.
Before opening their eyes in the morning, they were planning, plotting and scheming. After closing their eyes at night, they were doing the same. When they were eating, they were not eating. When they were bathing, they were not bathing. Even when they were making love, they were not making love.
They were falling sick. What they were doing was killing themselves too. They called it depression. They were even taking their own lives. They called these suicides.
Some of them studied and found out that they were losing minds. These people were their healers. They were called doctors, because they were adept at doctoring things.
These doctors gave them small pills, and they could go back to their work.
They were still losing mind.
Some of them didn’t study but found out that they needed to heal their minds. These people were their healers too. They were called masters, gurus and teachers, for various reasons.
These masters, gurus and teachers told them that they needed meditation to heal their minds. This will make them well adapted to their way of living.
The masters instructed, “You need to be in the here and now.”
But there was no here to be found.
They had already destroyed the real world. They had encaged themselves in boxes sterile of all other forms of life or parts of nature, and would spend all their time there. They must have been very fearful people. In the mornings they set out in their boxes on wheels to destroy; in the evenings they returned to their boxes without wheels to plan the next day.
Inside the sterile boxes, there was nothing to nourish their senses, but everything to stimulate their minds. They were surprised, their minds were never at rest.
Mirroring their boxes, they were vacuumed of the sensorial and puffed with words and images, symbols of the real world. All they had were simulations and semblances, which they really loved. But they said nobody loved them.
Their mind was not in their senses. They were out of their senses. Their senses were not in a sensuous world. There was nothing left to engage their senses and hold them here, in the present. There was nothing left to form a relationship with. There was no here left.
The masters still insisted they needed to be in the here and now.
But there was no now to be found.
They needed to retain a scheming mind. Their survival depended on it.
Their mind lived off the memories of their past; their anxieties of the future lived off their lives. There was no now to be found.
Besides they had already discerped themselves from the rhythms of nature, and flattened time to measure in it the number of hours of their work.
They were left with no other sense of time, but its linearity. They did not know any other way.
They had to grip themselves tightly with time; and flatten their lives to measure themselves in the number of hours of their work.
They were left with no other sense of themselves. They were left with no other sense of time. There was no timelessness to be found.
But the masters insisted. Said they were not doing enough; they were just being lazy.
They said, “You need to train you minds. You need to learn the techniques of mindfulness, which we’ll teach.”
The masters discoursed that these were very ancient techniques, and so effective that they could even increase the number of hours of their work.
So they sat down cross-legged, and said Namaste.
Doctors doctored and sold a lot of pills. Masters wrote and sold a lot of books; and sold their techniques in person as well. They called these work-shops.
They made their subjects well adapted, and sent them back to work.
None of them said they needed to change their way of life.
