The straight path

of vicAra — searching for the ‘true form’ of mind

In the last post, we have seen the ‘mind’ is actively and continuously recording all the experiences and due to that very recording it is continuously changing its own form.

There is an important limitation of mind which need to be understood and it is its own forgetfulness. This defect is ignored by itself due to the ego. So, the true form of mind is not known to anyone. Only a modified form that is conditioned by the ‘recent’ experiences is identified as ‘mind’ by everyone of us.

So, the simplest path to get to the reality is driving the ‘mind’ back to its original form.

Verse 17 of upadesa saram makes this point clearly:

manasu svarUpamu maRuvaka neRuga manasanunadi lEdu mArgamu sUTi

Same in Sanskrit:

mAnasam tu kim? mArgaNE kRtE naiva mAnasam mArga ArjavAt

By constantly keeping a vigil on the mind’s actual nature (and not letting it forget and transform continuously) one quickly finds that “there is nothing called mind” — this is the straight path.

This is a wonderful meditation. “what is mind?” Every experience is reconfiguring the mind. We are changing the “idea” of the world view with each new recorded impression. We strongly identify these bunch of ideas as mind. We add some new impressions and erase some old impressions and try to match them with those impressions recorded in another mind to find the compatibility and acceptability.

Before anything is recorded and identified itself as ‘mind’ there is only a white sheet of infinite consciousness without any impressions inked on it. So, in reality there is nothing called ‘mind’.

Contemplate! Erase all the impressions and try to find mind without them!!

Next Post: https://medium.com/upadesa-saram/aham-vrtti-the-i-thought-cacb93a654e9