The Question
Today’s topic is again a little provocative and contemplative, and the question is very simple.
Given a choice between going to a spiritual retreat like Raman Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, or your favorite spiritual place, and the other option of doing something very mundane like filing your tax return, what would you choose?
We’ll have to be honest with ourselves when we ask this question.
Most of you will choose the retreat, the spiritual retreat, the Ashram, or wherever you find that space to investigate and be yourself and be calm and peaceful.
And I doubt very few will choose filing your returns.
I’ve known people who have done 20, 30, 40 retreats and they’re still restless.
They’re still searching.
Each retreat offers a relief. It offers a promise of more understanding, more meditation, more insights, awakening.
But then when you come back to the real world, it does not stick.
Why Doesn’t It Stick?
Today we will investigate why this happens, why first the mind chooses one over the other, and why we have designated special places for our spiritual evolution.
A mind that can only find truth in a designated location has not learned yet to seek that awareness.
It has learned to seek that awareness only under better conditions.
So Ashrams provide better conditions.
And I’m not saying don’t go to the Ashrams. We’re investigating.
Ashrams and retreats do provide that place and sacredness where you can investigate, no question about it.
But what about the process of doing the mundane?
I took the tax return because that’s one of the things which stresses people out the most, and that friction is real.
It also reminds us that this structure of society with money and taxes has no interest in your spiritual growth.
It’s an activity you have to perform to survive, to be part of this functioning society.
The Sacred and the Mundane
Now, who created this conditioning that filing a return, or doing any of this mundane task, can’t be a doorway to that sacredness that you’re looking for?
The retreat offers an environment where the mind can feel good about itself and go deeper.
The tax return does not extend this courtesy.
And this is the reason the tax return is a more honest teacher than a retreat, because there are no pleasant conditions. There are just the figures, the stress, and life is being contacted in that moment.
So the mind has agreed to seek as long as seeking happens somewhere suitable, somewhere conducive.
And that is a fantasy which seekers have.
I had this for years.
I had an elaborate fantasy of living in Rishikesh by the Ganga and meditating.
The mind creates this elaborate fantasy that there are certain conditions, and if they are all right, then it becomes suitable for my evolution or growth or seeking.
But what if life is a series of challenges and we do not get those suitable conditions for evolution?
Are we going to just keep it on the back burner?
Are we always going to go to a retreat, come back, then feel deflated, feel restless, and then long again for the next one, and then come back again and then long again for the next one?
Or instead of doing that, is it possible that we take this mundane life—from filing your taxes to doing spreadsheets, to looking into your bank account, or going to your lawyer?
Can we not be antagonistic to all this?
Understanding Avoidance
So the first question was: what will the mind choose?
The mind chooses a retreat.
Why doesn’t the mind choose the tax return?
Because it is avoiding.
There is avoidance there.
And the avoidance can be because it is stressful, or it is boredom, or I don’t like it, or I hate it, or it’s got to do with money, whatever.
There is a mechanism which avoids one situation and wants the other situation.
Now we’re trying to dismantle this mechanism itself, which avoids one part.
And this dismantling can happen with anything.
It can happen with anything you’re avoiding in life.
It can be painful emotions or a relationship you’re not wanting to look at.
The basic mechanism is avoidance of the unpleasant and wanting of the pleasant.
So when things are pleasant in an Ashram, of course there’s no tension in the Ashram, so your mind is at peace.
But when it comes back to the chaos of this life, that peace does not translate, or it translates for a very short time.
And this is because of this gap between these two locations—geographic locations and mental locations.
In the end, everything is in mental conditioning.
Mentally we have decided on some level to give preference to a particular situation more than the others.
I want you to investigate and dismantle this.
Choice Belongs to the Mind
How would you dismantle this?
To dismantle this, we’ll have to first remove the core conditioning that we have been taught again and again in all the spiritual traditions and books—that one is better than the other.
That choice belongs to the mind, not to awareness.
Presence does not care.
Consciousness does not care if it is in the Himalayas, or it is lying in a ditch, or it is in a palace.
The mind has the preference.
The mind has its conditioning and says, “I want to choose one over the other.”
And Jiddu Krishnamurti spent his entire life trying to bring this to the forefront with the words “choiceless awareness”—that one is not better than the other, one is not more spiritual and sacred than the other.
The awareness which is the fundamental ground for all of us, for it all locations are the same.
A Story from Rishikesh
I’ll share a small story.
In 2006, I was in Rishikesh, at the foothills of the Himalayas, and I was with awakened master Dinesh Anand.
He was a very simple sage and he hardly had many people around him.
So I had a lot of access to him, which was amazing.
The Himalayas are really beautiful, and I always had this fantasy of going up to a lot of those sacred spots which were like 10,000 feet up.
One of them is Badrinath.
So I told Dinesh Anandji, I told my teacher, “You know, I want to go there and sit and meditate.”
And you know what he said to me?
He said, “Don’t be under the delusion that truth can be found there. The same consciousness is here in Rishikesh, and the same consciousness is there in Badrinath, up in the Himalayas.”
“So don’t go with the delusion. If you want to go around, find some peace, look at some good scenery, find some rest, that’s fine. Go and have some fun, relax, but leave this delusion here and then go.”
Of course, me being a very sincere seeker, I said thank you, smiled, and said, “But I will have to go there.”
And this is how the seeker’s mind works.
Even if the Master says it’s the same truth, you still want to explore.
So of course I went to Badrinath.
But I had these words in my head, what he had told me—that I’m not going to find the truth there, but I’m going to have a look and enjoy that place.
When I came back, he had a good laugh. I still remember.
He said, “Have you come back?”
I said, “Yes.”
And he was like, “Did you find the truth there?”
I said, “Of course not. You told me it’s everywhere, so how can it be there?”
And so we had a great laugh around it.
Treat Life as the Retreat
Again, we come back to this question of choice and the question of conditioning.
I call it conditioned preference.
The sooner we are able to see through it…
And I’m not saying don’t go to these retreats. It’s okay. You can go there for some time.
But when you come back, treat wherever you are as a retreat.
Treat your house as a cave.
Treat your office work, your everyday mundane relationships, the stuff that you avoid, as a teacher which is pointing you to see why you are avoiding certain things.
And when you honestly start doing that, when honestly the tax office is no different than Raman Ashram for you, then you will see that peace that you have been craving in retreats again and again will translate into the chaos of the everyday world.
And this is from my personal experience.
Whatever I’m teaching, whatever I’m saying, is what I have experienced, what I have stumbled upon after a lot of retreats myself and a lot of Ashrams.
So this is based not on reading a lot of books, but from practical experience that I went through in my own long journey.
When the Remedy Becomes the Trap
A spirituality which cannot meet all these challenges of everyday life, and is only used to somehow escape them and find a place where I can be peaceful for five days, then the remedy becomes the trap.
Initially, the remedy is to go to a retreat, and it’s good. You become more grounded and you come back.
But if you use it to escape the mundane and choose retreat over taxation every time, the remedy will become a trap.
And then when you come back, you will crave to go back there again.
Everything Is Sacred
So next time you have something really mundane and everyday which you think is not spiritual at all, change your perception, change your mindset.
Everything is sacred.
Everything is this consciousness.
When your mind changes, you can see everything as the manifestation of that consciousness.
And once you do that, then you will truly understand what J. Krishnamurti means by choiceless awareness.
An awareness where everything just happens.
Things blossom and fall off.
Manifestation comes and goes.
But That itself remains untouched and without any preference.