Let's Make A Choice Between Awake Unconsciousness or Conscious Awakening

Isn't it that everyone seeks peace and harmony? Isn't that we all experience agitation, irritation, disharmony on many occasions in our lives. Believe it or not but whenever we suffer, we can't just keep the suffering to ourselves; we invariably distribute our own suffering to others around us as well. Unhappiness and misery permeate the atmosphere around us and those who come in contact with us. Yet, we all wish so dearly at all times to live at peace with ourselves, and at peace with others. After all, we all are social beings.

But how are we to live peacefully? How are we to remain harmonious within, and maintain peace and harmony around us?

Gautam Buddha investigated and researched for 6 years the reasons and how can we be relieved of our misery. To understand his teachings of salvation from pain and misery, we have to understand the basic cause of our own suffering. Simply put His teachings makes it clear that whenever we start generating any negative emotion or impurity in the mind, we become unhappy.

"A negativity in the mind or impurity, cannot coexist with peace and harmony".

Question is how do we start generating this painful negativity?

We become unhappy when we find someone behaving in a way that we don't like, or when we find something happening which we don't like. Unwanted things do happen or wanted things do not happen, creating tension within, so tense, so full of negativity, that our lives becomes miserable. One way to resolve this problem; if nothing unwanted happens in life, that everything keeps on happening exactly as we desire. For this we must have the power to stop anything unwanted. We know that this is something impossible. There is no one in the world whose all desires are always fulfilled, in whose life everything happens according to his or her wish, without anything unwanted happening.Another way is that we stop react blindly to anything unwanted. When we stop getting affected or reacting to anything unwanted, we will are likely to remain with peace.

Question arise, how can we stop reacting blindly (unaware), when confronted with events that we don't like and how can we stop creating tension and remain peaceful and harmonious at all times?

A simple solution that we all know to this is that if something unwanted happens; then we should divert our attention to something else. For example, get up, take a glass of water, start drinking, or go for walk or leave the place of conflict etc.—our anger won't multiply. Some suggest to start counting; one, two, three, four or start repeating a word, or a phrase, or some mantra, perhaps the name of a god or saintly person towards whom we may have our devotion; and let the mind get diverted, and to some extent we'll be free of the negativity and anger sooner rather than later.

These solutions are quite helpful and they often work. With this technique mind feels free from agitation. However, the solution works only for a small period of time. By diverting the attention we try and push the negativity deep into the unconsciousness but that still continue to generate and even multiply deep down in us. On the surface, we may appear in peace and harmony, but somewhere deep there is a sleeping volcano of anger and suffering of suppressed negativity, which more often than not erupts in violent explosions. Thus we recognize that diverting the attention is only running away from the problem.

"Escape is no solution; we must face the problem."

The real solution lies deep inside us. Whenever negativity arises in the mind, just observe it, face it.

As soon as we start to observe a mental impurity, it begins to lose its strength and slowly withers away. This is a real solution; it avoids both extremes—suppression and expression.

Burying the negativity in the unconscious will not eradicate it, and allowing it to manifest as unwholesome physical or vocal actions will only create more problems. But if we just observe, then the anger and frustration passes away and we become free of it.

All this sounds wonderful, but is it really practical?

It's not easy to face one's own negativities and impurities. When anger arises, it so quickly overwhelms us that we can't even notice. Overpowered by anger, we perform physical or vocal actions which harm ourselves and others. Later, when the anger has passed, we start repenting, begging pardon either from that person or from the Almighty. But the next time, we when faced with a similar situation, we make the mistake of again reacting in the same manner. This continual repenting did not help. The difficulty is that we were not aware when negativity started. It begins deep in the unconscious mind, and by the time it reaches the conscious level it has gained so much strength that it overwhelms us, and we become incapable in observing it.

Gautam Buddha, discovered that whenever any impurity arises in the mind, two things happen simultaneously. One is that the breath loses its normal rhythm and other is abnormal sensations start to occur in our body. We start breathing harder whenever negativity comes into the mind. This observation presents itself as a practical solution.

An ordinary person cannot observe abstract fear, anger or passion. But with proper training and practice it is easy to observe our own respiration and sensations those are arising in our body. Respiration and sensations will help in two ways. First, they are like our very own personal observers. As soon as a negativity arises in the mind, the breath will lose its normality and will warn us, “Look, something has gone wrong!” We cannot scold the breath; we have to accept the warning. Secondly, the sensations will tell us that something has gone wrong. Then, having been warned, we can start observing the respiration and the sensations, and very quickly we may get rid of the negativity which has tried to overwhelm us.

Out of ignorance we keep reacting but when wisdom arises—the wisdom of observing reality as it is. When we cease to react unconsiously, then we are capable of real action—action from a balanced mind, a mind which sees and understands the truth. Such action can only be positive, creative, helpful to us and to others. Mental-physical phenomenon is like a coin with two sides. On one side are our emotions, on the other side are the respiration and sensations in the body. Thus, by observing the respiration or the sensations, we in fact observe our own mental impurities. In this way instead of running away from the problem, we face reality as it is. As a result, these impurities lose their strength; they no longer overpower us as they did in the past. If we persist, they eventually disappear altogether and we begin to live a peaceful and happy life, increasingly free of negativities.

With some amount of self training, We can achieve a state of awareness of our breathing and also of what is happening deep inside us. Whatever it is, breath or sensation, we learn to observe it without losing our mental balance. We stop reacting and multiplying our misery. Instead, we allow the defilements to manifest and pass away. The more one practices this technique, the more quickly negativities will dissolve. Gradually the mind becomes free of defilements, becomes at peace.

"A peaceful mind is always full of love—selfless love for all others, full of compassion for the failings and sufferings of others, full of joy at their success and happiness, full of equanimity in the face of any situation."

This is the essence of "Vipassana Meditation". This is what Buddha's message in brief and in simple terms. He never established or taught any religion, any “ism”. He never instructed those who came to him to practice any rites or rituals, or any formalities. Instead, he taught them just to observe nature as it is, by observing the reality inside and be consciously awake rather then in a state of awake unconsciousness.