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    A Buddha's Babble
    A Buddha's Babble
    A Buddha's Babble
    Ebook188 pages3 hours

    A Buddha's Babble

    By Ramesh S. Balsekar

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    Every ‘you’ are not THAT. THAT is every ‘you’.
    THAT will always be there without ‘you’, but ‘you’ cannot be there without THAT.

    Unless this is very clearly understood, every seeker will want to be ‘one with THAT’ and will, therefore, be frustrated. What is to be very clearly understood is that every individual entity is connected to THAT Source. And the highest understanding is that every human being, in his daily living, must continuously remain connected to THAT Source and never be disconnected from it.

    The individual entity – the Ego – gets disconnected from the Source whenever he considers himself or the ‘other’ as the doer of some action, and blames and condemns him for some action. The connection finally ends when the body dies and the Ego no longer exists as a separate entity.

    In A Buddha’s Babble, Ramesh Balsekar uses pithy writing, telling parables and large doses of humour to get this point across. Such is the magic of his writing that no reader can remain untouched by its inherent wisdom.

    RAMESH S. BALSEKAR was one of the most profound spiritual Masters of this Age. He was both a brilliant writer and a captivating speaker. Shortly after retiring as the President of the Bank of India, he met the sage Nisargadatta Maharaj and began translating for Maharaj’s daily morning talks. It was not long before Ramesh too experienced the Ultimate Understanding. He is therefore a wonderful blend of East and West, spiritual and material. His compassion and gentle humour infuse the Teaching with an energy that can only be described as being uniquely Ramesh.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRamesh S. Balsekar
    Release dateMay 30, 2013
    ISBN9789382788317
    A Buddha's Babble
    Author

    Ramesh S. Balsekar

    Ramesh Balsekar, a teacher of pure Advaita, or non-duality, is an unearthly blend of the utterly human and utterly divine manifesting as a brilliant spiritual Master. His crystal-clear and profound teachings are backed by his complete understanding that “Nobody does anything” coupled with his life experience as a top executive of a major Indian bank, as a huband, father and grandfather – all lived knowing that it is all happening as God’s Will.For much of his full life Ramesh, whose Guru was Nisargadatta Maharaj, has been devoted to Ramana Maharshi, in whose spirit Ramesh welcomes seekers and asks “Who is seeking? Leave the seeking to Him who started the seeking.”

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      A Buddha's Babble - Ramesh S. Balsekar

      The Four Basic Facts Of Life     

      1. Every human being is forced to live his life in the circumstances in which he has been placed. In those circumstances, he is free to do whatever he wants, but the experience has been that there is little he can do about the results.

      Therefore, it is futile and frustrating to constantly reject the what-is and pursue an illusory what-should-be.

      2. The very mechanism of daily living – whether now or 5000 years ago for the caveman, whether for a normal human being or a psychopath – requires every human being to have the total free will to do whatever he wishes to do in the circumstances.

      3. The experience of every human being has been that he has never had any control over the result of his action: sometimes he has succeeded in getting what he wanted, many times he has failed. No human being has had total control over the result of his action.

      Therefore it is stupidly futile, once the action has been done, to waste one’s energy constantly thinking about the possible result of the action, and it is much more practical to concentrate on the next action being taken.

      (This would seem to be precisely the advice given by Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: You have the birthright to act, but you have no right over the fruits of your action.)

      4. The fourth basic fact of life (divine rule) is that although the result of his action has never been in his control, in daily living, the society in which he lives considers the result as his action, and the individual human being is forced to accept the society’s verdict on the result of his action, based on the prevailing social regulations and legal provisions. If the society considers the action as good, the society rewards the individual concerned; and if the action is considered bad, the society punishes him. Reward from the society means pleasure in the moment; punishment means pain in the moment.

      And this has been the human being’s daily living: pleasure one moment, pain the next moment. And the individual has no option but to accept the award of the society because he has to continue to live in that society.

      The total acceptance of these four principles of life means Self-realization or enlightenment, the result of which is that the man of understanding, the sage, lives his life from moment to moment, necessarily accepting the pleasure of the moment (but without any pride of achievement), and the pain of the moment (but without the burden of guilt or shame). And, since he accepts the same principles for the ‘other’, there is no burden of hatred for the ‘other’ for his supposed actions.

      Life for the sage has thus become enormously simple. He lives his life, doing in any situation whatever he feels like doing, without any regrets about the past, without any complaints in the present, without any expectations in the future, and importantly, without blaming and condemning anyone for anything – neither himself nor the other.

      Our earth is degenerating these days: bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents. And the end of the world is evidently approaching.

      – Assyrian clay tablet, 2800 B.C.

      If you need glasses and you can see clearly, it is obvious that you have your glasses on.

      Living Away From The Centre    

      The average person is like an eccentric flywheel that is not centered properly; the faster the wheel turns, the more violently it vibrates. Ultimately flying apart. Most people are frequently in danger of ‘flying apart’ mentally; living at the periphery, not at the centre, the faster they whirl through life, the more violently they vibrate. Few think of themselves as having a ‘centre’, and are constantly on the edge.

      The ‘centre’ is the ego, the separate entity who has to live his life in a relationship with the ‘other’. The self-centered ego is in ignorance until the revelation happens that what he really is, is the impersonal Consciousness, the Source, the unmanifest Unicity, but that in the daily living, he is the Consciousness, identified with the form and the name as a separate identity. The revelation that is the enlightenment brings home to the ego that as a separate entity he is not the actual doer of any action but merely the instrument, a separate instrument, through which events happen according to God’s Will / Cosmic Law.

      The same T tells every ‘me’, Be still – and know that I am God. But the me is too busy and too anxious to listen to it.

      I Am ‘THAT’ – A Perspective    

      What does it mean? It does not mean that I, as a separate entity, am That, the Source, God. It means that, if, as a separate entity, I do what I want to do, which could be against what is supposed to be, I would be going against the flow of life, and therefore, likely to be frustrated.

      On the other hand, if I accept that I am not the separate entity with autonomy and personal doership, but THAT, then I should merely witness whatever happens as the functioning of the Source, THAT. This would mean less physical strain and less mental stress, and therefore peace and harmony.

      It is a matter of perspective. If I see the whole process from below (who is this me?) I end up with That as the Source; if I see the whole process from – above – the Source then I end up with the separate entity as only an instrument through which the Source, the Impersonal Consciousness, functions and brings about whatever is supposed to happen according to the Cosmic Law.

      Man’s Struggle In Life    

      In the world there is war, ecological disorder, political and social disorder, crime, all the evils of industrialization and overpopulation. And it seems that the more people try to solve these problems, the more they grow. And there is the human being full of problems himself. Then we have always been told that there is something else, mysterious, which has been given various labels like God, eternity, creation. These are the three aspects of life which seem to be confronting the human being at the same time.

      The question arises: does this division of the whole existence into the world outside of me, the world inside of me, and something beyond me, really exist? Or does it exist because we seem to be concerned with the outer chaos and totally neglect the inner chaos, and then try to find a solution in a belief, in the divine?

      Is it that we have not been able to solve the outer with its confusion, chaos, brutality, violence and destruction and therefore we turn to the inner, and then not being able to solve anything there either, we move to the third aspect beyond life?

      Could it be that if we treated the whole of this existence as one unitary movement, then perhaps we could solve all these problems intelligently?

      It would seem that the world, apparently outside of me, is really created by me – not the trees, the birds and the bees and the landscape – but human existence in relationship, generally known as ‘society’. So the world is me – and you – and I am the world. Give this concept some serious thought and you will know that this is a fact, not an intellectual abstraction.

      It may seem revolutionary, but the fact is that the problem has to be seen as one problem – the problem of the human being – and not the problem of the environment. This point of view is an enormous step forward. My consciousness is the world. The world is in my consciousness. The crisis is in this consciousness, not in organization or building roads and infrastructure. And of course my consciousness is the consciousness of the world.

      In deep sleep, the consciousness is not there, nor is the world there.

      There the real question is: can this consciousness undergo a radical change? And not escape into the supposed divine? The divine is itself in this change in consciousness.

      When we say there must be a change in consciousness, it is still within the field of consciousness. Consciousness is the collection of all the things collected by the human being as knowledge, experience, confusion and misery, violence and destruction. Wanting a change in consciousness, therefore, clearly means changing the pieces from one corner to another – juggling with the contents, changing variables in the same set of things.

      What we call consciousness and what we are talking about, is the very content of this consciousness – the container and the contained are an indivisible thing. Then the world, the Consciousness and the ego-entity who is supposed to bring about the change, are all the same entity, masquerading in three different roles.

      The problem, therefore, boils down to: "What is the human being to do? How is the mind – which is the content of consciousness with the accumulated knowledge of the past to empty itself of all its contents?

      When one talks of change, we imply an entity separate within the consciousness, which is supposed to bring about a transformation. It is absolutely necessary to see this fact very, very clearly that the observer-entity-the ego is very much a part of what has to be changed, that he is, in fact, a thief pretending to be a policeman to catch himself. But in life everybody believes that he is capable of exercising his will upon his own life, upon what happens in life.

      It is, therefore, so very necessary to understand that one has to be totally free of the idea that through one’s will one can change the content. And this is really simple. All that one has to do is see our own daily experience. The mechanism of daily living cannot happen unless every human being has the total free will to do whatever he feels he should do in any situation. But it is everybody’s experience that, while we have control over our actions, we have no control at all over the results of our actions. In other words, the will of the human being certainly exists, but it is worthless in actual life.

      A total acceptance of this every day fact of life means ‘no more will in my life’; and this means no more resistance – no

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