Thought for the Day - Do Not Attach to Name and Form

 In the throes of hurt? Is the mind messing with you and playing havoc? Do you feel someone hurt you or played with your feelings?

Pic Satish Nargundkar

Relax. It's our mind at play, wanting to be the victim. The mind is a master storyteller, better than the ones who write web series, and can conjure drama from anywhere. Fact is nothing need to really hurt us - unless we want to hurt. What anyone does need not be accepted or even taken seriously. One has one's own life to life and a million possibilities to look at.

But no. Our mind wants its pound of flesh. It wants to cry and throw a tantrum. So what do we do?

I loved this thing I picked up from the book 'Dropping Ashes on the Buddha' where the Zen master says simply - do not attach to anything, to any name and form. Nothing is good or better, and nothing is bad and worse. There is no past and future, there only is what is.

He betrayed me - betray becomes a word, a name. We expect this in a relationship - becomes a name and form. 

Take out all names and forms and there are no rules, nothing to attach anything to. Things just are. There's nothing to get hurt about - nothing to cling to. And the mind drops off. Once it drops off there's no hurt. There's nothing really - just what is. 

What is is reality, the present. In the now, as Eckhart Tolle says, there is no pain.

Cut out name and form and you cut out much drama in your life. In fact the moment you sense pain or heaviness, check where you have been attaching to name and form in some way, the slightest way.