don't let this happen to you…

There is a thin line between just being lazy relaxing chilling out, and becoming complacent rusting away! 😈

For those readers who have no time or inclination for meditation (i.e. for yourself) still this post may be of value to you in any other field like your profession or any hobby, etc 🙂

When everything is going fine, I get that real lazy feeling and hesitation to sit and practice… so strong and overpowering, and I feel either knowingly or unknowingly – what need I have to meditate anymore? I have almost everything I could’ve asked for and more! Little bit ups and downs I’m able to cope up with easily…

Then there is this excerpt from Herman Hesse’s Siddartha… In this book, Siddartha is a fictional character who is a really good meditator but unkowingly and gradually starts moving more and more away from meditative life… that is the context of the following excerpt…

Just as a potter’s wheel, once it has
been set in motion, will keep on turning for a long time and only slowly
lose its vigour and come to a stop, thus Siddhartha’s soul had kept on
turning the wheel of asceticism, the wheel of thinking, the wheel of
differentiation for a long time, still turning, but it turned slowly and
hesitantly and was close to coming to a standstill. Slowly, like
humidity entering the dying stem of a tree, filling it slowly and
making it rot, the world and sloth had entered Siddhartha’s soul,
slowly it filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, put it to
sleep. On the other hand, his senses had become alive, there was much
they had learned, much they had experienced.

…

Like a veil, like a thin mist, tiredness came over Siddhartha, slowly,
getting a bit denser every day, a bit murkier every month, a bit heavier
every year.

From the Dhammapada…

Just as rust arising from iron
eats away the base from which it arises,
even so, their own deeds
lead transgressors to states of woe.

No one really wants to rust away… but once life is going on well – its hard to know unless one has developed some kind of awareness… and I’ve found the practice of meditation helps greatly in remaining a learner…

Q: Why am I so inconsistent in my efforts at self-discovery?

A: For one thing because you merely seek relief from your pain, rather than total healing. The pain drives you to the doctor, but when it passes, you carelessly forget that it must attack again. Consistency comes when you get tired of the pain. When you finally discover that you are both your own pain and doctor, you can stay home and heal yourself.

There’s a story of a miserly rich man who had a dutiful daughter in law named Vishaka. When when a monk appears in front of their house for alms, his daughter-in-law tells the monk ‘my father-in-law is himself eating stale food’. The rich man admonishes her, but she says ‘Whatever food you have got is because of good deeds you made a long time ago. And because you have not done anything for so long, hence the food is stale’ The man understood

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.
“What are you doing?” you ask.
“Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”
“You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”
“Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”
“Well why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”
“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”

~ Excerpt from Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 habits”

Src: invisible blog

I hope to return to this post and read it myself every now and then as a warning to myself to not end up becoming complacent (unless I become too complacent to do even that 😉 !