From Mind to “No Mind”

Sometimes, just deluged with challenges, you think Life is a series of endless problems. But did you know that all your problems can be solved in a nanosecond? Just stop thinking of them as problems!!! 

There are no problems in Life. Really. There are merely Life situations – like a health challenge, a natural disaster, death of a loved one and failure with career or business or relationships despite all the integrity and effort. But a Life situation is labelled as a problem by the human mind. The mind keeps on churning out thoughts that look at Life situations or events and label them good or bad. We label an event or situation as bad when what has happened is not what we expected or thought we deserved. So, in effect, problems are caused by our thinking, by the mind. Which means if the mind took events and made them look and feel like problems, the same mind can get rid of the problems!

In a very theoretical way, if you can get rid of the mind, you can be free of problems. But this is not wordsmithing or spiritual theory alone. At one level, there is no mind. Mind is an imagination. There are only thoughts, 60,000 of them precisely (as proven by research), that arise within you each day. These are random, often disconnected, individual thoughts. When seen together they create the illusion of the mind. But really they are stand-alone thoughts. Think of this deeply. Someone you love dies. Now, a thought arises in you that says you cannot live without this person. So, you are plunged in grief. But what if this thought did not arise at all? What if the death was seen only as part of the cyclical Life pattern of birth and death? Or you lose your job. A thought in your mind tells you that without a job you will suffer because you will not have money to survive. But were you born with a job or money? What if you can reason out that you can survive the same way as you did when you were a child? Will you then be afraid and fearful of losing that job? So, if you examine Life closely, through these two example situations or through any other that you have encountered, you will find that death or job-loss or whatever else are mere events. The mind, the thoughts that arose within you, has made these events look and feel monstrous. Your mind, clearly, created your problems. Surely, if you had a way of ridding yourself of these thoughts, would you be tormented by these events at all?

So, the key to free yourself from your problems is to develop a temperament to distil your thoughts. You can’t not have thoughts. But you can surely develop the awareness, the discerning ability that reminds you, every step of your way, each time a debilitating thought arises, that Life is not a series of problems. It is just a series of events. Events get labelled as problems by your thinking. If you can remind yourself consistently to take each event, each moment as it comes, then your thoughts become insignificant and powerless. This is the state when there is “no mind” – it has become irrelevant, if not completely defunct! That is when you realize inner peace!