THE MIND AND ITS TRAVAILS
A student on a ten-day Vipassana course approached the conducting teacher to ask for permission to leave the course mid-way. At the time of registration for the course on day zero, each applicant is asked whether he is prepared to stay for the entire length of the course and that, if he has any doubt about being able to do so, he is welcome to come back at a later date when he is surer about his determination to complete the course.
The rigour of the course is such that many participants on a course might surely toy with the idea of leaving ' specially on day two and on day six ' though it is only the very irresolute few who actually leave. Such was the case with this student though it was day four or five when he first approached the teacher with his request to leave.
"Why do you wish to leave?", asked the teacher.
"Oh, it is just that in these few days I have figured out what the whole method and path is about and this stuff is just not for me", responded the young man.
The teacher went through the routine of reminding him of his voluntary pledge towards completing the course. Pledges hold little currency these days - at the first hurdle of discomfort and difficulty, the aspirant wants to opt out.
Whereas another student had already been permitted to leave the course, at times an intuitive feel for a meditation student's potential begs a teacher to persist with him and so it was in this case. The teacher explained that the ten days' duration had been arrived at on the basis of the experience of thousands of meditators in decades past - that it took at least ten days for one to get an adequate handle on the method and receive benefit from its practice - but all the cajoling, explanations, etc. were just so much water on a duck's back.
As meditation is not something that any horse can be forced to drink of, the teacher decided that he had one exemplary story - not a clichéd one - to narrate, after which the student could decide whether he wished to stay or not.
And the story went thus:
After the practice of the extreme austerities of crushing the mind with mind, of restraining the breath and of fasting while dwelling in the forest, the bodhisattva decided that the path of extreme self-mortification was as fruitless as the life of luxurious self-indulgence that he had enjoyed earlier under his father's patronage.
As soon as he took food from a woman on the riverbank, the five companions of the bodhisattva, who had served him very diligently till then, left him thinking that, as he had abandoned the path of austerities, he would never attain to higher knowledge, to liberation, to full enlightenment. In essence, of course, the bodhisattva could now work in complete solitude.
On attaining full enlightenment, the Buddha decided upon the very same five ascetics who had abandoned him to be the first receptors of his teaching. When the five saw him approaching, they decided neither to pay homage to him, nor to greet him for they saw him as one who had abandoned his struggle to become a Buddha.
As the Buddha drew nearer, the beneficence that must surely have emanated from him moved the five to do all that they had earlier decided they would not - greet him profusely, clean a spot and offer him a seat, get water to wash his feet, etc. Yet, when informed that he had indeed attained to full enlightenment, had indeed become a Buddha, they would not believe it to be true.
The Buddha then, in essence, asked the five to reflect on all the years of their association with him from his childhood onwards and whether any one of them could recall his utterance of an untruth. Not one of the five could recall of even one such instance. Thus, they came to accept that his assertion of having attained full enlightenment could not be an untruth as well and became receptive to being instructed by the Buddha - the first renunciate disciples of the Enlightened One.
No display of any miracles or supernatural powers to impress that group of five but just the utterance of the truth and nothing else!! Of course, the utterance of the truth by a Buddha must surely carry strength and power as from none other.
Having recounted this well-known story to underline the powerful purity of the Buddha, the meditation teacher then asked the dithering student whether he could really have figured out in four or five days what it took a bodhisattva a very, very long time and unimaginable effort to arrive at.
If indeed that were the case, it must be a travesty that he was attending the meditation course, in the first place. If not, then he would be served well if he were to seriously consider completing the course to obtain his first glimpse of that which a bodhisattva works towards and does attain. Else, it would be a terrible waste of an opportunity whereby his thirst brings him to the bank of the river and, yet, he would be turning and walking away saying that he already knew what the water tasted like.
If the student wished to stay he was most welcome to, if he wished to leave he had the teacher's permission to do so.
Did he stay?
After listening patiently to the teacher the student reiterated his decision to leave. As it was nighttime and raining, the teacher said that the student could stay at the meditation centre for the night and leave in the morning. No, he was adamant that he wished to leave right away.
The personal valuables deposited with the centre's office could only be had in the morning when the concerned person would come in. So, the student stayed on at the centre for the night though he could have very well insisted on leaving and come back in the morning to collect his personal valuables!!
Having stayed the night he probably felt rested enough to be back in the meditation hall early the next morning. A full day's striving can be quite tiring and by the end of that day he was back to tell the teacher that he surely wished to leave. The teacher, in turn, reminded him that he had already been granted the permission to leave on the previous day and that it was to his credit that he had stayed on for a day.
As it turned out, he stayed on again and was back in the hall the next morning. He did ask the volunteer serving in the hall, somewhat sheepishly, if the teacher would be annoyed to find him still at the centre after having twice asked for permission to leave. No, not at all, said the volunteer adding that the teacher had been quite keen that he complete the course. So assured, he stayed on and did complete the course.
On the tenth day of the course, when the vow of silence for nine days ends, that student was seen grinning away extravagantly at how well the course had gone for him. The teacher also felt that his intuition about the youngster had been vindicated, eventually.
