Accept your “no-thingness” and give in to Life

Being able to do nothing is freedom. Having no idea of what to do is bliss.

There will be times in Life when you have hit rock bottom, when you are in the depths of treacherous ravine, you see no way out and your mind can’t even think. The harder you try, the more blank you feel your mind is. There are only two kinds of problems in the world. One which you, or anyone you know, can solve and another which no human can solve. What do you do when you are faced with the second kind of problems – which no human can solve, at least not in an immediately imaginable, conceivable time window? Think Michael Schumacher, think MH 370, think of a five-year-old who is struck by a fourth stage cancer! At a practical, human level, this state may be a no-go. Where do you go when you have hit rock bottom and don’t have the means or even ideas to climb back up? But at a spiritual level, every dead-end, every no-go signifies an opportunity to evolve and grow within. Through such evolution, you become free and happy – despite your circumstances.  

In Zen Buddhism, there are koans. A koan is a paradoxical riddle or anecdote without a solution to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and provoke enlightenment. There are many famous koans. One is: “Find out your original face.” A Master asked his disciple to solve this koan.

The disciple asks the Master: “What is the original face?”

And the Master replies: “The face that you had before your parents were born.”

And the disciple starts meditating on that: “What is your original face?” Naturally, you have to deny all your faces. Many faces will start surfacing: childhood faces, when you were young, when you became middle-aged, when you became old, when you were healthy, when you were ill.... All kinds of faces will stand in a queue. They will pass before your eyes claiming: “I am the original face.” And you have to go on rejecting. The disciple too goes on rejecting all the faces that come in front of him. He goes through this process of rejection over many, many years. Finally, when he’s himself the Master of knowing which is not the original face, he realizes that there is no original face. That there is only emptiness. There’s nothing. When all the faces have been rejected and emptiness is left, you have found the original face. Osho, the other great Master, explains this so simply: “Emptiness is the original face. Zero is the ultimate experience. Nothingness – or more accurately no-thingness – is your original face.”

Similarly, some Life situations are koans. For example, everyone is looking at the Tarun Tejpal episode through the eyes of either Tejpal or the Young Woman who’s filed the complaint against him. But when you look at it through the eyes of Tejpal’s daughters Tiya, who’s best friend the Young Woman is, and Cara or from Geetan’s, Tejpal’s wife, point of view, you will see a koan there. An inexplicable situation with no solution. A legal redemption may still be on the cards for Tejpal. But will there ever be a moral one – in the eyes of his own family?

I have learnt from Life, in my own small, yet eventful, way that a no-go is really the time to let go! I have realized that when you can’t do anything about a situation, when nothing seems possible, when the mind can’t think and no one can even attempt a solution any more, then accept your “no-thingness”. And give in to Life. Let Life take you where you belong. And if Life doesn’t take you anywhere, then perhaps it’s here, in this dark abyss, that you were always ordained to arrive?