Thinking Vs Living

A student had many questions.

“What is life? What is reality? What is the meaning and purpose of life? How to live? What is right living? How to live in this chaotic world?”

He went to a Master and asked him these questions. Master was silent a while and said to him “I can answer these questions but not here. Only in a particular place I take you, you can ask these questions there which I can try to answer.”

The student was happy and was willing to go with the Master to that place where he can get answers for his questions.

The Master led the student to a place far from the village and to the edge of the precipice of a hillock below which lies expansive and turbulent river.

The Master suddenly pushed the student into the river and shouted “This is the right place for you to ask these questions. Come on ask.”

The student was dazed while falling into the river and when plunged into the turbulent river he was struggling to swim in those violent waves of the river. The river was so wild for him that he could hardly manage to swim. He was ONLY concentrating on saving his life. Nothing in his mind but action.

After he could manage to reach the shore with great difficulty, Master walked up to him and asked “Why you did not bother to ask the questions in that place where you are expected to ask them?”.

The student managed to say “Which questions? I have no questions to ask”. He left and never to return to the Master.

It is on the safe banks we have questions but not in the midst of the river.

A true Master is the one who kicks you into the “action” rather than giving intellectual abstractions as answers.

The organism for example, your heart does not question nor waits for the Jesus or Buddha to teach it “How to function”

To learn to swim we should jump into the river and not contemplate about “How to swim?” by sitting on the banks of the river.

Thought cannot meet life. Thought born out of dead past cannot capture that which is living. Thought how ever swift it is, always lags behind the movement of life.

When you are terribly hungry there is some action. You hunt for the food. Then you don’t contemplate about “what is hunger” and “how to rightly deal with the hunger”. The state of hunger cannot be simulated by thinking about the hunger, no matter how deeply you think.

Thinking and Living are two mutually exclusive things. Smoke and Fire cannot co-exist.

Thinking about “how to live” has created manic depressive state in us as we miss the ‘fresh lease of life’ by our constant thinking. And thoughts block the natural flow of life.

Thought is waste of life energy. It is useful only for maintaining survival mechanism and for the technological progress and in rest of the arena it is destructive.

To meet the life without questions and answers, with absolute uncertainty is to
STOP THINKING and START LIVING.