Riding The Tiger - The Vigilance Of Now

The mind is like a tiger that pulls you into the great illusion of Maya—the suffering nature of life. To ride the tiger is the great teaching of Papaji—the sublime vigilance of now. To master your mind is the deep recognition that there is no mind.

Transcript

The truth is,

Everything that's unfolding in your life is unfolding exactly as it is meant to unfold.

Wherever you are and whatever is unfolding is exactly what is meant to unfold in your life at this time,

Whether it is perceived to be good or bad.

This is the nature of karma,

Parabdha karma,

Predestiny,

Everything,

Every breath,

Every moment,

Every person that you meet is predestined.

And you can resist this or realize the truth of this and surrender to the living truth in your heart and let go of all of your efforts to make things go the way you want them to go,

To fix and change.

Even the movement to fix or change is predestined.

Even the wrong decision or what you perceive to be wrong was predestined.

So in that context,

It is impossible to make a wrong decision,

Right?

Because it leads you to this moment in time and this moment is forever free of good and bad or how you perceive things,

How you perceive yourself and other people.

Your perception is limited by egoic identification with the physical form,

With your senses,

Your feelings,

Emotions,

Circumstances distract you from the living truth in the core of your being.

So everything is unfolding exactly as it is meant to unfold.

You are in the exact right place in this moment in time.

Papaji was a guru,

Master,

Teacher,

Devotee of Sri Sri Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi.

He was a powerful force of nature who stands in eternity directing your attention to the living truth in your heart.

When he told a story of Kali Durga,

A student asked the question,

How do I ride the tiger like Kali Durga?

Kali is an ancient representation of liberation from the mind,

Right?

So riding the tiger is really mastery of mind,

Right?

And so Papaji explained that Kali rides the tiger and the tiger symbolizes mind.

So she has conquered the mind and she carries a double-edged sword so that she can annihilate any thought,

Any vasana,

Latent unconscious tendency,

Any feeling,

Anything associated with the body she can annihilate with her double-edged sword.

So the tiger symbolizes mind,

Her sword symbolizes consciousness,

Pure awareness,

Sat-chit-ananda.

She also wears a garland of skulls and from a Western point of view,

This is very strange,

But what it represents is the past,

The dead past.

And if you give your attention to the past or the future,

It is death.

It pulls you back into maya,

Into the illusion of you,

Right?

So the sword of consciousness brings you to this moment,

Which is free of the past.

This moment is always free of past and future.

And really Papaji's teaching was Kali,

Was Durga,

Was riding the tiger.

It was giving your attention fully to this moment,

Training your mind to let go of the past,

Let go of the future and stay aware as awareness itself.

This is the vigilance,

The practice of Papaji is now.

That is his practice,

Now.

Now is eternal.

It is eternally the truth of you.

There is no end to now.

The mind has a biological clock tied to the ego.

The mind keeps track of time and moves to the future and the past,

Constantly is moving from future to past.

And if you follow that movement,

It creates the illusion that you have somehow lost the moment or you've lost the now moment,

Which is impossible.

Past is an illusion of mind.

Future is an illusion of mind.

There is no past without mind.

There is no future without the projection of mind into a non-existent future,

Right?

So Kali's sword is a double-edged sword so she can annihilate any thought,

Past,

Future,

Even thoughts of now,

Even thoughts of God.

God cannot be limited by God,

Right?

The word God limits God.

God is omniscient.

God is eternal.

God is sat-chit-ananda,

Pure conscious eternal awareness,

A peace and stillness that surpasses all understanding that you are never ever separate from.

But because the illusion of the body is so strong,

The physicalness of your body is so strong,

It kind of works in unison with the mind to put you in a hypnotic trance.

Life as we know it is a trance state caused by mind.

The illusion of your mind generated by mind,

Your reaction to life,

Anger,

Fear,

Sadness,

Melancholy,

Depression,

Anxiety,

Stress is generated by your mind,

Right?

When you are a slave to your mind,

You suffer.

When you ride the tiger,

Right,

As Kali Durga,

There is no mind,

There is no body,

There is only the eternal truth,

The living truth of the heart.

Kali is now.

Right now,

When you give your attention to now,

When you practice the vigilance of now,

There is no problem,

There is no you,

There is only the most sublime happiness,

Stillness,

Happiness,

And those words must be wiped out.

Enlightenment,

The idea that the teacher is the human form.

The human form has nothing to do with the Sadhguru.

The Sadhguru is free of form,

In form,

Free of form.

The guru is one who has realized the formless one.

But there is no enlightened guru,

No enlightened human being.

The body is past.

The body is always past.

It is never future.

The body purely by its genetics is past.

Every cell in your body can be traced back millions of years,

Millions upon millions of incarnations.

Papaji told another beautiful story about truth and freedom.

It was about this guru had a small ashram and a few students,

Only a handful of students.

The reason he only had a few students is because his teaching was so deeply,

Ruthlessly true.

He confronted the ego,

Completely annihilated the ego.

So anyone attached to the ego or their humanness or making their life better or Maya would leave,

Wouldn't be interested in his teaching.

They were caught in the illusion of Maya,

Believing it was real,

Pursuing money,

Pleasure,

Power,

Esteem,

Fame.

They weren't interested in the truth.

So his group of students was very small because so few people really want freedom,

Really want it so badly they would surrender everything to realize the living truth.

So he had a small group of devotees who really heard the teaching on a very deep level and wanted to liberate themselves from the karmic wheel of samsara.

They were not seekers,

They were not disciples.

They studied scripture but really their practice was the practice of now,

This is Papaji's teaching,

The vigilance of now,

Riding the tiger of your mind.

That's mastery of mind which means no mind.

So the master in this ashram was very old,

He was close to death and he felt very strongly he needed to name a successor.

But he taught every day in the ashram the highest truths,

Mostly they remained in silent meditation.

And this group of 20 devotees would sit around the guru and really inquire into the deepest truth.

They had satsang every day in the most sublime peace,

Stillness,

Silence.

They were all very educated on the Vedic scriptures and sutras and they had a very austere spiritual practice,

This vigilance of now,

It's very Zen,

Right?

If there's only now,

Nothing else exists.

The maya illusion is seen through.

So these devotees were very well educated.

But in the ashram there was this man who was illiterate,

Could not read.

And every day he washed the floors,

He was the janitor for the ashram.

He was always scrubbing the floors as the satsang was unfolding and the wise teachings were offered by the guru.

And the devotees really didn't pay much attention to this janitor washing the floors,

Taking out the garbage,

Cleaning the kitchen,

Chopping wood for the fire.

And this janitor scrubbing the floors always listened very attentively to the guru.

And scrubbing the floor was his practice of now.

He really deeply heard the vigilance of now.

This is the teaching of the guru,

The teaching of all gurus,

Satguru.

There's only one guru.

There is no physical human guru.

The physical human guru is pointing to the eternal guru inside of you.

And only you can stop and surrender everything to the now.

Let go.

Discover the happiness and peace that you are now in this moment,

Right?

So he really heard this.

And as he was washing the floor with these big circular motions of his hands,

He would focus on the now in his heart and feel this amazing bliss.

But the guru was very old and knew he would soon leave his body.

So one day while the janitor was scrubbing the floors and the devotees were sitting quietly around him,

He said,

I must name my successor.

So the one of you who can write the greatest gatha spiritual teaching will be my successor.

And he put a chalkboard in the satsang hall and left.

And all the devotees sat silently and began writing down what they thought would be the greatest gatha and talked amongst themselves.

And they were very excited about this change,

Right?

And the janitor was just observing this unfold and all the talking and excitement.

And finally,

One of the devotees who was considered to be the wisest of the wise wrote down,

One who keeps the mirror of the mind clean will attain freedom.

Right?

One who keeps the mirror of the mind free of the dust or the thoughts of mind will attain freedom.

The janitor wasn't sure what was going on,

So he approached this group of devotees and he said,

What's happening?

What is all the excitement about?

And they told him,

The guru is near his mahasamadhi,

The time when he will leave his body.

And he will name his successor soon,

The one who can write the greatest gatha.

And the greatest gatha right now is this one,

The one written down.

One who keeps the mirror of the mind free of the dust of thought is truly free or liberated.

And the janitor replied,

When there is no mirror,

Where will the dust alight?

And the devotees were astonished that such wisdom arose from this janitor.

It was never even really part of their scholarly group,

Right?

So they wrote that down,

Where there is no mirror,

Where will the dust alight?

And then one night late in the evening,

When all the devotees were sleeping and the janitor had gone home,

The guru read all the gathas and he saw that that was the greatest gatha,

That was his successor.

So the next morning when the janitor came to wash the floor,

He goes to the janitor,

Takes off his robe and hands him his begging bowl and says,

You have written the greatest gatha,

You are my successor.

Now run as fast as you can because my devotees will be so jealous and angry,

They will try to kill you.

So he took the orange robe and the begging bowl and he ran as fast as he could.

But when the devotees woke up,

They were outraged.

They found their guru totally naked and he said the successor was the janitor.

So they ran after the janitor as fast as they could and they finally caught up with him and said that you cannot be a guru,

You are illiterate,

You cannot even read.

You have stolen our guru's only possessions,

Which is this robe and the begging bowl.

We are going to take you to the magistrate and have you thrown into prison or we might even kill you.

Laughing the janitor took off the robe and tossed it to the devotees along with the begging bowl and said,

You can have this robe and this bowl.

But what the guru has given me no one can ever take.

This is the living now in your heart.

No one ever touches that,

Ever takes that,

Ever speaks that.

There are no words for that and you are that living now.

You are the vigilance of now in the core.

Really to train the mind to focus on that is letting go of everything.

This is what Kali Durga represents,

Surrendering within yourself.

It's not about leaving your job,

Leaving your relationship,

Becoming a renunciate,

It's becoming a renunciate in the heart,

Recognizing for yourself that the past future is not real,

Recognizing that everything in the world changes except that living now in the heart.

And the more you give your attention to that,

The happier and happier you become.

But not as human happiness beyond that.

The state of no mind is the deep realization there is no mind,

No thinker,

And no doer.

This is Papaji's teaching of now,

Which is Ramana's teaching of now,

Which is Arunachala Shiva,

The living eternal flame of the heart that destroys everything that is false.

Without you doing anything,

You can recognize for yourself this idea of you is an illusion generated by your own mind.

Now is the only reality.

Thank you so much for listening.

This is Koshi and I'll be talking to you again soon.

Reviews

Lovely! 🙏 Thank you so much 💖🙏💐

Thank you for these wise words!