So I recently finished reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle the author of the Power of Now. The Power of Now is a great book and for anyone who hasn't had the chance to read it I fully recommend it. I'm going to post a full review of the book and go more in depth of some of the aspects of it but I want to talk about one chapter which talks about not minding what happens in life. The example used by the author was about an Indian Philosopher named J. Krishnamutri who talked all over the world to different people about how to live a life of meaning and enlightenment. He had been having these talks for a long time and had been all over the world for over 50 years. At one of his talks he decided to tell people his "secret".
This secret was supposed to be what these people he had been talking to for multiple years had not been able to grasp about how he has been able to live the life that he lives. The secret he told them is "Not minding what happens". This is straight forward to some but to others there is a deeper coherence that goes into it that most people won't be able to recognize until it is too late. Not minding to him was being in alignment with the things that happened. It basically talks about taking the approach of not being affected by what happens to and around us. We have to get to the point where things that happen are just what they are and we don't need to label it as something good or something bad. There comes a time where we just have to let go of the need for control and just let things be and that is easier said than done. The ability to practice non detachment to things will have such a positive impact on us that we will be questioning why we were so worried in the first place or affected by these things.
There was another story told in the same context when it came to this instance. A Zen master would always reply to things with "Is that so?". While everyone would be angry with him with things they thought he did or criticize him, he would always remain stoic and would answer "Is that so?". What the author was trying to convey in this moment is that how we respond to things matter. The response may be the difference between the circumstance escalating or ending. In the case of this Zen master, he would always respond in the same way no matter what it is. To the author "He allowed the form of the moment good or bad to be as it is and so does not become a participant in human drama". A power realization was "He was completely at one with what happens that it had no power over him".
This is the point we need to get to where we become non-reactive in an aloof way that nothing has power over us. Not the people who are trying to get a reaction out of us or spend their lives trying to bring nothing but trouble into ours and also not the battles life throws at us. There will always be good and bad times and we will always go through moments of uncertainty but how we respond to those moments will say a lot about us and how we can bounce back from it. I will be giving a full review of this book in the next post but this was such an important concept that I wanted to take time to write about it.
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