This article presents the whole content of the public talk Cico gave on March 14 2022.
If the mind is quite busy, it might be good to stay silent for a while to empty the mind first. (Silent audio guides)
Why is this life so confusing, chaotic, turbulent and messy? Why does the mind suffer so much?
To understand this, we need energy, so we gather all the energy which can be quickly dissipated and wasted in thoughts in this consciousness, which is the “me”.
In such a river of this consciousness, the mind has lost the vitality to look, to perceive. The mind is filled with all kinds of inferences, gossip, news, stories, narratives, and all kinds of various verbal expressions. And such a mind has no space at all to understand itself.
Can you empty the mind totally? -- not partially or fragmentarily, but totally empty the mind. Can you? Can you do it immediately? If you are hesitating, if you are doubting, you are being lazy.
And when the mind is lazy, the mind depends, the mind always wants to find out a method, a solution, a shortcut, a stopgap, but the mind is still lazy, very lazy.
For a lazy mind, it is easier to depend on something – rely on authority; it's easier to conform and imitate. And such a lazy mind is easily being manipulated, influenced, shaped, and therefore totally lost in this confusing world.
To meditate -- to understand ourselves deeply, one must stop being lazy mentally now.
It is easy to escape, to think of something different, to get some pleasure from thoughts and ideas, to get entertained.
It is more difficult to turn inward to examine oneself. So, a lazy mind is always taking the easy approach for convenience. And this convenience creates such a world -- turbulent, conflicting, confusing.
It's easy to accumulate thoughts and ideas, but it's more challenging to empty them because it needs your action now immediately.
But the mind still wants immediate pleasure, postponing the action; the mind has all kinds of excuses and pretexts.
You see, these thought processes trap the mind in the concept of time. “OK, I will do it tomorrow.” ”I will do it in the future.”, but if there's no action now, nothing actually happens.
This dialogue between you and the speaker is very serious because we look at life together and look at the fundamental level of living. It's a matter of life and death.
We must be very careful to understand the subtleties which have great importance in the simplicity of living, or else life becomes so complicated, meaningless and isolated.
So this moment, can we set aside all the things? So it is really between you and the speaker. If the mind is filled with all kinds of inferences, then you are not alone.
Without this aloneness, it's not you and the speaker. It is 100 people (your mind is being influenced by many things) and the speaker. So there's no relationship between you and the speaker unless you are really alone mentally so we can really inquire together.
Can you really put aside everything else human beings have created? So that you are totally alone at this moment.
Can you do that now? Just do it.
So now, let's keep silent together for three or four minutes. Let's be alone together.
You and the speaker only belong to this moment.
Let's hold, let's watch, let's stand alone now.
What is friendship? We rarely asked this question carefully, seriously.
In this ego-centric world -- utterly individualistic world, the mind is becoming more and more isolated, craving companionship, friends, and all kinds of socialising activities.
This isolation created by the self, the ego has all kinds of symptoms: loneliness, aggression, illusion, anxiety, fear, you name it.
All of those symptoms are pointing to this isolation. And out of that isolation, the mind wants to socialise, have friends and have all kinds of relationships to alleviate this isolation.
So this socialising becomes a need demanded by the egocentric mind, which is in isolation.
But what is friendship? Is friendship for this kind of isolation? Is this friendship a kind of drug to alleviate this isolation? Or is friendship something totally different?
The speaker is wondering when the mind is isolated, whether the mind can really make friends or not. When the mind is in isolation, the mind merely wants to alleviate the isolation.
The desire to alleviate the isolation is different from making friends, but it is so easy for the mind to mix them, creating more and more issues.
The isolated mind wants to have a person or so-called friend to tolerate one’s childish behaviours. So in that view from this egocentric mind, the friend becomes a trash can. “I need to find somebody who can really tolerate me, tolerate whatever I do.”
Is that friendship? In this utter selfishness, this isolation is only enhanced further because, in that treatment, one scares away all the people, creating all kinds of issues.
Because such a mind, which is full of egocentric thoughts and is utterly selfish, always wants to find a trash can. In doing so, it brings more hurt, more issues and more conflicts.
To really understand what his friendship is, to stop being childish. To stop being childish is to have care.
Children need to be taken care of. Being childish means craving to be taken care of. Being mature is to give care. The egocentric mind is childish, selfish, and only craves being taken care of. Doing so only enhances this isolation.
So to understand what is friendship, one has to understand what is care. Have you ever really cared about somebody? Or your consciousness is only about you all the time?
Care only exists in one’s actions; when a mother's child is in danger, the mother will do something immediately to protect the child, not ask the child, “do you need some help?” So phoney, isn't it?
Look at our life; it is so verbal, it is full of all kinds of phoney things. To care is to do, not to merely say something pleasant. “I will do this for you”, then nothing happens.
Care only exists in action -- in the very acting, or else there's no care. Verbal things are nothing, but look at life, the verbal things become so important, but actually, nothing happens.
To the speaker, making friends is very cautious because a friend is somebody you give care to, not to use as a trash can to tolerate childish behaviours.
Looking around this world, the mind craves all kinds of socialising to alleviate this isolation, and we don't take people seriously.
The mind is very cunning to make most of the people around, not take care of them, which creates such a challenge in living – numerous divisions between people.
Something that demands seriousness has been made so unserious.
Whether one can really transform oneself from this childish state to a mature state?
This civilisation is deeply conditioned to egoism; people grow up being influenced and educated to only care about themselves. So the mind has lost this sense of care as a human being.
Is it possible for one to have that care back? In the very caring, the self is not. That's why it needs one’s diligence to take sheer action to change, to do it, to break away from this self-centred loop.
It also means that one must stand alone in this world. The very standing alone requires tremendous observation and diligence, or else the mind is still being lazy, conforming, or imitating.
And this disorder of this world is still existing in yourself. Can the mind really empty itself? So the mind can stand alone means that there's nobody psychologically.
It's really empty, and there is nothing about you. And only such a mind, where the consciousness can empty itself, is capable of caring and loving.
And only such a mind that is really empty without those thoughts, images and views, is a fresh mind.
And such a mind which is fresh is never isolated therefore it has no desire to socialise, to look for trash cans. And only such a mind can love can care. And such a mind never lacks friends and relationships.
Or else the mind, which is full and also second hand due to all kinds of influences, always says “I have a friend, this is my friend, that is my friend”, to deceive oneself.
Having friends becomes a new measurement to compare, to show off, which only shows that one has no friends at all because the mind only cares about oneself.
To empty this consciousness – the "me", the disorder is to empty and to end this selfishness. The very doing so effects the real transformation of the mind.
We have this physical body here, but when the mind keeps thinking about me, it is in disorder.
And in that disorder, there is no friend; there is no relationship, there is only isolation, utter isolation.
And this restless world is purely out of this isolation, and the true meditation is to end the “me”, end this isolation.
It is up to you to act, to do it, to find out what is living when the “me” when the self is totally absent.
This serious dialogue between you and the speaker is rare in life, isn't it? This life is full of all kinds of superficialities.
People are so selfish and individualistic that nobody really cares about others. And everyone is lost in their own illusions, totally confused.
And this dialogue between you and the speaker must go beyond these superficialities. This dialogue is between human beings to inquire into who we really are -- not the names, not the titles, not the certificate, education, houses, or money.
What you really are has nothing to do with that. All of those are mere narratives, stories. And you are living with those labels from one story to another.
And when the mind is trapped in those stories, the mind is not serious. And all those stories generate so much fear that nobody speaks out directly. People turn into pleasure to escape, avoid and delay.
If you and the speaker are really friends, not friends as trash cans, but friends to talk over those issues together seriously, to thoroughly understand all these issues, all the issues are totally solved.
And this process points to the real friendship because this very serious dialogue is the very act of caring.
When the mind is really empty, this whole being is really alone. And only in that aloneness, there is a real friendship; there is a real relationship, and there is love, compassion, and care.
And what else does one ask for? Nothing, right? This is already the beauty of life, and this beauty only exists in simplicity when the mind understands everything deeply and clearly.
Be a human, not be an Englishman, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, but be a human; this authentic life then starts.