The Virgin Mind

In one of meditation session in the prison, a prisoner asked a touching question: "I am now punished here for years because of killing, shall I be punished again after death?". This question is really touching the heart.

To be honest, the journey after death is determined by the quality of one's mind in the moment of death. Sadly, almost all people experience great shock in the time of death. The one who died were shock, the family were also shock. The combination between these two shocks makes the journey after death to be a journey of sadness.

This experience often happens because most people die without any spiritual preparation. Similar to a long distance traveling, without preparation then any journey will be full of misery. And on the path of meditation, the most convincing preparation to face death is the inner quality of mind.

In China there was an interesting story about a young man. One day he went into the woods riding a horse. The next day he returns back without the horse because the horse is lost. His neighbor then muttered: "it is pity". On the next day, the lost horse returns and brings a lot of wild horses together. This time the neighbors said: "how fortunate this son".

Because of being very happy then the young man ride the wild horses. As a result, he fell down and his leg was broken. And the neighbors commented further: "it is pity". The next few days the Chinese army came to the village and ordering all young generation to be an army. Because of his broken leg, this young man was free from the obligation of being an army. Again the neighbors whispered: "how fortunate this son".

It does not matter one pray or not, one meditates or not, life is always flows like this. And meditation always asks us to be a witness. Misfortune is a low wave, fortune is a high wave. As a matter of time both waves will bow humbly on the same beach.

Meditative mind does not try to stop these waves, it simply witness the waves. Before being touched by meditation, mind is drawn in these waves. Mind will be deeply sad when experiencing bad luck, mind will be highly happy when facing good luck. That's the main characteristic of the drawn mind.

Deep meditation transforms the mind. At the beginning of meditation, the difference between sadness and happiness is very clear. It is like night and day. Once someone spent long time enough to be a witness, then sadness and happiness begin to be similar. Meditators attain the peak of meditation when they have direct experience of emptiness (shunyata). Sometimes it is called silence. In the East it is called tabula rasa.

In the language of a Master: "in silence everything has one taste". While ordinary people have two flavors of life such as loss-profit, sad-happy, sorrow-joy, at the peak of meditation life has only one flavor, which is the flavor of love.

Silence is similar to the womb. Love is a baby who was born from silence. In a more poetic language, love is a blooming silence. This love is not an ordinary love, but love that was born simply to love. This is virgin mind. Any one who attain the state of virgin mind in the moment of death, then the journey after death is free from punishment. Remember, everything is just waves that come and go. And you are the witness.

Author: Gede Prama
Photo Courtesy: Twitter @MDatzberger

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