Repeated slips in the spiritual path

The tendency of the mind is to fall back. It doesn’t matter how many times you pick it up, it is designed to slip again. Therefore spiritual practice lies not in regretting the various falls, but in ensuring that no fall is permanent, that no fall is final.

Fall you will and there should be no surprise in that.

You are designed, constituted to fall. And you don’t need to go into the details for that, just look at your body.

Look into that mirror. Look at your nose, your eyes, your skin. Does your skin ever experience anything from the inside? And your entire body is skin, is it not?

When you say, “My body,” what you really mean is the skin. Is there any part of your body not covered by skin? Look at the eyes, look at the ears, look at these fingers. Are they manufactured to hold the Truth? Are they?

Your body is designed to hold the teacup, not the Truth.

If stuff were to be designed, it could have been designed otherwise as well. But look at the damn design. The design itself is incapable of performing beyond itself. These eyes cannot even look at the physical heart unless you get into an operation theatre or something. How will they look at the spiritual heart? Or would they?

You know how difficult it is for the mind to look at itself. Start from realising that the eyes cannot even look at the brain, how will they then look at the mind. Your eyes cannot even look at the brain, how will then they even look at the mind. The brain is at least physical, the mind is abstract.

You cannot look at even all the parts of your external body, can you? Forget about looking at your liver and kidney, can you even look using your eyes at all the external parts of your body? You can’t. How will you then ever know where lust arises from, or the various physical excitements arise from?

So we are designed to be flawed.

Too bad.

It does not come easily to the mind to be self-reflective.

Therefore, the mind has to be trained and taught.

But it comes very easily even to the uneducated mind to gape and grope. Look at things outside, and then go for them.