THE MIND IS AS IMPORTANT AS IT IS UNIMPORTANT

 
The mind is as helpful as it is destructive. It is the same game of love and hate that goes on with it all the time: it loves and hates; it constructs and destroys. So it is the mind that we have to tackle. Without it we cannot live or exist. Eventually, like a scaffolding of a building that is erected for constructing a wall, it has to be discarded. But even when the wall is constructed, we fall in love with the scaffolding and do not want to give it up. We embrace the scaffolding and eschew the wall.

Similarly, we eschew Reality and embrace our mind, with which we have been associated for who knows how long — millions of births and deaths. The mind eventually has to go, but we cannot try to force it out. I always said this mind is like a barking dog that follows the man. If you kick the dog, then it bites you. So we cannot afford to kick it or to be absolutely unresponsive to it. We have to respond. But the time comes when we have to disregard the promptings of the mind. Knowing that all the promptings the mind gives are not really helpful, we should not give great importance to it.

This mind is as important as it is unimportant, and these are the two things we must know. We must exercise a game of love and hate with this mind. We cannot do without it, but if we try to follow our mind to the bitter end of our lives, I think we would destroy ourselves.