No Umbrella



Egoic Mind: It seems everywhere I turn the façade of support is fading away.  The stock market is having an all-you-can-eat with my retirement funds, my teenage son is breaking the rules faster than I can establish them and my health … well that seems to be in a permanent state of purgatorial limbo.  What can I depend on if everything is proving undependable?

Gnani: What indeed?  For some it takes only a single rain cloud to momentarily block the sun from view in order to see the impermeance of all things.  While others must become drenched to the bone by thunderous storms and torrential rains night after day before they realize there is no thing to cling to.  Are you still carrying your umbrella hoping to stave off the downpour?

Egoic Mind:  But we DO carry protection for the weather.  We research where to place our money.  We try to help our children grow up to be responsible adults.  How could we live otherwise?

Gnani: There is living in the illusion as you know it but there is only LIFE once you let go of trying to live within the umbrella.

Egoic Mind: And this letting go is also something that I can not do per se.  Isn’t that so?

Gnani: Precisely!  Letting go is but ONE thing among the many that YOU are not capable of doing.  Much like investing money for growth, deciding how your teenager will grow up or the state of the physical body as you are growing old.

Egoic Mind: My mind understands, and is even soothed at times by the freedom that is implied.  Yet when the storm DOES hit I seem to be utterly unprepared for the deluge.

Gnani: But there IS NO PREPARATION necessary or even possible.  Why is it then you describe your state as unprepared if you truly understand the teaching?

Egoic Mind: Because I respond with fear or anger or helplessness in the moment.  The same response I had all along.  There is no change in my behavior.  Suffering continues.

Gnani: Pain WILL arise!  Anger WILL arise!! Fear WILL arise!!!  And each will fall away on its own accord without any doing on your part.  Without preparation, pain, anger and fear will happen in this body mind organism.  And without effort on your behalf each will come to an end.  Sometimes the waves on the ocean will seem like a tsunami, and other times the surface will appear as still as glass.  These are all just movements of the ocean.  There is no reason or ability to stop the waves.

Egoic Mind: So I keep doing all of these things: investing, parenting and efforting towards health?

Gnani: You can not STOP doing any of these things.  But when you are present to the truth that you can depend on nothing, that nothing you do will prepare you for what comes next, that what comes next has nothing to do with any of your efforts … ahh when this Truth is realized then the invisible umbrella that has been there all along will provide you with all that you ever truly needed.

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