The Way

Whenever someone performs a noble deed, an act that softens the heart, opens the mind, brings a lump in the throat and moistens the eyes, we say he/she went out of the way to do it. I have often wondered, if doing a noble act is going out of the way then what is the way? Is living a blinkered existence the way? Living like a pre-programmed robot, unable to take into account
emerging reality, is that the way? Single mindedly (or is it mindlessly) working to make a living, to make money, chasing after notional success and the approval of faceless others, is that the
way? It was prescribed as the way but in reality it was a maze in which I was left chasing my tail. It is all a play of Maya.

I have lived this way for many years and experienced the ennui of it, the vacuous ness, the edginess, and the meaninglessness. It provides a cosmetic glory for a while but the after taste of guilt, of missing the bus, of being lost, saps the soul of its vitality, of a sense of purpose. It has taken me hours of toil to get out of the maze and find the way. In retrospect the struggle too, was an illusion. What was happening was a process of finding the cheese, away from the one that was placed there in the maze by someone else who was having a ball at my expense.

Slowly but surely I stopped paying attention to the signals coming from out there, the market place. For a while I felt clueless. Worse was the sense of being valueless. It felt as if all my senses had gone numb. I had no clue of what was out there. I had to literally grope for my way. Gradually a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. I soon realized that this was also an illusion. There was no tunnel and no light at the end of it. Gradually it dawned that I was the tunnel and I was the light, that there was no beginning and no end. There was no going anywhere and no coming from somewhere. There was no journey. There was no way. This is it.

When the sages say Aham Bramh Asmi, are they referring to this state of being?

Ganoba