The US is an institutionalized country where every thing is "taken care of". Every square yard in a residential district is accounted for. There are certain types of freedoms which are very easy to get in the US. But you are not free to be out of the system and still live a comfortable life. Such people are very rare in the US.

In a country like India, on the other hand, the "system" is not at all pervasive. One can really be a free person in India. Free not in a material sense, but free spiritually. One has to work much harder to be spiritually free in the US. But is spiritual freedom dependant upon circumstances, then? I would say that the atmosphere in the US discourages spiritual exploration, it doesn't make it impossible, for nothing is impossible for a man willing to do what he wants.

And perhaps there is something to the fact that India has had a long tradition of religious enquiry which is closer to my heart and being.

Have I lost the urge for enquiry?

It seems I have to meditate on what is going on in my mind these days. It is quite perplexing. Am I "falling in the ditch of sensation"? Am I succumbing to the pleasures of the world? Was the awareness which was awakened in me dead?

What is going on? The unfortunate thing is, I don't even feel the urge to go into all this deeply. I have become lethargic, it seems.

I have to gather my energies and focus my thoughts.

There is no recourse for me now but to throw away the lethargy. Let's see how that comes about.

September 21, 1998

I suffer, doing a job that I do not want to do, earning money in a way that I consider deceitful and exploitative, living in a way that is forced to be wasteful, living my days in thoughtful sadness.

And I think, what will change me?

Not knowing it, I clamour for experimentation of all kinds.

I think I need time and peace and absence of pressures to focus on my mind. That is impossible (or so I feel) as long as I live a life in which most of my day is spent in pain.

I need peace and quiet in the beginning. I do. But also deep down is the realization that I distract myself.

But then leaving this country will lead to other noises, noises from my family, for example.

I crave for external peace, because I need that to discover myself. Or so I think. Ha.

Sudden and complete freedom is possible, but then fear enters the picture. I am afraid of taking the plunge.

Listen, boy. Either you do it, or you don't. But don't wail.

The choices you make determine the life you live.

There is no pressure but the pressure exerted by oneself.

Give up attachment, how easy it sounds!

I think leaving the US will be good for me. I will feel more comfortable in India, physically and mentally. And I need that comfort, that lack of apparently external pressure.

And I'm waiting for the time when I can do it without much noise. I feel incapable of handling noise. I don't have that kind of strength and clarity.

When people get angry at me, when they shout at me, cry in front of me, I let go of my plans and defer to their wishes. Is that sensitivity?

Or cowardice? And confusion? Or is that secretly I am also afraid of the unknown.

Or is it that I think by changing circumstances, I will achieve happiness? Changing a job, changing relationships, changing one's surroundings.

It is also a despair in having failed to changed oneself.

But I haven't lost hope.

I am just growing old. How long can I sustain this rootlessness? I am finally bending down under this burden, becoming insane, heartless and bitter.

But the awareness of this process is alive.

August 23, 1999.

To hate a circumstance is a failure of equanimity.

Circumstances are at best only in a very small part due to our choices. But what is unequivocally a human choice is whether to struggle against "what is".

The flowering of "what is" is a very mis-understood theme. I do not claim to understand it fully, but I may have some inkling.

Thinking about oneself, at any level, is the effort to change.

When one is reminded that effort is counter-productive inwardly, the mind cannot grasp the vastness of this truth. For the mind, to be is to do, to be is to become. It forms a doing even out of non-doing. I must not struggle, it says. And struggle at another level is thus born.

True acceptance of "what is" is silence about oneself. This silence is not of a part of the mind, but of the whole of the mind as regards oneself.

An ambitious mind evaluates every situation and forms choices as to which action is better as a means to the end. It is living in the future.

Honesty about one's deep ambitions can be only if one is aware of those depths.

When it is seen that any activity of the mind regarding oneself is fundamentally the same, ...

If a circumstance is hated because it does not afford one the possibility of inner blossoming, the blossoming that that circumstance is offering is denied.

Blossoming is not there, it is right here.

To choose a way in which to blossom is to stagnate.

July 17, 2000.