Pratikraman: The Key That Resolves All Conflicts (Full Version) Pratikraman: The Key That Resolves All Conflicts | Page 586

UNDERSTANDING SAMAYIK
527
confining it. If one has a thought about her mother-in-law, she
will push away that thought. She will push that thought outside
her designated ‘circle’; she will not let it enter the circle. Any
thoughts that come along, one will keep pushing them away. But
even then, the mind has become weak and prone to temptations
(lapatu). It is bound to stray, isn’t it? By lapatu ‘we’ mean that
when a bottle topples over and loses its cork, its contents slowly
spill. So this method of trying to pull the mind back within a
boundary and keeping it there, this is the kind of samayik people
do elsewhere.
During that time, no one bothers him. He is able to sit
peacefully. He keeps an hourglass in one place. The sand will
fall into the section below. When the top section becomes empty,
he turns it over again. It takes forty-eight minutes for the sand
from the top section to fall into the bottom one. So when there
is a heap of sand in the bottom one, he will claim, ‘My samayik
is done.’ That is why he keeps an hourglass. But what does he
do? He will decide from the day before, ‘Tomorrow I don’t
want to think about my shop when I do samayik.’ So the
moment he closes his eyes in the samayik, the very first thing
that will raid his thoughts is his shop! That, which he does not
want to remember is the first thing that will come to him.
So the poor fellow gets tired and the next day he will tell
me, ‘This is what occurred.’ So I tell him, ‘Why do you remember
it by saying, ‘Tomorrow I don’t want to think about the shop’?’
You created an action and that is why the reaction came. Why
must you create an action in the first place? But what is he to
do in the samayik? He has not become a Shuddhatma, so
whatever thoughts he gets, he pushes them away. Thoughts that
do not belong within his circle, he will push away. And so the
time for the samayik ends. During the forty-eight minutes, he
goes on looking at the hourglass; still, there is some time left.
Even though the Lord said not to, he keeps looking at the
hourglass!