“Now, there are a few important things that Bodhidharma is saying. The first is: If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. But the word understanding can be misunderstood, because the Western psychology is now the predominant psychology all over the world. West or East, the only psychology prevalent today is Western psychology. And the Western psychology tries to understand the mind by analysis. That is a futile effort.

“It is like peeling an onion. One layer is taken off and you find another layer, fresher, waiting for you. You take that layer off and another layer is there. People have been under psychoanalysis for fifteen years continuously; still their psychoanalysis is not complete. The psychoanalysts themselves recognize that they have not yet been able to psychoanalyze a single man perfectly, totally, until nothing is left to be psychoanalyzed. But still, even the psychoanalysts do not have the insight to understand that perhaps they are doing something absurd.

“The mind can never be totally analyzed because while you are analyzing it, it goes on creating new things. It does not remain static. You go on analyzing every week twice or thrice, but the remaining time the mind is creating more ideas, more imaginations, more dreams. You can never come to an end, it is simply impossible. And if you cannot come to an end, the rock bottom, your understanding of the mind is very superficial.

“The East does not believe in analysis. It believes in awareness. The difference is of tremendous importance, in two ways. First, for analysis you have to depend on somebody else; it creates a dependence, almost a kind of addiction. Once people have been in psychoanalysis, it is very difficult to get them out of it, because at least twice a week while in psychoanalysis they feel a little light, unburdened, a little relaxed. The mind will gather the tensions again because the roots have not been cut, you have been only pruning the leaves.

“And when you just prune a leaf, watch what happens: three leaves will come in place of the one you have cut. The tree takes the challenge. You cannot destroy the tree; it is also a living being. It shows its effort to survive. You cannot destroy it by cutting off its leaves. Hence, if you want a tree to have a thick foliage, you have to prune it. By pruning it, the foliage becomes thicker, not thinner.

“So first, in psychoanalysis you have to depend on somebody else. And you become addicted, just like with any drug. Yes, let me call the psychoanalysis prevalent in the West, and borrowed by the East, a very subtle drug. And to come out of it is almost impossible. You get tired with one psychoanalyst, then you move to another psychoanalyst. It is just like getting immune to one drug, then you move to another drug which is stronger and more dangerous. Soon you will become immune to that drug too. It won’t affect you. Then you will have to move ahead again.

“Psychoanalysis is a very mild drug. You become accustomed, immune to one psychoanalyst. You go to somebody who is stronger, who goes deeper into your mind and finds stuff that the first one has not been able to find. This goes on and on. Psychoanalysts have been around for almost a century, but in one hundred years they have not been able to bring a man to the understanding of his mind. Psychoanalysis has failed utterly.

“Awareness has a beauty. It does not depend on anybody else; it is just the arising of a new force that has been dormant in you. And you don’t analyze the mind. That is an absolutely futile exercise. You simply watch the mind without any analysis, any judgment, any appreciation, any condemnation, any evaluation – you simply watch, as if you have nothing to do with it. You are separate, and you are watching the mind.”