The morning wind was strong.
Mango leaves spun across the yard, circling once or twice before being carried away.
The young man stood on the porch, watching them drift — feeling strangely as if he were watching himself being blown about with nowhere to land.

The teacher stepped outside with a bamboo broom.
He swept slowly, then asked:

“Where are you trying to stand?”

The young man startled.

“I… I’m not trying to stand anywhere.”

The teacher smiled.

“Your mind is running everywhere, searching for something to cling to.”

The young man exhaled.

“I feel like I have no anchor.
Nothing certain.
Nothing solid.
I feel… unsafe.”

The teacher nodded.

“That is because you haven’t understood the nature of nonabiding.”

He set the broom aside and sat next to him.

“You think you need something to hold on to —
a person,
an idea,
a belief,
a plan,
a future.”

The young man lowered his head.

“I’m afraid…
if I don’t hold on to something, I’ll fall.”

The teacher picked up a fallen leaf and held it before him.

“Look at this leaf.
It clings to nothing.
Yet it doesn’t fall into nothingness.
It simply moves with the wind.”

The young man watched the leaf — light, effortless, unafraid.

“You suffer because you want a place to stand,” the teacher said.
“But everything you cling to changes.
You cling to people — people change.
You cling to emotions — emotions change.
You cling to thoughts — thoughts change.
You cling to yourself — you change too.”

Then he spoke with the clarity of Krishnamurti:

“Look closely: who needs a place to cling to?
Can you find that person?”

The young man closed his eyes.

He searched.
He searched in fear.
He searched in the longing for stability.
He searched in the belief that he must stand somewhere.

But there was no “one who needs to cling.”
Only fear.
Only desire.
Only movement.

He opened his eyes.

“I… can’t find anyone.”

The teacher smiled.

“Exactly.
There is only clinging —
no one who clings.”

He stood and pointed to a puddle of rainwater.

“Look at this water.
It reflects the sky, but it doesn’t hold the sky.
It doesn’t dwell on any image.
It reflects — and lets go.”

He looked at the young man.

“Your mind is the same.
It reflects everything — emotions, thoughts, memories —
but it doesn’t need to hold any of them.”

The young man remained silent.

“Nonabiding doesn’t mean having nothing,” the teacher said.
“Nonabiding means not clinging to anything.”

Then he added:

“When you stop searching for a place to stand,
you begin to see that you were never falling.”

The young man closed his eyes again.
The unease was still there —
but this time, he didn’t search for an anchor.
He didn’t cling to thoughts.
He didn’t cling to feelings.
He didn’t cling even to himself.

He let the mind drift like a leaf in the wind.

When he opened his eyes, the mind wasn’t perfectly calm —
but it was no longer panicked.
It felt like a river flowing — needing no banks to exist.

The teacher said:

“Today, when the mind seeks something to cling to, don’t say ‘I need stability.’
Just see: a movement is searching for a place to land.”

The young man nodded.

Not because he had mastered nonabiding,
but because he finally understood:

Nonabiding is not losing a refuge.
Nonabiding is seeing that there is no ‘self’ that needs one.

And when that “self” dissolves,
the mind becomes light —
like a leaf carried by the wind.