What is meditation?
MEDITATION is a state of no-mind. Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust. The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are moving, memories are moving, ambitions are moving – it is a constant traffic! Day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the mind is functioning, it is dreaming. It is still thinking; it is still in worries and anxieties. It is preparing for the next day; an underground preparation is going on.
This is the state of no meditation. Just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thoughts move, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent – that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise. Meditation is a state of no-mind.
And you cannot find meditation through the mind, because mind will perpetuate itself. You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind; by seeing the mind pass, but not getting identified with it, not thinking that I am it.
Meditation is the awareness that I am not the mind. When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive – moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still. In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know the mystery of this existence.
A day comes, a day of great blessings, when meditation becomes your natural state.
Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state – which we have lost. It is a paradise lost, but the paradise can be regained. Look into the child’s eyes, look and you will see tremendous silence, innocence. Each child comes with a meditative state, but he has to be initiated into the ways of the society – he has to be taught how to think, how to calculate, how to reason, how to argue; he has to be taught words, language, concepts. And, slowly slowly, he loses contact with his own innocence. He becomes contaminated, polluted by the society. He becomes an efficient mechanism; he is no more a man.
All that is needed is to regain that space once more. You have known it before, so when for the first time you know meditation, you will be surprised – because a great feeling will arise in you as if you have known it before. And that feeling is true: you have known it before. You have forgotten. The diamond is lost in piles of rubbish. But if you can uncover it, you will find the diamond again – it is yours.
It cannot really be lost: it can only be forgotten. We are born as meditators, then we learn the ways of the mind. But our real nature remains hidden somewhere deep down like an undercurrent. Any day, a little digging, and you will find the source stillflowing, the source of fresh waters. And the greatest joy in life is to find it.
WHAT IS MEDITATION?
An ordinary person may think meditation as a prayer or worship. But it is not just prayer and worship. Some people think meditation as concentration, it is also not. Meditation means awareness. Whatever you do with awareness is meditation. Watching your breath is meditation, listening to the birds can be meditation if it is done with awareness. listening to sound of running water, feeling the cool breeze can be meditation if it is done with awareness.As long as all these activities are free from any other distraction of the mind, it is meditation.
MEDITATION IS NOT A TECHNIQUE BUT WAY OF LIFE
Meditation means state of no thought. When there is no thoughts in your mind, just pure awareness and watchfulness. It is state of pure joy and bliss. It is a state of pure consciousness, when the mind is empty , free of scattered thoughts and various patterns . The Meditator become observer of all activity of the mind. Thoughts may come and go but the observer or a meditator realize that he or she totally detached of the thoughts.
ANYTHING CAN BE MEDITATION, If IT IS DONE WITH AWARENESS
Now meditation is not limited to sitting in a budha posture for long hours, with long face and with no pleasure of doing it. when we mention about meditation it is ,it is commonly understood that it may be some kind spiritual practice where one sits down with eyes closed , or doing some kind of prayer, and empties the mind to attain inner peace. Now meditation is more simple and more enjoyable, walking on the beach can be meditation, seeing sun rise or sun set is meditation, any thing what you do with your total heart can be meditation. Meditation is not seriousness it is playfulness. Any thing that make you more loving, more kind, more compassionate, more alive is meditation. Now some gardener feel so joy in gardening for him gardening is meditation , A musician a playing his music so much feeling joy and bliss in doing it ,it is his meditation and prayer. An artist while creating his art totally forget his mind, very much in to art, as if mind stops , this is his meditation.
Meditation And Our Relationship
From childhood , we have been trained by our school and society how to be good, behave good, to do things, to do things in the external world. No school no society teach us how to look within, how to watch within, how to watch and observe our breath, how to watch our thought within. So when we grow up, we know everything about the outside world, but don't know anything about our self. we remain strangers to ourselves, while trying to get to know others. We know all the world, but we don't know our inner world. When our relationship don't work , we blame other, we tease other, we angry at other, but we never come to realize, that who we are, why I am angry, why I am disappointed, why my relationship does not work, because we have no connection with our self. we have no relationship with our self. we have relationship with all the world, except our self. This is pain and suffering when we don't understand our self, and we are trying to find out all the pleasure in the outer world, not finding the true treasure within our self.
The goal of meditation is to go beyond the mind and experience our essential nature—which is described as peace, happiness, and bliss.
When we learn to do meditation, we attain the highest of all joys that can ever be experienced by a human being. All the other joys in the world are momentary, but the joy of meditation is immense and everlasting.
