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meditation and what is wrong meditation? If the meditator exists then it is wrong meditation. If the meditator is lost in meditation then it is right meditation. Right meditation brings you to emptiness and aloneness.
This sutra... this whole sutra is concerned with how to become utterly empty. This is his basic gift to the world.
THUS HAVE I HEARD AT ONE TIME.
These sutras have been remembered by Buddha's great disciple Ananda. And one thing to be remembered: all sutras start: THUS HAVE I HEARD....
When Buddha died all the disciples gathered together to collect whatsoever Buddha had said in those forty-five years. Ananda was the only one who had lived continuously for those forty-five years with Buddha. He was the most authentic to be relied upon. Others had heard, but they had heard from others. Sometimes they were with Buddha and sometimes they were not with Buddha. Only Ananda had lived like a shadow.
So Ananda relates, but the beauty is that he never says that "Buddha said this"; he simply says, "Thus have I heard". The difference is great. He does not say, "Buddha has said this," because he says, "How am I to say what Buddha has said? All that I can say is this -- that this is what I have heard. What Buddha said, only he knows. What he meant, only he knows. All that I can remember is what I have heard. My capacities are limited. He may have meant something else. I may have forgotten a few words, I may have put a few words of my own."
This is a great sincerity. He could have claimed, "This is what Buddha said. I was present, I am an eyewitness." And he WAS an eyewitness; nobody can deny that. But look at the humbleness of the man: he says "Thus have I heard. Buddha was saying, I was hearing -- I can only relate what I have heard. It may be right, it may not be right. I may have interfered, I may have interpreted, I may have forgotten a few things, something of my own mind may have got into it -- that all is possible. I am not an enlightened man." Ananda was not yet enlightened, so he says, "This is all that I can say, I can vouch for."
THUS HAVE I HEARD AT ONE TIME.
THE LORD DWELT AT SRAVASTI.
EARLY
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