| |
Therefore thought cannot take you beyond duality. If one is to realize this unity, to live in the self and to know it, then meditation, not thinking, is the way.
Thought and meditation are in diametrically opposite directions. The former moves outward; the latter, inward. Thought is the way to know the other; meditation, the way to know the self. But thought is generally taken for meditation. This is a very serious and widespread mistake and I want to caution you against this fundamental error. Meditation means becoming actionless. Meditation is not action but a state of being. It is being steady in one's own self.
In action we come into contact with the outside world; in inaction, with ourselves. When we are not doing anything we become aware of what we are, but we are constantly involved in different activities and do not know ourselves. We do not even remember that we exist. We are deeply preoccupied. At least the body rests but the mind does not rest at all. Awake, we think;p asleep, we dream. Engrossed in these constant preoccupations and activities, we simply forget ourselves. In the press of our own affairs we lose ourselves. How strange this is! But it is a fact. We have become lost, not in the crowds of other people, but in our own thoughts, in our own dreams, in our own preoccupations and activities. We have become lost in ourselves. Meditation is the way to extricate ourselves from this self-created crowd, from this mental wanderlust.
By its nature meditation cannot involve any action. It is no-action. It is a term for an unoccupied mind. This is what I teach. It may look rather odd to say that I teach no-action and to say that we have gathered here to practice no-action but the language of man is very poor and very limited. Designed to express action only, it is never able to express the soul. How can what is fashioned for speech express silence? The world "meditation" suggests that it is some sort of action but it is by no means action of any kind. It would be wrong of me to say I was "practicing" meditation; it would be correct to say I was "in" meditation. It is just like love. I am in love, but love cannot be manufactured. Hence
|
|
|