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| | | Book Name: Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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MEDITATE ON ANYTHING THAT APPEALS TO YOU.
Meditate on the face of your beloved meditate. If you love flowers, meditate on a rose. Meditate on the moon, or whatsoever you like. If you love food, meditate on food. Why Patanjali says "... whatsoever appeals to you"? Because meditation should not be a forced effort. If it is forced, it is doomed from the very beginning. A forced thing will never make you natural. So from the very beginning, find out something which appeals to you. There is no need to create unnecessary conflict. And this is to be understood, because mind has a natural capacity to meditate if you give it objects which are appealing to it.
In a small school, a child is listening: the birds are chirping in the trees and he is listening, and he is raptly listening -- he is in rapport. He has forgotten the teacher, he has forgotten the class. He is no more there; he is rapt attention. Meditation has happened. And then the teacher says, "What are you doing? Are you asleep? Concentrate here on the board!" Now the child has to try, make effort. Those birds never said anything to the child that, "Look we are singing here. Be attentive!" Simply it happened because it had a deep appeal for the child. This blackboard looks so ugly and this teacher looks so murderous, and the whole thing is forced. He will try, but by effort nobody can meditate. Again and again the mind will slip. So many things are happening outside the room: suddenly a dog starts barking or a beggar passes by singing, or somebody is playing on a guitar. So many millions of things are happening outside, and he has to bring his attention again and again to the blackboard, to the ugly schoolroom.
We have made schools just like prisons. In India, the school building and the prison building has the same color, red. Schoolrooms are ugly. Nothing is appealing there: no toys, no music, no trees, no birds -- nothing. The schoolroom is meant to force your attention. You have to learn to concentrate.
And this is the difference between concentration and meditation: concentration is a forced thing, meditation is natural. Says Patanjali,
ALSO, MEDITATE ON ANYTHING THAT APPEALS
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