Definitions Of Meditation

[Why?]

There are so many definitions about meditation. List em below.

[AstralProjection]

Meditation is the art of focusing on everything and nothing at the same time.

[Shin]

How to save time.

I slept 3 hours, and I'm not even tired, what the fuck is happening

[SOUL]

It's like learning any skill, it's something that at first is done as a conscious exercise that eventually becomes a subconsciously reflexive happening.

 

What is that skill we are cultivating? Being aware in the present moment.

Edited June 11, 2017 by SOUL

[Prabhaker]

Osho - excerpts from the book What is Meditation?

Meditation Is Alertness

Whatsoever you do, do it with deep alertness; then even small things become sacred. Then cooking or cleaning become sacred; they become worship. It is not a question of what you are doing, the question is how you are doing it. You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it. Then you miss something beautiful. Then you waste those moments in only cleaning the floor. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience; you missed it. The floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you were aware, not only the floor but you would have felt a deep cleansing. Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness. Work or sit or walk, but one thing has to be a continuous thread: make more and more moments of your life luminous with awareness. Let the candle of awareness burn in each moment, in each act. The cumulative effect is what enlightenment is. The cumulative effect, all the moments together, all small candles together, become a great source of light.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Your Nature

What is meditation? Is it a technique that can be practiced? Is it an effort that you have to do? Is it something which the mind can achieve? It is not. All that the mind can do cannot be meditation - it is something beyond the mind, the mind is absolutely helpless there.

The mind cannot penetrate meditation; where mind ends, meditation begins. This has to be remembered, because in our life, whatsoever we do, we do through the mind; whatsoever we achieve, we achieve through the mind. And then, when we turn inwards, we again start thinking in terms of techniques, methods, doings, because the whole of life's experience shows us that everything can be done by the mind. Yes - except meditation, everything can be done by the mind. Everything is done by the mind except meditation. Because meditation is not an achievement - it is already the case, it is your nature. It has not to be achieved; it has not only to be recognized, it has only to be remembered. It is there waiting for you - just a turning in, and it is available. You have been carrying it always and always.

Meditation is your intrinsic nature - it is you, it is your being, it has nothing to do with your doings. You cannot have it and you cannot have it. It cannot be possessed, it is not a thing. It is you. It is your being.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Non-doing

When people come to me and they ask, "How to meditate?" I tell them, "There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation - how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.

When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the center, it settles down towards the center. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Non-doing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read the Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.

Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed - courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that - the courage to be meditative.

But people who are engaged outside - with worldly things or nonworldly things, but occupied all the same, they think ....and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers. They say that if you are introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about you: "What are you doing? - gazing at your navel? What are you doing? - opening the third eye? Where are you going? Are you morbid?...because what is there to do inside? There is nothing inside."

Inside doesn't exist for the majority of people, only the outside exists. And just the opposite is the case - only inside is real; outside is nothing but a dream. But they call introverts morbid, they call meditators morbid. In the West they think that the East is little morbid. What is the point of sitting alone and looking inwards? What are you going to get there? There is nothing.

David Hume, one of the great British philosophers, tried once... because he was studying the Upanishads and they go on saying: Go in, go in, go in - that is their only message. So he tried it. He closed his eyes one day - a totally secular man, very logical, empirical, but not meditative at all - he closed his eyes and he said, "It is so boring! It is a boredom to look in. Thoughts move, sometimes a few emotions, and they go on racing in the mind, and you go on looking at them - what is the point of it? It is useless. It has no utility."

And this is the understanding of many people. Hume's standpoint is that of the majority: What are going to get inside? There is darkness, thoughts floating here and there. What will you do? What will come out of it? If Hume had waited a little longer - and that is difficult for such people - if he had been a little more patient, by and by thought disappear, emotions subside. But if it had happened to him he would have said, "That is even worse, because emptiness comes. At least first there were thoughts, something to be occupied with, to look at, to think about. Now even thoughts have disappeared; only emptiness....What to do with emptiness? It is absolutely useless."

But if he had waited a little more, then darkness also disappears. It is just like when you come from the hot sun and you enter your house: everything looks dark because your eyes need a little attunement. They are fixed on the hot sun outside; comparatively, your house looks dark. You cannot see, you feel as if it is night. But you wait, you sit, you rest in a chair, and after few seconds the eyes get attuned. Now it is not dark, a little more light........You rest for an hour, and everything is light, there is no darkness at all.

If Hume had waited a little longer, then darkness also disappears. Because you have lived in the hot sun outside for many lives your eyes have become fixed, they have lost flexibility. They need tuning. When one comes inside the house it takes a little while, a little time, a patience. Don't be in a hurry.

In haste nobody can come to know himself. It is a very very deep awaiting. Infinite patience is needed. By and by darkness disappears. There comes a light with no source There is no flame in it, no lamp is burning, no sun is there. A light, just like it is morning: the night has disappeared, and the sun has not risen.... Or in the evening - the twilight, when the sun has set and night has not yet descended. That's why Hindus call their prayer time sandhya. Sandhya means twilight, light without any source.

When you move inwards you will come to the light without any source. In that light, for the first time you start understanding yourself, who you are, because you are that light. You are that twilight, that sandhya, that pure clarity, that perception, where the observer and the observed disappear, and only the light remains.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Witnessing

Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain: you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain: you are not the flower, you are the watcher.

Watching is the key of meditation.

Watch your mind.

Don't do anything - no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of god - just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don't disturb it, don't prevent it, don't repress it; don't do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.

As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes aflame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing - without any judgement, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind....

Whatever Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and other people like him are doing is good, but they are calling something meditation which is not. That's where they are leading people astray. If they had remained sincere and authentic and told people that this will give you mental health, physical health, a more relaxed life, a more peaceful existence, it would have been right. But once they started calling it 'transcendental meditation' they have raised a very trivial thing to an ultimate significance which it cannot fulfill. People have been in transcendental meditation for years, and in the East, for thousands of years. But that has not become their self-knowing, and that has not made them Gautam Buddhas.

If you want to understand exactly what meditation is, Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition - that is witnessing.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is a Jump

You can never go beyond the mind if you go on using it. You have to take a jump, and meditation mean that jump. That's why meditation is illogical, irrational. And it cannot be made logical; it cannot be reduced to reason. You have to experience it. If you experience, only then do you know. So try this: don't think about it, try - try to be a witness to your own thoughts. Sit down, relaxed, close your eyes, let your thoughts run just like pictures run on a screen. See them, look at them, make them your objects. One thought arises: look at it deeply. don't think about it, just look at it. If you begin to think about it then you are not a witness - you have fallen in a trap.

There is a horn outside; a thought arises, some car is passing; or a dog barks, or something happens. Don't think about it; just look at the thought. The thought has arisen, taken form. Now it is before you. Soon it will pass. Another thought will replace it. Go on looking at this thought process. Even for a single moment, if you are capable of looking at this thought process without thinking about it, you will have gained something in witnessing and you will have known something in witnessing. This is a taste, a different taste than thinking - totally different. But one has to experiment with it. Religion and science are poles apart, but in one thing they are similar and their emphasis is the same: science depends on experiment, and religion also. Only philosophy depends just on thinking. Religion and science both depend on experiment: science on objects, religion on subjectivity. Science depends on experimenting with other things than you, and religion depends on experimenting directly with you.

It is difficult, because in science the experimenter is there, the experiment is there and the object to be experimented upon is there. There are three things: the object, the subject and the experiment. In religion you are all the three simultaneously. You are the experiment upon yourself. You are the subject and you are the object and you are the lab. Don't go on thinking. Begin, start somewhere, to experiment. Then you will have a direct feeling of what thinking is and what witnessing is. And then you will come to know that you cannot do both simultaneously, just as you cannot run and sit simultaneously. If you run, then you cannot sit, then you are not sitting. And if you are sitting, then you cannot run. But sitting is not a function of the legs. Running is a function of legs. Rather, sitting is non-function of the legs. When the legs are functioning, then you are not sitting. Sitting is a non-function of the legs: running is the function. The same is with the mind: thinking is a function of the mind; witnessing is a non-function of the mind. When the mind is not functioning, you have the witnessing, then you have the awareness.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is an Experiment

You don't believe in God? That is not a hindrance to meditation. You don't believe in soul? That is not a hindrance in meditation. You don't believe at all? That is not an obstacle. You can meditate, because meditation simply says how to go withinwards: whether there is a soul or not doesn't matter; whether there is a God or not doesn't matter.

One thing is certain, that you are. Who are you? To enter into it is meditation: to go deeper into your own being. Maybe it is just momentary; maybe you are not eternal: maybe death finishes everything. We don't make any condition that you have to believe. We say only that you have to experiment. Just try. One day it happens: thoughts are not there. And suddenly when thoughts disappear, the body and you are separate - because thoughts are the bridge. Through thoughts you are joined with the body; it is the link. Suddenly the link disappears - you are there, the body is there, and there is an infinite abyss between the two. Then you know that the body will die, but you cannot die. Then it is not something like a dogma; it is not a creed, it is an experience - self-evident. On that day, death disappears; on that day, doubt disappears, because now you are not always having to defend yourself. Nobody can destroy you, you are indestructible. Then trust arises, overflows. And to be in trust is to be in ecstasy; to be in trust is to be in god; to be in trust is to be fulfilled.

So I don't say cultivate trust, I say experiment with meditation.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Silence

Mind means words: self means silence. Mind is nothing but all the words that you have accumulated; silence is that which has always been with you, it is not an accumulation. That is the meaning of self. It is your intrinsic quality. On the background of silence you go on accumulating words, and the words in total are known as the mind. Silence is meditation. It is a question of changing the gestalt, shifting the attention from words into silence - which is always there.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Paradise

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 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 had 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 still flowing, the source of fresh waters. And the greatest joy in life is to find it.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Remembrance

Wherever you are remember yourself, that you are: this consciousness that you are should become a continuity. Not your name, your caste, your nationality - those are futile things, absolutely useless. Just remember that "I am." This must not be forgotten. This is what Hindus call self-remembrance, what the Buddha called right-mindfulness, what Gurdjieff used to call self-remembering, what Krishnamurti calls awareness.

This is the most substantial part of meditation, to remember that "I am." Walking, sitting, eating, talking, remember that "I am." Never forget this. It will be difficult, very arduous. In the beginning you will keep forgetting; there will be only single moments when you will feel illuminated, then it is lost. But don't get miserable; even single moments are much. Go on, whenever you can remember again, again catch hold of the thread. When you forget, don't worry - remember again, again catch hold of the thread, and by and by the gaps will lessen, the intervals will start dropping, a continuity will arise. And whenever your consciousness becomes continuous, you need not use the mind. Then there is no planning, then you act out of your consciousness, not out of your mind. Then there is no need of apology, no need to give any explanation. Then you are whatsoever you are, there is nothing to hide. Whatsoever you are, you are. You cannot do anything else. You can only be in a state of continuous remembrance.

Through this remembrance, this mindfulness, comes the authentic religion, comes the authentic morality.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is a Knack

It is the simplest art in the world, to be silent. It is not a doing, it is a non-doing. How can it be difficult.

I am showing you the way of enlightenment through laziness! Nothing has to be done to attain it, because it is your nature. You have already got it. You are just so busy with outer business that you cannot see your own nature.

Deep within you is exactly the same as outside you: the beauty, the silence, the ecstasy, the blissfulness. But please, sometimes to be kind to yourself: just sit down and don't do anything, either physically or mentally.

Relax, not in an American way.... because I have seen so many American books titled "How To Relax". The very title says that the man knows nothing about relaxation. There is no "how".

Yes , it is okay - How to repair a Car; you will have to do something. But there is no doing as such, as far as relaxation is concerned. Just don't do anything. I know you will find it a little difficult in the beginning. That is not because relaxation is difficult, it is because you have become addicted to doing something. The addiction will take a little time to disappear.

Just be, and watch. Being is not doing, and watching is also not doing. You sit silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening. Thoughts will be moving in your mind; your body may be feeling some tension somewhere, you may have a migraine. Just be a witness. Don't be identified with it. Watch, be a watcher on the hills, and everything else is happening in the valley. It is a knack, not an art.

Meditation is not a science, it is not an art, it is a knack - just that way. All that you need is a little patience.

The old habits will continue; the thoughts will go on rushing. And your mind is always in a rush hour, the traffic is always jammed. Your body is not accustomed to sitting silently - you will be tossing and turning. Nothing to be worried about. Just watch that the body is tossing and turning, and that the mind is whirling, is full of thoughts - consistent, inconsistent, useless - fantasies, dreams. You remain in the center, just watching.

All the religions of the world have taught people to do something; stop the process of thought, force the body into a still posture. That's what yoga is - a long practice of forcing the body to be still. But a forced body is not still. And all the prayers, concentrations, contemplations of all the religions do the same with the mind: they force it, they don't allow the thoughts to move. Yes, you have the capacity to do it. And if you persist you may be able to stop the thought process. But this is not the real thing, it is absolutely fake.

When stillness comes on its own, when silence descends without your effort, when you watch thoughts and a moment comes when thoughts start disappearing and silence starts happening that is beautiful. The thoughts stop of their own accord if you don't identify, if you remain a witness and you don't say, "This is my thought."

You don't say, " This is bad, this is good." "This should be there" and "This should not be there". Then you are not a watcher; you have prejudices, you have certain attitudes. A watcher has no prejudice, he has no judgment. He simply sees like a mirror.

When you bring something in front of a mirror it reflects, simply reflects. There is no judgment that the man is ugly, that the man is beautiful, that, "Aha! What a good nose you have got." The mirror has nothing to say. Its nature is to mirror; it mirrors. This is what I call meditation: you simply mirror everything within or without.

And I guarantee you... I can guarantee because it has happened to me and to many of my people; just watching patiently - maybe a few days will pass, maybe a few months, maybe a few years. There is no way of saying because each individual has a different collection.

You must have seen people collecting antiques, postal stamps. Everybody has a different collection: the quantity may be different, hence the time it takes will be different - but go on remaining witness as much as you can. And this meditation needs no special time. You can wash the floor and remain silently watching yourself washing the floor.

I can move my hand unconsciously, without watching, or I can move it with full awareness. And there is qualitative difference. When you move it unconsciously it is mechanical. When you move it with consciousness there is grace. Even in the hand, which is part of your body, you will feel silence, coolness - what to say about the mind? With your watching and watching, slowly the rush of thoughts starts getting less and less. Moments of silence start appearing; a thought comes, and then there is silence before another appears. These gaps will give you the first glimpse of meditation and the first joy that you are arriving home.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Fun

Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on a wrong connotation. It looks very serious, looks gloomy, has something of the church in it, looks as if it is only for people who are dead, or almost dead, who are gloomy, serious, have long faces, who have lost festivity, fun, playfulness, celebration. These are the qualities of meditation. A really meditative person is playful; life is fun for him, life is a leela, a play. He enjoys it tremendously. He is not serious. He is relaxed.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Not Escapist

The man who lives in the future, lives a counterfeit life. He does not really live, he only pretends to live. He hopes to live, he desires to live, but he never lives. And the tomorrow never comes, it is always today. And whatsoever comes is always now and here, and he does not know how to live here-now. The way to escape is called "desire."

Tanha - that is Buddha's word for what is an escape from the present, from the real into the unreal.

The man who desires is an escapist.

Now, this is very strange, that meditators are thought to be escapists. That is utter nonsense. Only the meditator is not an escapist - everybody else is. Meditation means relaxing in the moment, in the present. Meditation is the only thing in the world which is not escapist thing. People who condemn meditation always condemn it with the argument that it is escape, escaping from life. They are simply talking nonsense; they don't understand what they are saying.

Meditation is not escaping from life: it is escaping into life. Mind is escaping from life, desire is escaping from life.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Awareness

And remember each situation has to become an opportunity to meditate. What is meditation? Becoming aware of what you are doing, becoming aware of what is happening to you. Somebody insults you: become aware. What is happening to you when the insult reaches you? Meditate over it; this is changing the whole gestalt. When somebody insults you, you concentrate on the person - "Why is he insulting me? Who does he think he is? How can I take revenge?" If he is very powerful you surrender, you start wagging your tail. If he is not very powerful and you see that he is weak, you pounce on him. But you forget yourself completely in all this; the other becomes the focus. This is missing an opportunity for meditation. When somebody insults you, meditate.

Gurdjieff has said, "When my father was dying. I was only nine. He called me close to his bed and whispered in my ear. 'My son, I am not leaving much to you, not in worldly things, but I have one thing to tell you that was told to me by my father on his deathbed. It has helped me tremendously; it has been my treasure. You are not grown up yet, you may not understand what I am saying, but keep it, remember it. One day you will be grown up and then you may understand. This is a key: it unlocks the doors of great treasures.'"

Of course Gurdjieff could not understand it at that moment, but it was the thing that changed his whole life. And his father said a very simple thing. He said, "Whenever somebody insults you, my son tell him you will meditate over it for twenty-four hours and then you will come and answer him."

Gurdjieff could not believe that this was such a great key. He could not believe that "This is something so valuable that I have to remember it." And we can forgive a young child of nine years of old. But because this was something said by his dying father who had loved him tremendously, and immediately after saying it he breathed his last, it became imprinted on him; he could not forget it. Whenever he remembered his father, he would remember the saying.

Without truly understanding, he started practicing it. If somebody insulted him he would say, "Sir for twenty-four hours I have to meditate over it - that's what my father told me. And he is here no more, and I cannot disobey a dead old man. He loved me tremendously, and I loved him tremendously, and there is no way to disobey him. You can disobey your father when he is alive, but when your father is dead how can you disobey him? So please forgive me, I will come back after twenty-four hours and answer you." And he says. "Meditating on it for twenty-four hours has given me the greatest insights into my being. Sometimes I found that the insult was right, that that's how I am. So I would go to the person and say, 'Sir, thank you, you were right. It was not an insult, it was simply a statement of fact. You called me stupid: I am.'"

"Or sometimes it happened that meditating for twenty-four hours, I would come to know that it was an absolute lie. But when something is a lie, why be offended by it? So I would not even go to tell him that it was a lie. A lie is a lie, why be bothered by it?"

But watching, meditating, slowly slowly he became more and more aware of his reactions, rather than the actions of others.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Understanding

You will have to understand one of the most fundamental things about meditation - that no technique leads to meditation. The old so-called techniques and the new scientific bio-feedback techniques are the same as far as meditation is concerned.

Meditation is not a byproduct of any technique. Meditation happens beyond mind. No technique can go beyond mind.

But there is going to be a great misunderstanding in scientific circles and it has a certain basis.

The basis of all misunderstanding is: When the being of a person is in a state of meditation, it creates certain waves in the mind. These waves can be created from the outside by technical means. But those waves will not create meditation - this is the misunderstanding.

Meditation creates those waves; it is the mind reflecting the inner world.

You cannot see what is happening inside. But you can see what is happening in the mind. Now there are sensitive instruments... we can judge what kind of waves are there when a person is asleep, what kind of waves are there when a person is dreaming, what kind of waves are there when a person is in meditation.

But by creating the waves, you cannot create the situation - because those waves are only symptoms, indicators. It is perfectly good, you can study them. But remember that there is no shortcut to meditation, and no mechanical device can be of any help. In fact, meditation needs no technique - scientific or otherwise.

It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.

Mind is only a mechanism, but when that awareness arises it is bound to create a certain energy pattern around it. That energy pattern is noted by the mind. Mind is a very subtle mechanism.

And you are studying from the outside, so at the most you can study the mind. Seeing that whenever a person is silent, serene, peaceful, a certain wave pattern always, inevitably appears in the mind, the scientific thinking will say: if we can create this wave pattern in the mind, through some bio-feedback technology, then the being inside will reach the heights of awareness.

It is not a question of cause and effect.

These waves in the mind are not the cause of meditation; they are on the contrary, the effect. But from the effect you cannot move towards the cause. It is possible that by bio-feedback you can create certain patterns in the mind and they will give a feeling of peace, silence and serenity to the person. Because the person himself does not know what meditation is and has no way of comparing, he may be misled into believing that this is meditation - but it is not. Because the moment the bio-feedback mechanism stops, the waves disappear and the silence and the peace and the serenity disappear.

And you may go on practicing with those scientific instruments for years: it will not change your character, it will not change your morality, it will not change your individuality. You will remain the same.

Meditation transforms. It takes you to higher levels of consciousness and changes your whole lifestyle. It changes your reactions into responses to such an extent that it is unbelievable that the person who would have reacted in the same situation in anger is now acting in deep compassion, with love - in the same situation.

Meditation is a state of being, arrived at through understanding. It needs intelligence, it does not need techniques.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is Relaxation

Meditation is rest, absolute rest, a full stop to all activity - physical, mental, emotional. When you are in such a deep rest that nothing stirs in you, when all action as such ceases, as if you are fast asleep yet awake, you come to know who you are. Suddenly the window opens. It cannot be opened by effort, because effort creates tension, and tension is the cause of our whole misery. Hence this is something very fundamental to be understood that meditation is not effort.

One has to be very playful about meditation, one has to learn to enjoy it as fun. One has not to be serious about it - be serious and you miss. One has to go into it very joyously. And one has to keep aware that it is falling into deeper and deeper rest. It is not concentration, just the contrary, it is relaxation. When you are utterly relaxed, for the first time you start feeling your reality; you come face to face with your being. When you are engaged in activity you are so occupied that you cannot see yourself. Activity creates much smoke around you, it raises much dust around you; hence all activity has to be dropped, at least for a few hours per day.

That is only so in the beginning. When you have learnt the art of being at rest you can be both active and restful together, because then you know that rest is something so inner that it cannot be disturbed by anything outer. The activity goes on at the circumference and at the center you remain restful. So it is only for beginning that activity has to be dropped for a few hours. When one has learned the art then there is no question : for twenty-four hours a day one can be meditative and one can continue all the activities of ordinary life.

But remember, the key word is rest, relaxation. Never go against rest and relaxation. Arrange your life in such a way, drop all futile activity, because ninety per cent is futile; it is just for killing time and remaining occupied. Do only the essential and devote your energies more and more to the inner journey. Then that miracle happens when you can remain at rest and in action together, simultaneously. That is the meeting of the sacred and the mundane, the meeting of this world and that, the meeting of materialism and spiritualism.

[Prabhaker]

Meditation Is in the Present

Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. It is a pure response to the present, it is not reaction. It acts not out of conclusions, it acts seeing the existential.

Watch in your life: there is a great difference when you act out of conclusions.

You see a man, you feel attracted - a beautiful man, looks very good, looks innocent. His eyes are beautiful, the vibe is beautiful. But then the man introduces himself and he says, "I am Jew" - and you are a Christian. Something immediately clicks and there is distance: now the man is no more innocent, the man is no more beautiful. You have certain ideas about Jews. Or, he is a Christian and you are a Jew; you have certain ideas about Christians - what Christianity has done to Jews in the past, what other Christians have done to Jews in the past, how they have tortured Jews down the ages... and suddenly he is a Christian - and something immediately changes.

This is acting out of conclusions, prejudices, not looking at this man - because this man may not be the man that you think a Jew has to be... because each Jew is a different kind of man, each Hindu is a different kind of man, so is each Mohammedan.

You cannot act out of prejudices. You cannot act by categorizing people. You cannot pigeonhole people; nobody can be pigeonholed. You may have been deceived by a hundred communists, but when you meet the hundred and first communist don't go on believing in the category that you have made in your mind: that communists are deceptive - or anything. This may be a different type of man, because no two persons are alike.

Whenever you act out of conclusion, it is mind. When you look into the present and you don't allow any idea to obstruct the reality, to obstruct the fact, you just look into the fact and act out of that look, that is meditation.