What is
meditation? To sincerely ask the question of yourself is the very act of
meditating. It is not something you do for 30 minutes a day, but a
practice that evokes awareness moment-by-moment. There is no escaping
reality.
Krishnamurti explains...
But
meditation is part of everyday existence; it is something that you have
to do as you breathe, as you think, as you live, as you have delicate
or brutal feelings. That is real meditation, and it is entirely
different from systematized mediation which some of you so sedulously
practice.
Like
a good teacher, Krishnamurti leads you back to yourself. He is not a
guru, but he does invite you to think over the question of what is
meditation with him...
I
would like, if I may, to go into this question of meditation, but
please do not be mesmerized by my words. Don't become suddenly
meditative; don't become very intent to discover what is the goal of
true meditation. The meditation of which I speak has no goal, no
end....
We are going on a journey together, and when on a journey you can take along only what is absolutely essential. The journey of which I am speaking is very swift, there is no abiding place, no stopping, no rest; it is an endless movement, and a mind that is burdened is not free to travel.
We are going on a journey together, and when on a journey you can take along only what is absolutely essential. The journey of which I am speaking is very swift, there is no abiding place, no stopping, no rest; it is an endless movement, and a mind that is burdened is not free to travel.
Krishnamurti adds the following warning...
A
petty mind cannot take the journey into itself. But if through these
words you are becoming aware of you own thoughts, your own state, then
there is no guru.
In
his talk, Krishnamurti then explores what meditation is not--it is not
concentration, it is not some form of thought control, or the
suppression of desires. It is not what is recognizable or known. He
concludes that meditation is "the freeing of the mind from the known."
He adds...
It is open, not to the sannyasis [a Hindu religious mendicant], not to the dehydrated human beings who have suppressed
themselves and who no longer have any passion, but to everyone whose
mind is in the state of meditation from moment to moment.
To more fully explore this question with Krishnamurti, see his Second Talk in Madras from his book The Revolution Within.
