Meditate Like the Beatles This Weekend

Meditation, the word, inevitably has been through the treadmill of mind and has become, a thing.

Forget what you’ve read for a moment (if you can). That which happens when one IS, without doing anything, when one is simply Being. This space of non-doing we can label meditation. We label it ‘meditation’ in order to distinguish it from concentration, or any activity (no matter how subtle). Thus, watching the breath, is not ‘meditation’. One can call it meditation, that is fine, then we need another way to label and distinguish what happens when we are not doing anything. Some call it ‘Witnessing’. Some call it ‘Being’. Some call it ‘Abiding as the Self’. Some call it ‘The Unborn Buddha Mind’ Some call it ‘Awareness’, ‘Consciousness’ ‘Silence’ ‘Buddha nature’ ‘N0-mind’ and many others.

This is what is meant by true meditation. It is not something one can ‘do’. It is what one already is. It is the ‘one’ that precedes the sense of a person trying to get back to the ‘one’. It is as easy as waking up in the morning. It is always so. It is the uncaused abiding awareness. It is not other than who you are. Until it clicks as a self evident realisation, we bring our attention to it. We can do this anywhere, at anytime. It is helpful to spend time sitting, allowing nothing else but this alone to be our moment. Again, this time sitting some have called ‘meditation.’ It is a helpful method not meditation itself. Meditation cannot be done. One cannot do the uncaused abiding awareness. Once this understanding is self-evident formal sitting may not happen, or it may continue. What is vital to note, is not to throw away ‘practice’ because you have a new philosophy banging about your head, you learned passively from a book.

Catching the drift. Some helpful hints for sitting meditation:

Be happy Have a travellers or scientists or child’s sense of discovery. Be sincere but not serious. Meditate everyday, be alert to the mind’s resistance and excuses, don’t give in to ego whimsy and skip a day. Quality over quantity. This moment is enough, truth is not somewhere else. Keep your back up right and straight. Be happy.

This approach can be applied to all methods.

A man came to Baba Farid; Farid was a Sufi mystic. The man said ’I have heard that you have come to know God. I have come from far away. Tell me what God is and how God can be known.’ Farid said ’Right now I am going to the river to take my morning bath. You come along and if possible I will answer there.’ The seeker looked a little puzzled – ’Why can’t he answer it right now? Why should he answer there?’ But he had heard that mystics are eccentric people: ’Maybe some idea of this madman…’ He followed. Farid told him ’You also throw off your clothes, be naked and come into the river. Perhaps then I can answer.’ The man thought ’This is going too far: ”Throw off your clothes”?’ But there was nobody else on the riverbank, so he said ’Why not?’ He threw off the clothes and jumped into the river. Farid was a very strong man. He jumped upon the seeker and started drowning him in the river and pushed him hard. The seeker was a very thin and weak man – must have been a philosopher, must havebeen thinking too much, must not have cared about the body – and Farid was killing him, murdering him. But only for one minute, and the weak and thin man threw Farid away. He tried so hard to come up that Farid could not hold him any longer. Then they faced each other. The man could not understand. He said ’It is my own fault that I followed you; I should have been a little more intelligent. You are a madman! What were you doing? You were murdering me!’ Farid said ’These things later on. First I want to ask one thing: how many thoughts did you have while I was pulling you down into the water?’ He said ’Thoughts? There was only one thought, and that too was not a thought: ”How can I get out?” And that too was not a thought – it penetrated my whole being, it saturated my whole being, it permeated every cell of my body. It was not a thought.’ Farid said ’That you have understood. When you desire God so passionately, you will know – not before that.’ God is not a philosophical theory, itis an experience of intense passion.