What is Meditation?
Meditation is Life
If these words strike your Heart; If these words point to a fact that you have already discovered. There is no need for you to read any further. You know what meditation is and you know what I speak about when I use the word meditation. But, if you are not sure what this statement means, or would like to examine my understanding of this subject, then read on.
If you have come here to find out how to meditate, I am sorry, I cannot tell you how. There is no “how” to meditation. We can talk together about the various methods of approach to meditation, but these methods are not meditation, though they are often called meditation.
Many methods may lead you to the door of meditation, but the method cannot pass through that door. All methods are the product of thought and as such can be useful tools, a means to an end. And, if well devised and properly explained the end of these methods will take you to the threshold of meditation. Meditation is that which is both prior to and beyond thought and cannot be used by thought. But thought can be used by meditation.
Some methods seek to take you to the threshold of the door prior to thought, utilizing devices that suppress thought. The most common device of this nature is the mantra, the repetition of a word or series of words with focused and devotional intent. From this point, one may get a glimpse through the door but will be unable to enter through that door, even if one manages to drop the device as a tool. The problem here is that one has gone to the wrong door. It is the entrance door to thought, not the exit door that leads beyond thought. There is no going out through the in-door.
Still, even these methods can serve as an impetus to find the other door as they do sometimes expose a state of unity that exists outside of thought. The problem is that most practitioners who catch a glimpse, thrilled by the experience or memory of the moment, seek to repeat the experience again and again with the hope that someday it will become a permanent state. But that will not happen, and they are often left in deep depression and terribly anxious. Others will never even get a glimpse through the doorway but become satisfied with sitting in a sort of hypnotic trance that these devices can produce. This state then becomes an escape of sorts and the potential for meaningful transformation is not actualized.
Other methods geared towards meditation seek to allow thought to exhaust itself. These can be roughly divided into two categories: “meditation” with a seed thought and “meditation” without a seed thought. I use quotation marks to make clear that these are techniques, a product of thought, not meditation in and of itself but a means of coming to the threshold of meditation. Both of these methods understood and practiced correctly may lead one to the threshold of the doorway leading beyond thought.
While the first technique is more readily accessible to the intellectually inclined, it is the most difficult to let drop even when the door to meditation is seen ahead. The second method, “without seed thought” is easier to let drop, but that’s because it is difficult to grasp in the first place. The busy, undisciplined mind can be very distracting and frustrating for the beginner and many find it too difficult to maintain. With proper instruction and support however one comes to see that this really is no problem at all.
In future articles, I will take up in more detail the general categories that I have touched on here and discuss the potential and pitfalls of each. None of these methods are exempt from the traps of thought because all are devices of thought. Yet all, including those that utilize thought suppression, may serve to point to that which thought cannot touch and as such can be a means to that end (pointing). With a proper understanding of their limitations, they can be useful. Without this understanding, they are better left alone. For then they are of no more value than any other attempt to escape from living. Plus their traps are more subtle and respectable, thus they are much harder to release.
Meditation is not separated from life. The methods we have talked about often begin by asking that you set aside some time on a regular basis to sit and practice the technique. As such, there is a division between the time of so-called “meditation” and the rest of your daily life. And when one first catches a glimpse through the door to meditation this separation may be seen as the threshold to cross. But if one is caught up in the glimpse of light through the doorway and mistakes this experience for meditation itself then the threshold may never be seen and therefore they do not proceed across it.
As I will discuss in detail in “Study, Meditation and Service” a technique or method is not a prerequisite to meditation. Meditation is always seeking expression and whenever resistance to that expression is not present, Meditation Is. Such a statement then begs the question, “Why Sit?”
