By meditation we do not mean just sitting. Meditation means being there every moment. Being present.

How seriously should we pursue meditation? And what is meditation – what do we understand by meditation? Is meditation ‘a couple of hours sitting’ – and most times dozing – or is it an alertness? Is it a consciousness that you try to arrive at, wherein you are constantly vigilant within yourself; you create an atmosphere within and therefore around you?

It does not take away your moments of lightness, because meditation is to arrive at lightness, humour, playfulness. But there is also a certain seriousness to life, a serious concentration, a serious pursuit – an intensity. Playfulness and all sport is extremely useful to get us over the morbidity, the emotional morbidity and depression that we may enter – and we must be able to let go of that and not sink into it, not pamper it.  When we pamper it, we want it to be our possession and it remains with us. Somehow through that we would seek some empathy, some sympathy; but if you want to arrive at a dignity which is self-dignity and self-reliance we must be able to go beyond seeking and expecting outside sympathies.

There must be a total reliance on the Truth, an honesty in the pursuit of enlightenment. So the approach also must be enlightened – at least the attitude must be one of that.

You know, for this enlightenment Buddha exercised so much intensity, which he developed through lifetimes. I think we take this too lightly, and therefore also the one who guides and leads is taken for granted – because in today’s age somehow it is being given too easily. It is the power of the guide that is given, but it has come from lifetimes of sadhana – practice. So it depends on oneself, to what depth you would like to reach.

Enlightenment is not some enjoyment, enjoyable experience; enlightenment is an integrated consciousness that is always awake; it is awake to every moment; it is awake to the frivolity of life that we may indulge in so easily. Enlightenment also means to be brave enough and courageous enough to let go of something when it needs to be let go of – not to continue to pamper it: to keep the objective in front of us all the time.

There are tremendous treasures awaiting you through your consciousness, it is up to you to tap them. And so the question arises, how to be honest with ourselves and with what we are doing; to be watchful of our motives, with each other, and with the work that is here.

So meditation is not two hours of sitting, or just being in this room. It is an alertness to yourself, an attentiveness, it is a watchfulness. It does not take away your playfulness, because watchfulness and playfulness can go together, easily go together. So when we play let us play completely, when we laugh let us laugh freely, and then when we meditate let us meditate fully, completely turned to it with all of our soul. Commitment is a big thing when you have committed yourself. And you will have to inquire in yourself whether you are really committed. We say we are committed, but each moment you watch and see how committed you are to what is happening here. It is not just being physically present; it is to be present in the Spirit. Usually it is heard that this one is with this one, this one is with that one, and I am with him – this is only talking physically.

Even for one like the Buddha it took him six years of intense seeking, not to mention the years of his previous lives, and only then He could be completely with It.

Often we react, we rebel without any intelligence, and then we say we are with this, with him, with that. Before we were elsewhere and with another and when tomorrow comes, who knows, you will go elsewhere and with someone else, like a wayward yo-yo – a rolling stone that gathers no moss.

So when we are here, when we sit, let us be here completely; when we laugh, let us laugh completely; and if we have decided to be committed, let us be committed completely – not just in words. Words have no meaning – if there is no back up in spirit we will get nowhere, we will only fool ourselves and each other.

To take to spiritual life we have to pass through fire – I have said this before, and I say it again. It is not a joy ride: the joy comes only after and yet it can be immediate and present – because it requires you to go through many regions, it brings a whole upheaval in your life, a psychological upheaval. It will bring your whole personality to the forefront. It is a passage that one makes to arrive at the truth that one is. So one must be able to see one’s motives, one’s biases, one’s prejudices, one’s possessiveness, one’s jealousies, everything. And be able to make the change where it is required: in your soul-being you know the answers.

How to awaken oneself to this fire? What should awaken within our hearts? That which was in the heart of a Buddha – Siddharta before he became Buddha, or a Christ turned to prayer – even after thousands of years you can feel their intensity. Or are they the only ones privileged to have this intensity? Is that why the whole of humanity somehow approaches them with reverence and worship and therefore places them on an altar permanently, away from the rest of humanity? Or could you narrow the gap between yourself and them – nay – even more, have what they had? But it would depend on what your objective is. When we remember the Buddha or the Christ, when we talk about them, do you try to analyse what they were, what made them what they were? How did their intensity develop to such a high pitch that they forgot food, water, friends and gossip? Or are they just unique specimens of humanity – freaks, that is what they would be called then – aberrations. We usually laugh at freaks, but here we never laugh at a Buddha or a Christ – rather they are worshipped. But I tell you, when they were present they were also taken for granted and persecuted, crucified. It is only posterity somehow that gives them their due.

This is the strange thing about humanity: they always worship petrified, fossilized figures. When they become fossils, when they become stone, they place them on the altar and they light an incense, make confession and concession to them. This is how humanity works. They do not want to understand the living Christ or the living Buddha – and you could only do that if you understood yourself truly, if you became an honest book to yourself.

Why is humanity so prone to worshipping stone and the past, never the present?

And people like Christ and the Buddha, they always come to give a dream to humanity and to awaken humanity from a dream, a false one, and to wake them to a real one. ‘Yes,’ says humanity, ‘we would like to wake up to this dream’ but in practice there is always a resistance, there is always a rebellion, because agreeing in words does not necessarily mean agreeing in practice; it has to be put into practice, that is why it is called sadhana.

It means cooperating with Christ, it means cooperating with the Buddha, it means cooperating with the Master – and not cooperating only when you feel like it. It is almost as if you are the leader and the Buddha has to follow! If you were to just look over your reactions, you would see many occasions when you just keep going around in circles.

Arya Vihar

26 March 1998