The Experience Of Meditation
Friends.
Without the seed of divinity within us, no human being would exist.
Because of the divinity within us, we move, think, love, give and
receive. Do not b e misled by what you see in the world around you: the
passing show with its violence, commercialism, greed for possessions, lust
for power. We are incarnations of the life Energy of the cosmos, evolving
as we, here and now, transform ourselves.
For this transformation which is
Self-realization, we need meditation. In meditation, we enter, we
experience, we prepare to express our divinity. This seed of divinity
within each of us is the Creative Force, but each of us must contact it.
Each of us must commit himself to living as a source of love and of light.
There are many forms of meditation. Often
the start of meditation is concentration on a point of light, or a word,
or a mantrum, or a phrase or an idea, or an image. However, concentration
is not meditation. Concentration can take us to the threshold, but we
must go beyond.
Meditation takes us beyond mind, beyond
words, beyond ego. In meditation, the confining shell of ego is split.
When the shell of the ego is cast off, the core which is within-which is
your true Self, your spirit, your soul – shines forth with dazzling
brilliance. When will the ego shatter? When you enter deep within
yourself; when you reach the core of your being. The Kernel of coconut,
its sweet milk, can be had only when you break its outer shell. The ego
is a shell; within it is the nucleus, the essence of your real Self.
Self-love belongs to the ego, love of all living beings, to the nucleus.
The ego aims to “get what is coming to me;” the nucleus aims to give all
that it can to the world. The ego is a façade-become-prison. When we
shed it, the essence, or nucleus, emerges in freedom, offering itself and
contributing to the bounty of the universe.
We glide into meditation. We cannot force
thoughts from our minds, or force bliss to come. It is as though we are
sitting on the balcony of our apartment, or on the porch of our house, and
see people passing in the street. We let many strangers pass. If a
friend appears, we invite him to join us. Now we are not even aware of
strangers in the street, as we concentrate on communicating with our
friend. Then, finally, we become silent. Communing with our friend in
the silence, we find we are communing with the Infinite.
First, let us concentrate on the concept of
the seed, and then glide into meditation…. The glory of the earth includes
almost limitless varieties of plants and trees, all of which start from
tiny seeds. We share this richness of diversity, this divinity in many
forms, each individually unique. The seed is nourished by the dark earth
which is broken up by earthworms, watered by rain, warmed by the sun,
cooled by the gentle touch of the night. The seed splits its shell, and a
form of life emerges which begins to expand and actualize its potential.
Now go to the law behind the maturation of the seed. There is a benign
harmony in the cycle of its flowering and bearing fruit and its
decay-only to grow again. The inter-relatedness of seed and sun and
earthworms, of birds that eat the superfluous seeds, of people who eat the
fruit, and of all that lives on the earth is the inter-relatedness of one
with all. Without this inter-relatedness, this harmony of the whole, we
would not be here. We not only eat the fruit of the tree, we rest in its
shade, and we also enjoy its beauty, which completes the tree.
Over two thousand five hundred years ago,
Mahavir said, “Since you received so much more than any other form of
life, it is inevitable that you should want to give more.” We not only
have senses that open the whole expanse of the universe to us, but we also
have articulate language, the capacity for abstract thinking, and the
freedom to choose and to move ourselves in the forward direction. But we
have to recognize the forward direction, we have to confront ourselves,
and we have to come to know ourselves.
So now, having concentrated on the object,
the seed, we must turn to the subject, which is ourselves. The eternal
questions that stand before man in all ages and in all parts of the world
are these: “Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?” For
centuries, all the seers, saints, sages, prophets and philosophers have
been pondering these questions. Circumstances have changed, but the
questions have not changed. Civilization have been going through many
stages and great turmoil, but these questions remain standing before each
and all of us, like a mountain. For these questions, there is no purely
verbal answer. If there were, we would have a beautiful statement and we
would not have to keep searching. The secret is that we have to go deeper
than mind or words. These who have seen, become silent. For the answers,
there is no vocabulary, no verbal expression. We find it in the silence
of meditation.
Friends, the universe wants something from
you. You have your place in the cosmos. You are significant. Each day
you are adding something to the world – your thoughts, your emotions, your
words, your actions. The same light that was in the enlightened masters
and great teachers is in you. The same spark is there, only they used it
to their full capacity.
I believe that you will not find out who you
are without meditation. I do not mean any one specific form of
meditation, for according to the Jain principle of relativity, different
meditations open different doors to reality as realized during certain
epochs and in certain places. However, meditation is that which leads us
from the small self, the ego, to the larger Self. Ego is perverted
Power. We need the love and the light of the large Self that reaches out
to all mankind, to all living beings. With this light and love we grow
the fruit we are capable of bearing, as our gift to the world.
Constantly we need to keep in mind the
immortal question of who we are, for at various stages of life our purpose
may be different. At one stage it may be to grow alone; at another it may
be to raise a family. All levels and varieties of human effort and
contributions are necessary to consume Karmas: bearing children, raising
them go; studying art composing or playing music; or perhaps deciding, as
Albert Schweitzer did, that music is not enough, and going on to establish
a hospital in Africa. We may leave the world for an hour a day, or for
ten years, and then return. Having learned who we are, we are ready to
give all we feel by making our contribution to building the earth.
Only you can decide on your focus. You may
change your mission, or retire from one and go into another one more
satisfying. Do not think about age. Some of you will find your goal
earlier, and some later. Only not to find it at all is a tragedy! It is
the intensity of experience that matters, not the length of time. Moments
can often be more enlightening than years. But each of you is here to
nurture the seed of divinity within yourself.
Now let us glide into meditation, and enter
the divinity within…. We are one whole, one with the seas and the stars,
one with life, with all life. … Let us meditate and find the bliss of
being alive and having the full inspiration of our receiving and
giving…..
Let
us enter meditation by first concentrating on the thought, “The whole
tree is in the heart of the tiny seed.”
THOUGHTS
|
