BENGALURU : What is a religious life and what is meditation? I think we should begin with meditation. What is meditation? That word has been brought over from India quite recently, unfortunately, because they have brought with it a lot of systems, methods and all kinds of fanciful imaginative thoughts and the projection of thought of various types.
There are the meditations of Zen, probably you have heard about all these things, and also the Tibetan meditation, the Buddhist meditation, the varieties of Hindu meditation, and one can invent one’s own meditation. And one can observe, see logically, that any form of routine, repeating over and over and over again certain words - Ave Maria - or some words which you have bought with a coin, and repeating those words only makes the mind more dull, makes the mind or the brain continue in a certain pattern.
And all these meditations are basically, if you have gone into it and studied it or talked to people who have done it, or you have done it yourself, their basis is control - controlling thought, disciplining, being aware, exercising great effort to be aware, to concentrate, to attend.
And in all this there is the exercise of will. If you have studied it, or if some of you have practised various forms of meditation and also if you have done any of the so-called transcendental meditation - a good word spoilt - by repeating a certain mantra, and all these forms, all these efforts, practising, what relationship has all that to daily life? Is it a form of escape? Or trying to understand something, or experience something, which will then alter your whole way of thinking and then that experience will totally alter the ways of one’s life.
That is, meditate, whatever that may mean, then that meditation will somehow alter the ways of one’s living. That is one approach to this whole problem of meditation. I don’t know why we have made it into a problem, but apparently it has become a problem.
Or bring about order in one’s daily life, not order based on some form of conformity, imitation, but understanding the whole movement of thought, in daily life, in our relationship with each other, so that we put our house in order first. And that bringing about that order in daily life is part of meditation. There are these two approaches.
The first, which is the traditional: meditate first, control your thought, concentrate, be aware of every movement of your hands, toes, all that, begin with that and that will transform your daily life. Let us talk that over first. What are the implications of such meditation? We are not denying or condemning one or the other. We are examining together the whole question of meditation, which when it is really understood has an extraordinary significance. So together, first let’s examine this question of meditation first, which will then flow into our life and alter the whole misery of life.