“What is important in meditation is the quality of the mind and the heart. It is not what you achieve, or what you say you attain, but rather the quality of a mind that is innocent and vulnerable. Through negation there is the positive state. Merely to gather, or to live in, experience, denies the purity of meditation. Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.
– J. Krishnamurthi
Kabir – The couplet
माला तो कर में फिरे, जीभ फिर मुख माहीं ।
मनवा तो चहुँ डिश फिर, यह तो सुमिरन नाहीं ||
transliterated:
Maala to kar mein phire, jeebh phire mukh maahi |
Manwa to chahun dish phire, yeh to sumiran nahi ||
Translation:
(Whether) it is the rosary beads in the had moving, or the tongue dancing in the mouth|
For as long as the mind wanders in all other directions, this is not meditation||
My understanding:
Early on, from the teaching of elders, observation of others, and all the reading we do, understand that meditation can help center us and help us find peace and the real center within us. For those so inclined, we even seek a special mantra or set of mantras, and seek, by repeated repetition, to find that true heart and meaning.
What we need to realize, however, is that it is not just the words or the action that create the magic. The magic actually happens when we step beyond the words and repetition, and learn to focus the physical and mental senses inwards, away from all external input, into the central core.
When the entire being can focus, even for just an instant, on that quiet space deep within, when we can just be, just observe, without thought, action or interaction, we find that well of bliss that we seek.
And when we can teach ourselves to repeat the exercise repeatedly, the attractions of the external world and the desires that draw us there finally show their true nature as brittle facades that fall away as easily as bark on rotting wood. Once that happens, the true self steps out in all its luminescent glory, lighting up both the individual and the entire space around. And in that brilliance, all of false ego melts away like the ice sculpture in the warmth of the sun – slowly and surely.