Meditation: The Art Of Celebration
We have become so conditioned and habits have become so mechanical that even when there is no business to be done, our minds are businesslike. When no narrowing is needed, you are narrowed. Even when you are playing, you are not playing, you are not enjoying it. Even when you are playing cards, you are not enjoying it. You play for the victory and then the play becomes a work; then what is going on is not important, only the result.
In business the result is important. In festivity, the act is important. If you can make any act significant in itself, then you become festive and you can celebrate it.
Whenever you are in celebration, the limits, the narrowing limits are broken. They are not needed, they are thrown. You come out of your straitjacket, the narrowing jacket of concentration. Now you are not choosing; everything that comes, you allow. And the moment you allow the total existence to come in, you become one with it. There is a communion.
This communion – this celebration, this choiceless awareness, this non businesslike attitude – I call meditation.
The festivity is in the moment, in the act, not in the bothering about the results, not in achieving something.
There is nothing to be achieved, so you can enjoy that which is here and now.
You can explain it in this way: I am talking to you; if I am concerned about the result, then the talk becomes a business, it becomes a work. But if I talk to you without any expectations, without any desire about the result, then the talk becomes a play. The very act, in itself, is the end. Then narrowing is not needed. I can play with the words, I can play with the thoughts. I can play with your question, I can play with my answer; then it is not serious, then it is lighthearted.
And if you are listening to me without thinking about getting something out of it, then you can be relaxed; then you can allow me to be in communion with you and your consciousness will not be narrowed. Then it is open – playing, enjoying.
Any moment can be a business moment, any moment can be a meditative moment; the difference is in the attitude. If it is choiceless, if you are playing with it, it is meditative.
There are social needs and there are existential needs that are to be fulfilled. I will not say, “Do not condition children.” If you leave them totally unconditioned, they will be barbaric. They will not be able to exist. Survival needs conditioning but survival is not the end, so you must be able to put your conditioning on and take it off – just like clothes. You can put them on, go out and do your business, and then come home and take them off. Then you are.
Excerpted From Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy CH: 1
