VBT – Meditation 2.2
Minute Observation
Shiva says, AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN – THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE.
Be aware at the turn. But it is a very short turn; very minute observation will be needed. And we are just without any observing capacity; we cannot observe anything. If I say to you, “Observe this flower; observe this flower which I give to you,” you cannot observe it. For a single moment you will see it, and then you will begin to think of something else. It may be about the flower, but it will not be THE FLOWER. You may think about the flower, about how beautiful it is – then you have moved.
Now the flower is no more in your observation, your field has changed. You may say that it is red, it is blue, it is white… then you have moved. Observation means remaining with no word, with no verbalization, with no bubbling inside – just remaining WITH. If you can remain with a flower for three minutes, completely, with no movement of the mind, the thing will happen – the beneficence. You will realize.
But we are not at all observers. We are not aware, we are not alert; we cannot pay attention to anything. We just go on jumping. This is part of our heritage, our monkey heritage. Our mind is just the growth of the monkey mind, so the monkey moves on. He goes on jumping from here to there. The monkey cannot sit still. That is why Buddha insisted so much on just sitting without any movement, because then the monkey mind is not allowed to go on its way.
In Japan they have a particular type of meditation which they call Zazen. The word ‘zazen’ in Japan means just sitting, doing nothing. No movement is allowed. One is just sitting like a statue – dead, not moving at all. But there is no need to sit like a statue for years together. If you can observe the turn of your breath without any movement of the mind, you will enter. You will enter into yourself or into the beyond within.
Let me explain to you what zazen is. Zazen is a deep unoccupied-ness – not doing anything outwardly, not doing anything inwardly. It is not even meditation because when you meditate you are making some sort of effort, you are trying to do something: chanting a mantra, remembering God, or even remembering yourself. But these efforts create ripples, these efforts create vibrations and your sitting becomes corrupted. Then your sitting is not innocent. Zazen means: sit, and just sit, nothing else. There is no doing on the part of the body, no doing on the part of the mind. It’s a state of non-doing. That does not mean that you are fast asleep, because sleep is a doing. That does not mean that you are dead, because if you are dead you cannot just sit. That simply means that you are tremendously alive, intensely alive, a fire of being, but not moving anywhere – a reservoir of energy in a deep awaiting. You are just waiting for something to happen, not even expecting, because expectation will again create a ripple of thought and the mind will start functioning. Everything is suspended. You breathe, and that’s all that you do. But that is not a doing, because breathing goes on its own accord. You have not to do anything but just sit silently.
Tags: Minute Observation
