VBT – Meditation 34.5

VBT – Meditation 34.5

Concentration And Meditation

Everyone is searching for happiness but because they are looking in the wrong direction – outside – no one ever really finds it. Real happiness, bliss, can only be found inside, by learning the knack of dis–identifying with the mind.

Wherever you go, your mind will go with you. Your knowledge will go with you, your prejudices will go with you, your scriptures will go with you. Your idea that you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan will go with you.

Mind is vacillating. The discipline of a meditator is to become so watchful of the mind, so alert to the mind and its stupidities – its hesitations, its trembling, its vacillations – to become so watchful that you are cut off. That is the whole purpose of watching: watching cuts you off. Watch anything in the mind, and you are cut off. Watching is a sword. If a thought is moving in your mind, just watch it – and suddenly you will see the thought is there, you are here, and there is no bridge left. Don’t watch, and you become identified with the thought, you become it; watch, and you are not it. Mind possesses you because you have forgotten how to watch. Learn it.

Just looking at a rose flower watch it; or at the stars, or the people passing on the road, sit by the side and watch. And then slowly slowly close your eyes and see the inner traffic moving – thousands of thoughts, desires, dreams, passing by. It is always rush hour there. Just watch as somebody watches a river flowing by, sitting on the bank. Just watch – and watching, you will become aware that you are not it.

Mind is being identified with it. No-mind is being disidentified with it. Don’t be a mind, because in fact you are not a mind. Then who are you? You are consciousness. You are that watchfulness, you are witnessing, you are that pure observation, that mirrorlike quality that reflects everything but never becomes identified with anything.

Remember, I am not saying that you are conscious. I am saying you are consciousness: that is your true identity. The day one knows, “I am consciousness,” one has come to know the ultimate, because the moment you know, “I am consciousness,” you also know all is consciousness, on different planes. The rock is conscious in its own way, and the tree is conscious in its own way, and the animals and the people. Everybody is conscious in his own way, and consciousness is a multifaceted diamond. The day you know, “I am consciousness,” you have known the universal truth, you have come to the goal.

By meditation Atisha never means concentration, remember. Concentration and meditation are polar opposites. Concentration narrows down your mind; it is focusing on one point. It includes only something and excludes everything else. Meditation is all-inclusive, it excludes nothing. It is not a narrowing down of the mind, it is an expansion of consciousness. Concentration is of the mind, meditation is of consciousness. Concentration is mind, meditation is no-mind. Concentration is a tension: you will be tired of it sooner or later. You cannot concentrate for a long time, it is effort. But one can be meditative for twenty-four hours, because it is a relaxation.