State Of Samadhi
An old monk came to the shore of a river with a young companion. The young man asked, “How shall we cross this river?” The old man replied, “In such a way that your feet don’t get wet.” The young man heard him and like a flash of lightning something became very clear and evident to him. The river had come and gone but the mysterious maxim had penetrated deeply into his heart. It became the guiding principle and style of his life. Because of this he learned to cross the river in a way that his feet did not get wet.
Become a person who eats and yet is fasting, who is in the midst of a crowd and yet alone, who is awake while sleeping, because only such a man attains to liberation while in the world and finds the divine in matter.
Someone has said, “The world should not be in the mind, the mind should not be in the world.” This is the key. And if the first half of the maxim is perfected, the second half follows on its own. The first half is the cause; the latter, its effect. If the first is perfected the second is its natural consequence. Those who begin with the second half are mistaken, because that does not work, the second half is not the cause, not the root. So I say the maxim is only this: The world should not be in the mind. The remaining is not part of the maxim, it is the consequence of the maxim. If the world is not in the mind, the mind does not go to the world. That which is not in the mind cannot pull the mind.
In samadhi, enlightenment, there is no object to be known, hence the state of samadhi cannot be called knowledge. It certainly isn’t knowledge in the ordinary sense but at the same time it isn’t ignorance either. There is nothing there for not-knowing either. It is different from both knowledge and ignorance. It is neither knowing nor not-knowing of any object, for there is no object at all. There is only subjectivity. There is only that which knows. There is no knowledge of any object there, but only the knowing – consciousness empty of content.
Someone once asked a monk, “What is meditation?” He replied, “To be in that which is near is meditation.”
What is near you? Except for yourself, isn’t everything else at a distance from you? Only you are near yourself. But by deserting yourself, you are always somewhere else – you are always somewhere in the neighborhood. But you are not to be in the neighborhood, you are to be in yourself. That is meditation. When you are nowhere and your mind too is nowhere, even then you are somewhere. That being somewhere is meditation.
When you are nowhere, you are, in yourself. And that is not being in the neighborhood; that is not being away. That is inwardness; that is nearness, intimacy. Only by being there does one awaken into the truth. It is by being in the neighborhood that you have lost everything and it is by being in yourself that it all can be regained.
I don’t ask you to renounce the world, I ask you to transform yourself. By denying the world you will not change, but when you have changed, the world ceases to be the world for you. True religion is not world-rejecting, it is self-transforming. Don’t think of the world but of your outlook in relation to the world. You have to change that. It is because of your outlook that there is the world and there is bondage. It is not the world, but your outlook that is the bondage. Once your outlook is changed, the whole existence changes for you. There is no fault in the world. The fault lies in you and your outlook.
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