VBT – Week’s Meditation 96
A Celebration
Life is not for use. It is non-utilitarian, purposeless, it is a play, a celebration. So when you move into solitariness to do this technique, be prepared from the very beginning that you are going to be useless, and enjoy it, don’t feel sad about it. You cannot conceive of what arguments the mind will bring. You will say, “The world is in such trouble and you are sitting in silence here. Look what is happening in Vietnam and what is happening in Pakistan and what is happening in China; and your country is dying, there is no food, there is no water. What are you doing here meditation? What is the use? Will it bring socialism to the country?” Mind will bring beautiful arguments; mind is the great arguer. It is the Devil – it will try to persuade you, it will convince you that you are wasting time.
But don’t listen to it. From the very beginning be prepared, “I am going to waste time. I will not be of any use. I will simply enjoy being here.”
And don’t be concerned with the world. The world goes on. It is always in trouble. It has always been in trouble and it will always remain in trouble. That is the way of the world. You cannot do anything so don’t try to be a great world reformer, a revolutionary, a messiah. Don’t try.
You simply be yourself and enjoy your solitariness, just like a rock or a tree or a river. Useless! What is the use of a rock just lying there under the rains, under the sun, under the stars? What is the use of this rock? No use – the rock enjoys itself being that way. Just be a rock. There are rock gardens in Japan, in Zen monasteries; they make rock gardens particularly for this. There are no trees in the garden, just sand and rock. A solitary rock just sits there, and the master says to the disciple, “Go, and be just a rock, just like that rock. Don’t be bothered about the world. That rock remains there whatsoever happens to the world. Rock is not worried. It is always in meditation.”
Unless you are really prepared to be useless, you cannot be solitary, you cannot be in solitude.
And once you know the depth of it you can come back to society. You must come back because solitariness is not a style of life – it is just a training. It is not a way of life, it is just a deep relaxation to change the perspective. It is just falling out of step with society to have a look at yourself, who you are, alone. So don’t think that this is a style of life. Many have made it a style of life. They are in error. They are absolutely in error. They have made medicine, food. It is not a style of life, it is just medicinal. You fall out for a time being just to have a perspective, a distance, to see what you are and what society is doing to you. When you are out of it, you can have a better look. You can observe. Without being concerned, without being in it, you can become an observer from the hilltop, you can become a witness. You are so far away. Unprejudiced, undisturbed, you can look.
So note it, this is not a way of life. I am not saying leave the world and become hermits somewhere in the Himalayas – no. But sometimes leave, relax, be useless, be alone, exist like a rock, be independent, free from the world, be a part of nature – and you will be rejuvenated, reborn. Then come back and move in society and in the crowd again. And try to carry that beauty, that silence that happened to you when you were alone. Now carry it, don’t lose contact with it. Move deep into the crowd but don’t become a part of it. Let the crowd be there outside you – you remain alone.
And when you become capable of being alone in the crowd, you have achieved real aloneness. It is easy to be alone on a hilltop. The whole of nature helps you, and nothing is a barrier. To be back in the market-place, in the shop, in the office, in the family, and to remain alone – that is an achievement. Then it is something you have achieved and it is not just accidental, something that happened because of the hills. Now the quality of consciousness has changed. So remain alone in the crowd. The crowd will be there outside but don’t allow it to enter in. Protect whatsoever you have gained. Defend it, don’t allow it to be disturbed. And whenever you feel that the feeling has become dull, that you are missing it, that society has disturbed it, that the dust has gathered around, that the fresh spring is no longer fresh, that it is polluted – move again. Fall out of society to renew it, to make it alive again. Then come back and move in the crowd. And then a moment will come when that original spring will remain fresh and no one will be able to pollute it or contaminate it. Then there is no need to move anywhere.
So this is just a technique, not a style of life. Don’t become a monk, don’t become a nun, don’t move to a monastery to live there forever. That is nonsense. If you live forever in a monastery you will never be able to know whether you have attained what you have attained, or whether the monastery has just given it to you. It may be accidental, not essential. The essential has to be tested. The essential has to be set against society; it has to be brought to the touch-stone. And when it never breaks, when you can depend on it, when nothing can change it, then it has become a crystallization.
Tags: A Celebration
