Does meditation lead to a passive life? || Acharya Prashant (2017)
Questioner: When we meditate regularly, we start losing let’s say the desires, or I want to do this and goals and everything. But, then it’s kind of equal to, to become passive in life. So, can you say something about that? Because being passive also feels like…
Acharya Prashant: You see sir, had you not been told in advance that the so-called meditation will turn off your desires. Are you sure, you would experience a diminishing of desires?
I repeat. Even before you entered the process of meditation, had you not been told what the fruits of meditation are? Would you still have experienced those fruits?
If desires are really gone then you know that, that which you are calling as passivity, is the greatest joy of relaxation.
Desires are very much there. The so-called meditation is only used to put a veneer on them. I assure you that, the very same meditation would fail if you are told that it fails. You are told it succeeds, so it appears successful to you.
But had it really been successful? I am asking you.
Had it really been successful would you call the fruit of meditation as passivity and be worried about it?
When one is really in love, does one treat the fruit of love as a worry?
If you have really meditated, would you treat the fruit of meditation, as a worry?
When you are the one with God, do you treat the gift of God as a worry?
The gift is a worry, only when there is no gift. Meditation is still to happen.
What is meditation?
Is meditation about sitting in a particular place, following a particular set of physical and mental disciplines, subjecting the body to behave in a certain way, reserving a certain time in your daily schedule for peace? Is this what meditation is?
Is meditation something that can be taught as an activity?
Surely, if meditation is to be sold then it needs to be taught as an activity. Because if meditation is not really an activity then how will it become tangible? And if it is not tangible, why would you pay for it?
Meditation is the mind looking directly at that, which it really wants. The mind wants peace; the mind wants to relax and go to sleep. The total sleep is also called Samadhi.
When the mind is not acting as its own enemy.
When the mind is going in a direction, it anyway intends to go. That is meditation.
When you are fulfilling, your deepest and ultimate desire. That is meditation.
When you are doing what you must do and not doing what you must not do, that is meditation.
Meditation is not something that you do; meditation is something that you allow to happen to yourself.
Meditation is not something that purifies you; meditation is something that dissolves you.
After purification, you hope to retain some kind of a purified self, and a purified self is a bigger pride than an impure self. Is it not?
We love to say, “I’m a meditator. So, my mind is more evolved and more stainless, than yours.”
Meditation is that, which leaves you with nothing to take credit of. Meditation is not something that will help you fulfill your goals. Meditation is that in which your biggest goal, has already been realized.
A Zen saying puts it very pithily. It says, “When you have reached the top of the mountain, keep climbing.”
To reach the top of the mountain is meditation. To keep climbing even after you have reached the top is meditation. And that meditation cannot be confined to a particular hour of the day. That meditation cannot be a set of predefined activities. That meditation is life itself. That meditation is being committed to the top of the mountain, 24 hrs a day.
You are a very poor climber, if you climb just 1 hour a day, and for 23 hours you squander your time. And worst if, for 23 hours you climb downwards.
Meditation is to keep climbing 24 hours and not to stop climbing, even after you have reached there.
This real meditation is very very dangerous because it leaves you with no time and no allowance than anything else. You must keep climbing and that is your permanent job. You can’t do anything else.
The meditation that is usually sold and practiced, is the meditation in which you can very conveniently make allowance for everything that you stand for.
You say, “1 hour of my day belongs to meditation and BINGO 23 hours belong to me. Not only do these 23 hours belong to me, but I can also now use these 23 hours, with the added confidence and pride that, I’m a meditator.”
If meditation really is so dear to you then why do you meditate only for 1 hour? If meditation is really so precious, then why do you meditate only for 1 hour, why not 24 hours? What kind of love is this that reserves itself to a very small fraction of the day? Don’t you want to be with the beloved continuously?
You don’t want that when you have ten other things to be attracted to. Real meditativeness is your life-breathe. And because it is your life breath, it must remain unnoticed. If you can know, when you are meditating then you are not meditating at all. That is the one test.
Just as if you know when you are loving then you are not loving at all. If you know when you are speaking the Truth, the Truth is alien to you.
Meditation is either continuous or never. It cannot be intermittent. To be continuously in service of the deepest is meditation.
