How Long Should You Meditate?

Acharya Prashant

13 min
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How Long Should You Meditate?
It’s unfortunate that today, methods of meditation are being mistaken for meditation itself. Meditation is what makes us human—it must be continuous, 24x7. No method can be continuous or 24x7. Meditation is a way of life, a beautiful love affair. Just as the body cannot wait to breathe, consciousness cannot wait to meditate—it’s a madness of love, not dry, ritualistic, or time-bound. This summary has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation

Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji, I am Meghna, a student here. My Question is — Is meditation worth the hype? We usually associate meditation with spirituality and I was interested in understanding if it has any physiological effect, a mind-body connection of sorts.

Acharya Prashant: If you will listen carefully right now, this listening itself is meditation. You have to draw a distinction between meditation and methods of meditation. Probably, what you are asking about is methods of meditation.

Questioner: Yes, sir.

Acharya Prashant: Meditation is one thing, methods of meditation are another thing. It’s a problem, an unfortunate problem that today the methods are being called as meditation. Meditation is attention itself. Right now, I am meditating. You too, are meditating. This is meditation, and meditation is what makes us human. Meditation is understanding itself.

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: And if meditation is so valuable that it is at our centre of humanness, then meditation has to be continuous, uninterrupted, 24x7. And no method can be continuous or uninterrupted or 24x7. Methods by their definition must start and stop and methods by their definition are limited by conditions. Some method will require you to not to speak. Some method will require you to squat on the floor. Some method will require you to wait for a particular time, let’s say, 4 a.m. in the morning.

But meditation is so fundamentally important, that you cannot wait for a particular condition or bodily pose or time to enter it. Meditation is like the inner breath itself. Just as this body cannot wait to breathe, similarly your consciousness cannot wait to meditate. Consciousness needs meditation all the time just as the body needs the breath all the time. And therefore, meditation has to be silent and continuous like breath itself.

You are meditating right now and this is the most beautiful kind of meditation because it is happening silently in the background, without you even knowing it. If meditation has to be limited to a particular time or a particular condition, then it will be unfortunately broken all the time, no?

If you have to close your eyes while meditating, then how will you meditate while driving? And don’t you need to meditate while driving? What is all the road rage about? If people were meditative, would they drive the way they do? But you have been told, your favorite teacher is telling you that you know you need to meditate while doing this (Gyan mudra).

Now if you do this, there is a problem on the road. And if you don’t meditate at all, then again there is a problem on the road. Problem both ways, which means there is something wrong in the fundamentals, in the definition.

Meditation is a way of life. Meditation is the most beautiful love affair you can have.

People talk of romance, why not romance the truth? Romance is your unending date with the truth. You see, when you are on a date, it’s not as if you are looking at the other person all the time. Especially if you are meeting that person frequently. It could be a working date then. “Fine, let’s meet somewhere, let’s sit across a table, you have your own laptop, I have mine and we work.“ And that’s a date.

So even as you are doing something on your laptop, a certain nearness is there, a certain togetherness is there, right? Now that’s meditation. “I might be doing anything, still I am close to you. Closeness does not mean that continuously, we are looking into each other’s eyes, no? You are doing your own thing, I am doing my own thing, yet we are together.” That’s meditation. Throughout the day, I am doing my own thing, yet I am with the truth.

Ma’am when do you do the truth? I never do the truth, I am always with the truth. I am doing something else, I am doing something on the laptop but I am with the truth. Now that’s meditation. Irrespective of what I am doing throughout the day, I am with the truth. That’s meditation.

And this meditation is not subject to the limits of the various methods. All methods are limitations. Some method will say that you must have a rosary. Some method will say that you must have something else, there are like hundreds of methods of meditations. They are for rank beginners. They are just to give you some little flavor of inner peace so that you are encouraged to plunge neck deep, nose deep, head deep into the real thing. If the flavor is great, will you not buy an entire basket of the product? Please tell me.

You go to some decent shop selling toiletries— body oil, hair oil or perfumes. The first thing, they will take you to is samples. And what will they do there? “Ma’am, try this one,” and a little bit spray it on your…(gesturing top of the hand where perfume is sprayed as a sample.) You are not supposed to be satisfied with this much. If you like this, then you pay the price and get the entire bottle.” That’s meditation.

And all that we do in the name of meditation is this— “Okay! I want to try that one now,” and having tried all these you get some little aroma and you get satisfied with this and you walk out and say, “You know, I have fooled the shopkeeper.” Next day you again walk in and say, “You know I want to try that one. No, no, don’t spray it here, spray it here.”

Surely you don’t have much appetite for love. You get satisfied with too little. You must have a giant appetite for love. “I am not satisfied, I want more. Give me more.” Madness of love, that is meditation, not something dry, not something ritualistic, not something time bound. If I love you, how can I be away from you even for a split second? That’s meditation.

Seen those shops in small towns, you go to those places and you say, “You know, that particular mithai (sweet) I want to taste it, now that one …” and that way you quench your appetite and walk away without paying anything. This reluctance to pay up is called methods of meditation. This stinginess and this dishonesty, is called methods of meditation. You are thinking you have cheated the shopkeeper. No, you have cheated yourself. If you really loved the barfi (name of a sweet), why didn’t you pay up? That little piece was meant to convince you that the entire kilogram is worth the price, no?

But we meditate for thirty minutes everyday and say, “This is it.” Thirty minutes every day. What kind of loveless person would this be? If you loved those thirty minutes, why did you let the thing stop? You sat down with your eyes closed and you say you loved the peace you got, then why did you open your eyes and get up? If you really loved the peace you got; while sitting in mediation, why did you then open your eyes and get up?

“No because I have my worldly responsibilities to take care of.” Then you love your worldly responsibilities more than you love meditation. Are you even a man then? You are a social slave. “No, but you cannot meditate all the time. A fellow has a shop to run.” Then you are not a meditator, you are a shopkeeper and your entire meditation is devoted to your shop.

You want to meditate just so that you can run your shop more smoothly. Meditation is just a servant to your shop. And your shop is such, that running your shop gives you a lot of tension. So, you meditate so that tension can be somehow cleared away and you can again return to that shop, just to earn more tension.

If someone uses a method of meditation for ten days, twenty days, two months, that’s passable. But if someone says, “He has been into a particular method of meditation for twenty years,” this fellow is crooked. Why did your meditation not turn into a subtle and silent love affair? Why did it not become your breath and your heartbeat? Why did it remain a mere method?

And such is our crookedness, that we call the methods as meditation. It is not meditation, it is a trick. How can a trick be the truth? In fact, by calling a trick as the truth, you are trying to trick the truth. That’s what a method of meditation is, you are trying to trick the truth. You are saying, “You know, I can use a particular method and get you.” You are so inflated in your ego, that you think that you can even trick the truth.

The truth demands unconditional and continuous surrender, not some trick. 24x7, you have to be devoted to the truth itself, that’s meditation, not some exotic trick.

“On a full moon night, go get drenched in goat urine and sit under a banyan tree and open your mouth and gape at the moon, and that’s the greatest meditation you can have. And obviously, all this while, just keep remembering your great guru. Remember the great guru, open your mouth and stare at the moon and you will be enlightened.”

Such a fool the ego is, it tries to fool the truth. It thinks, by doing these kinds of cheap tactics, it will come to salvation. We want to preserve our everyday life as it is and relegate meditation to one corner of our existence. “The everyday life should run as it runs.” And because the everyday life generates a lot of fire and smoke and heat, so let me meditate to somehow keep things cool and calm.

Meditation, I said, is crazy love. When it comes, it possesses you. It takes over your entire life. You can no more, operate from the same centre. You are somebody else now. You are no more, meditation is. Mediation is the master, it commands you, you are the servant. And it commands you all the time. You don’t speak, meditation speaks through you.

You don’t even know what you are saying, because you are not doing the talking, somebody else is talking through you. That’s meditation. You are the servant. But when you apply a method of meditation, then you are the master. The ego wants to be the master whereas deserves to be a slave.

Are you getting it?

Unfortunately, commercial spirituality has turned meditation into a little product, whereas it is the highest degree of devotion possible. Meditation is love, prem, bhakti, everything.

And meditation is nothing special or unique. Reading a book, you are meditating. And if you are not meditating while reading a book, are you even reading? Speaking, I am meditating. Listening, you are meditating. And if either of us is not meditating, are we even speaking or listening?

Playing tennis, I have to be meditative, else I will be double faulting all the time. And if I double fault, I know the problem is not with the serve, but with the server. The server had something that disrupted his meditation. Baking bread, you have to be meditative, washing clothes... (pause.)

Not just the great tasks of the day, but even doing simple things like laundry. Do you want to be with your sweetheart only while you are doing the great things? Or do you want to be with him or her all the time? That’s meditation. Even when I am doing the laundry, I want you to be here. Where? Here (inside me). Not somebody next to you.

Great jewels of wisdom appear from Saint Kabir’s meditation, when he would be weaving clothes. What is he doing? Just weaving, like an ordinary weaver. But he was with his beloved. And from that, what we get is the highest pieces of wisdom humanity ever had. My hands are busy with the warp, the weft and the shuttle, but my mind is with the beloved.

And from there, you get the bhajans, the abhangs, the shlokas. Most of those pieces were not written in solitude. They were spontaneous pieces of exuberance, while the speaker was actually involved ostensibly in something else. Doing something else he says something, and it turns out to be the highest thing you can ever hear. That’s meditation.

Are you getting it?

Methods of meditation can be taught and sold. Meditation can neither be taught, nor be sold. And that’s the reason why methods are popular and why methods are being sold as meditation. Because meditation itself is impossible to be sold. It is something that can be awakened, but never taught. It is love, how can you teach love? You can awaken love, by pointing at stuff which is not love. You can say, “This, that you think is love, is not love at all. Discard it.”

Going through the market, just pulling water from the well, or just cooking some food, something reveals itself to you. That’s meditation. You are here and still not here. You are looking at something very ordinary and you are seeing something supremely extra-ordinary. You are looking at the surface of things and the core is revealing itself to you. In the shadow, you are seeing the tree. In the part, you are seeing the whole. That’s meditation. In death, you are seeing deathlessness. In words, you are listening to silence. That’s meditation. I don’t want to finish this answer. That’s meditation. It’s a love affair.

Something says, “Look at the clock,” something says, “Take care of your throat,” something says, “Measure your temperature.” And something says, “Just go on and on till you drop dead.” That’s meditation. The madness of stubborn love.

Questioner: Thank you, sir.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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