Chapter 4 Chapter 4 The Quiet Meditation

Dynamic meditation is very active, very laborious.Can one not enter meditation by sitting alone?You can go into meditation just by sitting, but then just sitting, just don't do anything.If you can just sit, then it becomes meditation.To sit completely, no movement is your only movement.In fact, the word Zen comes from zazen, which means just sitting and doing nothing.If you can just sit with your body doing nothing, your mind doing nothing, it becomes meditation; but it is difficult. It is easy to sit when you are doing something else, but the problem arises when you are just sitting and doing nothing.Every fiber of the body starts to move inside, every blood vessel and every muscle starts to move.You will start to feel a subtle vibration, and you will become aware of many points in your body that you have never been aware of before.The more you try to just sit still, the more you will feel the movement inside your body.So, to sit still, you can only do something else first.

You can just walk first, that's easier.You can just dance, that's even easier.You can only sit down when you have done other easier things.Sitting in a Buddha-like posture is actually the last thing to do, it should never be done at the very beginning.Only when you have begun to feel fully at one with movement can you begin to feel at one with stillness. So I never teach people to meditate in the first place.Start where it is easy, or you will feel many things unnecessarily—things out of nothing. If you start with meditation, you will feel a lot of disturbance inside.The more you try to just sit, the more distractions you will feel.You are only aware of your own deranged mind and nothing else.This creates frustration and you feel disappointed.You will not feel very happy, on the contrary, you will start to think that you are crazy.Sometimes you can really go nuts.

If you make a genuine effort to "just sit," you might actually go crazy.It's not that common to go crazy, just because people don't mean to do it.In a meditative position you start to feel that there is so much madness inside of you that if you continue to sit with all your heart, you might actually go mad.This has happened many times before, so I would never suggest anything that would lead to depression, disappointment, sadness, anything that would make you too aware of your madness.You may not be mentally prepared to be aware of the madness in yourself.Some things must let you know slowly.Knowledge is not always good, knowledge has to be slowly cracked as your ability to breathe grows.

I start with your insanity, not a sitting position.I allow your insanity to run wild.If you dance wildly, the opposite happens within you.By dancing wildly, you will begin to become aware of a still spot within yourself.And with meditation you start becoming aware of madness.The opposite is always the point of awareness.You dance wildly and chaotically, shouting and breathing chaotically, and I let you go mad.Then you become aware of a subtle point, a point deep within you that is still and unmoving, the exact opposite of the madness around you.You will feel very blissful and have an inner peace in your heart.If you are just sitting, the inner state is a state of madness.You are peaceful on the outside, but inside you are crazy.

It's better if you start with something active, active, alive, in motion, and then you start to feel an inner stillness growing.The more it grows, the more likely you are to adopt a sitting or lying posture, the more likely is peaceful meditation.But then, things will be different, completely different. Meditation techniques that begin with activity, with action, will help you in other ways as well.It became a catharsis.You are just sitting and you feel frustrated; your mind wants to move and you are just sitting.Every muscle, every nerve is twisting, you are imposing on yourself what is unnatural to you, so that you are splitting yourself in half, the one who imposes and the other half who is imposed .In fact, the imposed and repressed part is the real you. It occupies a larger part of your mind than the oppressor, and the larger part must win.

What you are repressing should really be thrown away rather than repressed.It builds up inside you because you keep suppressing it.The whole upbringing, civilization, education is oppressive.You suppress a lot of things that would be easy to throw away in another education, in a more conscious education and a more aware parent.If there is a better awareness of the inner mechanism of the mind, then the culture will allow you to drop a lot of things. For example, when a child is angry, we say to him, "Don't be angry," and he starts to suppress his anger.Over time, what used to be just a momentary event has now become permanent.He no longer acts angry, but he is still angry.We pile up what is only a momentary event into a mass of anger; no one can be angry all the time unless his anger is already repressed.Anger is an instant thing, it comes and goes: just let it out, and then you are no longer angry.So with me, I will allow the child to be really angry.Be angry, but go deep into it, don't repress it.

Of course that would be problematic.If we say "to be angry", then you have to have someone to be angry with.However, a small child can be shaped.You can give him a pillow and say to him, "Be angry with this pillow, be rough with it." From the very beginning, a child can be brought up another way, and you can channel the anger away.Give him something and let him throw it until his anger dies down.Within minutes or seconds, he'll have vented his anger and it won't build up. You have accumulated anger, sexuality, violence, greed, everything!Now this accumulation is the madness within you.It exists, within you.If you start with any suppressed meditation, like just sitting, then you are suppressing all this, you are not allowing them to be released.So I start with a catharsis.First, let these inhibitions be thrown out of the blue.When you can throw your anger out of the sky, you become mature.

If I can't love alone, if I have to have someone I love to love, then I'm really immature, and even in love I'm dependent on someone, someone has to be there, I am able to love.Love like that can only be a superficial thing, it's not in my nature.If I am alone in a room, I have no love at all, the quality of such love does not penetrate, it does not become part of my being. The less dependent you become, the more mature you become.If you can be angry alone, you are more mature; you don't need any object to be angry.So, I made catharsis a must to get started.You have to throw everything out of the clouds, into the open sky, without being aware of any object.

To be angry without the object of your anger is present, and to cry for no reason.Just cry, don't need anything to cry about.That way, you'll be able to get rid of everything that's accumulated - and you'll be able to get rid of it.Once you understand this way, you will unload the whole burden of the past. In very little time, you can unburden an entire lifetime, or even several lifetimes.If you're ready to drop it all, if you can allow your madness to come out, it won't be long before there's a deep case.Now you are clean: fresh and innocent, and you are a child again.Now in your innocence you can sit and meditate, just sit, or lie, or whatever, because there is no madman in you disturbing your meditation.

The first thing has to be a cleanse -- a pour, otherwise, whether you practice breathing, whether you just sit, whether you practice asana, you are just suppressing something.A strange thing happens: when you allow everything to be thrown out, meditation just happens, asana just happens, it will be spontaneous. ①Asanas: In Indian yoga philosophy, refers to an immobile posture adopted by the body, the purpose of which is to free the mind from attention to bodily functions. ——Editor's note You may know nothing about yoga asana, but you will start to do it.Now, these poses you do are very authentic and real, and they produce a great change in your body, because now the body is doing these poses by itself, you are not forcing them.For example, after a person has thrown a lot of things away, he may try to stand on his head.He may have never learned to do a shirshasan, but now his whole body is trying to do it.Now, this is a very internal thing, it comes from the inner wisdom of the body, not from the intellectual, mental information of his head.If his body is urging "Go, headstand!" and he allows it, then he will feel very refreshed and transformed by it.

You can do any posture, but I will allow it only if it comes out of the spontaneity of those postures.One can sit down and be in peace in siddhasan or whatever posture.But this Siddhartha is something very different, the quality is different.Someone is trying to sit still.But this is a happening, there is no suppression, no effort, it's just how your body feels.Your whole being feels like sitting.In such meditation there is no divided mind, no repression.Such meditation is a flowering. You must have seen statues of Buddha sitting on a flower, sitting on a lotus.The lotus is just symbolic, it symbolizes what is going on inside the Buddha.When "just sitting" is happening from within, you will feel like a flower opening up.No additional repression.Instead, there is a growth, an opening from within, something blossoming within.You can imitate the posture of Buddha, but you cannot imitate the flower.You can sit exactly like Buddha, even more like Buddha than Buddha, but the inner flower will not be there, it cannot be imitated. You can play tricks, you can use the rhythm of your breathing to force you to be quiet, to discipline your mind.Breathing can be used very oppressively because with every breath rhythm a certain emotion is created in the mind.It's not that other emotions disappear, they just hide. You can force anything on yourself.If you are going to be angry, just breathe in the rhythm that would cause you to be angry.That's what actors do, when they act angry, they change the rhythm of their breathing, the rhythm of breathing has to become the same as when they are angry.By picking up the tempo, they start to feel angry and the angry part of the mind comes up. So, the rhythm of breathing can be used to suppress the mind, to suppress whatever is in the mind.But that's not good, it's not a flower.Another way is better: when the mind changes first, then as a result the breath also changes.Change starts with the mind. So, I use the breathing rhythm as a signal.A person who is at ease with himself keeps the same breathing rhythm forever, it never changes with the mind, it only changes with the body.If you run, the breath changes, but it never changes with the mind. Therefore, Genkura used many, many breathing rhythms as a secret.They even have intercourse as a kind of meditation, but they only allow it if your breathing rhythm remains the same during intercourse, otherwise they don't allow it.If the mind is involved, then the breathing rhythm cannot remain the same, and if the breathing rhythm remains the same, the mind cannot be involved at all.If there is such a deep physical activity as sexual intercourse, the mind can not get involved, then nothing can make it involved. But you can force it.You can sit and impose a certain rhythm on you, you can create an illusory Buddha-like posture, but you are just dead.You will become dull, stupid.This has happened to many monks, many saturates, they have all become stupid.Their eyes have no light of intelligence, their faces are just like idiots, there is no inner light, no inner fire.Because they are afraid of any inner activity, they suppress everything, including the intellect.Intelligence is an activity, a most subtle activity, so if all inner activity is suppressed, intelligence is also affected. ① Satu (sadhu): Indians’ name for religious people, including not only saints of different religions, but also men and women who have become monks, forest hermits, magicians and fortune-tellers with different religious inclinations. —— Annotation Awareness is not a static thing.Awareness is also activity, a dynamic flow.So, if you start from the outside, if you force yourself to sit like a statue, you are killing a lot of things.The outpouring should be concerned first, to cleanse your mind, to throw everything out, and then you become empty -- just a channel for what comes in from beyond.Then sitting will be useful, silence will be useful, but not before that. It seems to me that tranquility is not a valuable thing in itself.You can create a silence, but that is a dead silence.Stillness has to be alive, dynamic.If you create silence, then you become more stupid, duller, more rigid.In a sense, though, it's easier to do that, so a lot of people are doing it now.The whole culture is so repressive that it is easier to repress yourself to be more still.That way, you don't have to take any risks, and you don't have to jump. People come to me and say, "Please teach us a meditation technique that we can practice quietly." Why are you so afraid?Everyone has a madhouse inside of them, but still they say, "Please teach me a technique to do quietly." With a technique to do quietly, you only get more and more insane— — quietly mad, and nothing else. If you just sit still, with your eyes closed, everything will be fine; your wife or husband will say you have become a good person.Everyone wants you to be dead, even mothers want their children to be dead -- obedient, peaceful. The whole society wants you to be dead.The so-called good people are actually dead people. So, don't worry about what others think, and don't worry about your image in others' minds.Start with catharsis, and then something good will blossom inside of you.It will have a different quality, a different beauty, totally different.It will be real. When silence comes to you, it is not a false silence: you did not cultivate it, it came by itself, it happened to you.You start to feel it growing inside, just like a mother starts to feel the fetus growing.There is a deep stillness growing within you, and you are beginning to conceive it.Only then will there be rebirth; otherwise it is just self-deception.One can deceive oneself life after life, and that capacity is unlimited. Doesn't meditation mean being unemployed, inactive? ① Karman (akarman): Karman is a Buddhist noun, which means fabrication, and generally refers to all physical and mental activities.Unemployed (akarman) is the opposite. ——Editor's note The fourth stage of Dynamic Meditation is no karma, no activity; but the first three stages are activities.The first, second, and third stages are the stages of strenuous activity.During the first stage, your vital body and your breath are in violent motion, extremely active.Only by making your vital body, your ethereal body, your breath extremely active, is it possible for you to enter the second stage: that which makes your physical body extremely active.And in the third stage, after becoming fully physically active, the mental body (mental body) can become active. So in the three bodies - the vital body, the physical body and the mental body, you create a climax of activity, a climax of tension, and you become more and more tense, and your whole being becomes a whirlwind, a vortex.The more tense it becomes, the more likely it is to relax in stage four. The fourth stage is total relaxation. This is not practiced relaxation. In fact, no one can practice relaxation.Relaxation can only come as a by-product, as a shadow of strenuous exercise.The phrase that you practice relaxation is a contradiction in itself; every practice is an exercise in tension.Relaxation means non-action, and you cannot practice non-action, you can only approach it, you can only reach it.It is only through vigorous activity that a situation is created within you that brings you to "letting go." So the fourth stage is unemployment, you are doing nothing, now, you are just being, you are just being in it, doing nothing.If anything happens, it just happens naturally.If something happens, nature made it happen, you didn't make it.In your case, the activity has completely stopped, there is no activity.In this state of inactivity, in this state of unemployment, the universe and the individual are approached.They become intimate, they lose their respective identities, they overlap each other.Something in the universe seeps into you, something in you seeps into the universe.The line between the two becomes fluid and liquid-like.Sometimes there is no boundary, and you feel that consciousness is not there anymore, no boundary, no end, no beginning.And sometimes boundaries start to become concrete around you again. The situation oscillates back and forth: sometimes there are boundaries, sometimes not.But the more you relax, the more the boundaries disappear.Then an unpredictable moment comes, an accidental moment without reason, without condition.Finally comes the moment when there are no boundaries and there will be no more boundaries.This is when there begins to be a person without boundaries, a mind without boundaries, a consciousness without limitations.This is the universe, this is the divine, this is the whole