Photo Credit: The Minds Journal
Unlearning the Mind
Is meditation something which can be taught?
Meditation starts happening only once the mind becomes quiet – so, the
challenge is the mind. Unlearning the mind is the beginning of meditation. Unlearning
the mind is learning meditation; when the mind has been completely unlearned one
has learned meditation. One cannot go directly into learning meditation. All
that is needed is to remove the mind.
The mind is like a block. The river is there but
blocked, it can’t flow. It is covered with rocks; those rocks don’t allow it
any outlet. It is surging within us, it is longing for the ocean, it wants to
get out of this prison. That’s why everybody feels so restless. This
restlessness is nothing but our consciousness longing to meet with the
ultimate. The river wants to reach the ocean. The seed wants to sprout, but it
is covered, blocked by a big rock. That rock is of our mind. And it is a big
rock because we have been accumulating it for many lives. Our meditation is
simply crushed underneath it.
We cannot reach meditation directly, but we can
remove this rock chunk by chunk. We can take a chisel and a hammer and go on
hammering on the rock. Slowly, gradually the rock will disappear. The day the
rock disappears, suddenly a flow, a fresh flow of water, will start running
towards the ocean. That is meditation.
Meditation cannot be learned. It cannot be practiced
because all practicing is of the mind. All practices strengthen the mind, make
it stronger. And the mind has to be made weaker; its power has to be destroyed.
It has to be put in its right place: it is not the master; it has only become
the master. Stop cooperating with it, stop giving more and more nourishment to
it.
When meditation has happened, love is its aroma,
its perfume. A meditative person is naturally loving. A loving person is
naturally meditative. If a man thinks he is meditative and is not loving, then
his meditation is nothing but a mind practice, something false, pseudo.
Something which is not meditation is masquerading as meditation. He has been
deceived by his mind.
Meditation brings love naturally – it is its
aroma, its fragrance. And love exists only around the flower called meditation,
never otherwise. They are together. Either search for love or for meditation.
If we can find one, the other is found without any effort on our part. Either
find love or find meditation and the other will follow it like a shadow.
If one wants to learn meditation, one will have to
unlearn the ways of the mind. If one wants to learn love, one will have to
unlearn the unloving ways that have become very ingrained within. Anger,
possessiveness, jealousy – these will have to be unlearned.
Meditation is our innermost nature. Yes, it is a
grace, a gift, but it is not going to happen in the future, it has already
happened. We have never been without it; we CAN’T be without it. Love and
meditation constitute our real, essential core.
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