Meditation’s Fragrance

 

Photo Credit: Adwait Yoga

Meditation’s Fragrance

If we look at meditation from a distance, we will realise that meditation is like a flower and compassion is its fragrance. Compassion starts making a stronger and stronger appearance as we progress deeper and deeper into meditation. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of the earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower.

We are also carrying a potentiality for flowering within us. Until and unless our inner being flowers, the fragrance of compassion is not possible. Compassion cannot be practiced. It is not a discipline. We cannot manage it. It is beyond us. If we meditate, one day, suddenly, we become aware of a new phenomenon, absolutely strange – we notice that compassion is flowing from our being towards the whole of existence; undirected, unaddressed, it is moving to the very ends of existence.

Without meditation, energy remains passion; with meditation, the same energy becomes compassion. Passion and compassion are not two energies, they are one and the same energy. Once it passes through meditation, it is transformed, transfigured; it becomes qualitatively different. Passion moves downwards, compassion moves upwards; passion moves through desire, compassion moves through desireless-ness; passion is an occupation to forget the miseries in which we live, compassion is a celebration, it is a dance of attainment, of fulfilment…we are so fulfilled that we can share. Now there is nothing left; we have attained the destiny that we were carrying for millennia within us like an unflowered potentiality, just a bud. Now it has flowered and it is dancing. We have attained, we are fulfilled, there is no more to attain, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Now what will happen to the energy? We start sharing. The same energy that was moving through the dark layers of passion, now moves with light rays upwards, uncontaminated by any desire, uncontaminated by any conditioning. It is uncorrupted by any motivation - hence it becomes fragrant. The flower is limited but not the fragrance. The flower has limitations it is rooted somewhere in bondage, but fragrance has no bondage. It simply moves, rides on the winds; it has no moorings in the earth.

Meditation is a flower. It has roots. It exists within us. Once compassion happens, it is not rooted; it simply moves and goes on moving. Buddha has disappeared but not his compassion. The flower will die sooner or later - it is part of earth and the dust will return unto dust - but the fragrance that has been released will remain forever and forever. Saints have come and gone but not their fragrance. Their compassion still continues and whoever is open to their compassion will immediately feel its impact, will be moved by it, will be taken on a new journey, on a new pilgrimage.

Compassion frees us, gives us freedom, but that compassion has to come only through meditation, there is no other way to it. Buddha has said that compassion is a by-product, a consequence. We cannot catch hold of the consequence directly, we have to move; we have to produce the cause, and the effect follows. So, if we really want to understand what compassion is we have to understand what meditation is. Forget all about compassion; it comes on its own accord.

Try to understand meditation. Compassion can become a criterion as to whether the meditation was right or not. If the meditation has been right, compassion is bound to come - it is natural; it follows like a shadow. If the meditation has been wrong then compassion will not follow.