presents
Alertness Awareness Mindfulness
We were told that the people who are working here at the commune
driving a bulldozer, for example,
that was their meditation. Do you agree with that?
You will have to understand what I mean by meditation.
Meditation means:
alertness,
awareness,
mindfulness.
So whatever you are doing,
just do it consciously,
don't do it mechanically.
I can move my hand mechanically.
I can move it very consciously,
fully alert.
And there is a difference of quality.
When you move it with consciousness there is grace.
When you move it just like machine,
there is no grace, no beauty.
When you
are doing any kind of work...
All the old religions have been telling you that
your religion is
a Sunday religion.
Every Sunday you have to go to church,
and for six days you are free.
This is very strange.
Six days God was creating
this world.
He was tremendously creative, in six days
he created this whole universe,
and seventh day there is no mention that he went to church!
In fact, after those six days
he has gone for a long weekend.
And it has been really long!
According to Christians, six thousand years have passed.
According to Hindus, ninety thousand years have passed.
The weekend seems to be unending!
Six days you do everything, and seventh day you go
to the church,
pray,
and your religion is finished.
Other religions
give you twenty minutes meditation -- sit in the morning
and meditate for twenty minutes.
These are not meditations.
Meditation has to be something like breathing,
you cannot go on holiday.
Even in sleep you have to continue breathing.
So whatever you are doing
even just breathing,
then breathe consciously in.
As you take the breath in, remain alert.
As the breath starts moving out, remain alert.
You are meditating.
Walking, just
go
consciously,
and you are meditating.
My meditation is not something separate from life;
it is something that has to be spread all over life.
Your whole life has to be colored by it.
So whatever you do,
you make love, but meditation
remains.
You cannot drop that even while making love.
It is not like your glasses, you cannot take it off!
It is like eyes,
they are always there,
you cannot just take them off and put them on again.
My meditation is
a method of being aware of whatever you are doing
thinking, feeling.
On all three layers you have to become aware.
A time comes
that when you are going to sleep...
even then
while you are sitting on the bed,
sit in awareness, lie down in awareness.
Wait for sleep fully watchful:
when it comes, how it comes,
how slowly it descends on you,
how your body starts relaxing,
in what points there was tension,
and now the tension is gone.
A day will come,
certainly comes,
when the body will have gone to sleep
and your meditation will be still there like a flame inside you,
burning, fully aware.
This is the moment
that I call your meditation is complete.
Now even in sleep you can meditate.
So there is no question,
while you are awake
you will be able to meditate, there is no problem.
And the man who can meditate in sleep
will be able to meditate while dying,
because the same is the process.
Just as in sleep
you slowly slowly
go deeper inside you, the body is left far away, relaxed,
the mind slows down, the thoughts go on disappearing
exactly the same happens in death.
A man who knows meditation,
never dies.
He remains alive, aware.
Death is happening,
he is there.
When Socrates was given poison,
he had gathered all his disciples.
One of the disciples asked,
"Before you leave us,
please tell us whether the soul survives or not."
Socrates said,
"Again you are asking the same stupid question.
Let me die and see!
I will die fully aware.
Only two are the possibilities:
either
I am gone,
finished with the body finishing,
and there is nobody left to be aware,
or
the body will be dying,
and I will be moving into some other form.
But before death, how can I say?
I am so excited."
And the man who is preparing the poison is delaying,
because he loves Socrates everybody loved the man,
even the man who is going to give him poison
is delaying. Socrates says, "This is not right.
It is exact now time that you should come.”
The man who was preparing the poison said,
"You must be crazy, Socrates.
I am simply delaying the process so you can live a little longer."
Socrates says, "I have lived long enough,
and I have lived so totally
that I don't think I have
left anything unlived.
My life is complete,
so don't waste time. I am excited to experience death.
I want to see death."
And that is exactly
the situation of every meditator:
he wants to see death too.
And seeing it means you are separate from it,
you are something eternal.
And this experience of eternity,
immortality,
is authentic religion
not worshiping a God, not a Holy Bible,
not a Gita.
Those are just
for retarded people.
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