477 Krishnamurti on meditation

When Jiddu Krishnamurti is asked about meditation, his answers reflect and confirm what my thoughts are: It is not important what meditation'system' we subscribe to; furthermore and most pertinently, meditation is a way of life.

"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique; when you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy, if you are aware of all that in yourself, that's part of meditation."

This text is about the inquiry what meditation is, it is not about how to meditate ... (which is really simple [though very hard]: Sit still, breathe, don't think.) I must admit, it takes K a little while to come to the point in this recording (I think, as always with such a talk, one must have been there to fully appreciate it). He slowly gets going at about 5:20; by 6:50 and especially 8:20 he becomes very profound. Give it a go ... it's truly worth it ... not just the content of his talk, but listening to this great man.

5:20 ... “So, please, we are together examining the whole ... question of what is meditation. Not how to meditate…. for then if you ask how am I to meditate, then you’ll find a system how to mediate. The ‘how’ implies a method. But whereas if you’re enquiring into this question what is mediation and why should one meditate then we will never ask how to meditate; the very questioning ... is the beginning of enquiry, which is the beginning of meditation. As we said, this is a very complex problem and we have to go slowly and hesitantly but subtly into this question …”

6:50 “… we are enquiring into it so that you are not listening to the speaker, you are asking the question to yourself and finding the right answer, without accepting any kind of authority … especially the authority of the speaker sitting on this unfortunate platform. It doesn’t give him any authority because he sits on a platform and talks. There is no authority in so-called … spiritual matters … so we are doing this together: Not meditating together, but enquiring, “What is mediattion?” And from that discover for oneself as we go along the whole movement of meditation.”

“Is this alright?”

8:25 “First I think one must be careful in observing that meditation is not something that you do. Meditation is … the whole of our living. That is the first thing, how we live, how we behave, whether we have fears, anxieties, sorrows or if we are pursuing ... pleasures … whether we have built images about ourselves and about others. If we have an understanding of the various issues in our life and ... actually being free from those issues … then we can proceed to enquire into what is meditation ...”

10:00 “... we must put order in our house (our house is ourselves) complete order ... then, when that order is established, when there is complete understanding of what is disorder, what is confusion and why we are in contradiction in ourselves, why there is this constant struggle between the opposites ... having put our life in order and after placing things in their proper place … that is the beginning of meditation ... if we have not done that, actually (not theoretically), but in daily life, every moment of our life, then meditation merely becomes another form of illusion, another form of prayer, another form of wanting something … money, position, refrigerator and so on.”

From another talk (an interview):

“We ask, what is meditation? Meditation is our daily life, it encompasses all our activities and experiences; meditation is not separate, not divorced from life. If it is divorced from life, meditation has no meaning. If it is divorced from life it is an escape. Escape from all our travails, our miseries, sorrows and confusion.”

“So is meditation an achievement? Is it an attainment of a goal? Or is it pervading all our activities? That, I think, has tremendous significance. Then, the next question is … is it the result of a search? Joining one group after the other, this practice, that practice … in order to get there. For me all of those are totally unnecessary, because then meditation becomes a religious question. Meditation covers the whole field of existence. Meditation implies freedom from this method, that system … discard all that, have no burden. That is meditation.”