Real Meditation

----- from Ashtavakra Gita (अष्टावक्रगीता)

निःसंगो निष्क्रियोऽसि त्वं स्वप्रकाशो निरंजनः ।
अयमेव हि ते बन्धः समाधिमनुतिष्ठति ॥१-१५ ॥

niḥsaṁgo niṣkriyo'si tvaṁ svaprakāśo niraṁjanaḥ |
ayameva hi te bandhaḥ samādhimanutiṣṭhati ||1-15||


Translation :-

आप असंग अक्रिय स्वयं प्रकाशवान तथा सर्वथा दोषमुक्त हैं, आपका ध्यान द्वारा मस्तिष्क को शांत रखने का प्रयत्न ही बंधन है |

You are really unattached and actionless, Self-luminous and without any taints already. The cause of your bondage is that you practice meditation.

Comments:

In this verse Ashtavakra speaks of meditation as the cause of bondage while in verse 13 of this chapter he had advocated meditation. This may seem like a contradiction but it is not so. Ashtavakra is a complete Master. He understands that many sadhakas are far too anxious and eager to reach a meditative state. They want to reach the state through effort and seeking. Both effort and seeking are of the mind. As long as mind is, there is effort and seeking. The fact is meditation cannot be reached. Meditation simply happens on its own. The instruction is not to seek anything in your meditations, but to merely observe. What starts as a looking through mind slowly transcends that very instrument and becomes looking through awareness. This happens through a one-sided abidance in the sense of being, the I AM. Further, the concept of looking through the mind gets dropped along the way, and the mind gets more and more purified and subtle. The
looking has to be beyond the mind for it to be complete and total, only then it is called deep. A keen observation and kind, loving attention to our sense of being is all that is needed. Aspirants want to reach a state, and that itself is the problem. The attempt to reach is always through the mind. In actual terms, there is nowhere really to reach.

First stage of Self-inquiry: We have to learn to accept our sense of being no matter what it is. Only when you accept, can you truly love. Can love be there without acceptance? Can you truly love without acceptance? If you have a child, you love and accept your child howsoever it may be, howsoever it seems, or appears. So acceptance leads to love, and love is acceptance, that is the first step of self-inquiry. So you must treat your present state of beingness as if it were your own child. And that is where you
have to begin your relationship with your beingness, by truly and
unconditionally accepting it. You say to yourself that this is your present state of beingness, and you are going to sink right into it. I am going to love it.

Second stage: acceptance does not mean that we leave it unattended. Acceptance means that we watch over it – continuously, by being aware. Don’t we do the same thing with our child? We love our child, so we never leave it, howsoever it is. We keep a watch! Every movement is watched. And that is how the relationship develops, flowers. How has it gotten to that
state? It is by watching, observing, daily, deeply, seeing all its forms. So we must continuously watch over our state of beingness.

Third stage: What happens when we are continuously aware, continuously observing our state of beingness? We will know that awareness, that continuous watching and observing, has resulted in our beingness changing form. The beingness has changed its nature. That will happen automatically. We are not changing anything here. We have simply observed. We have
simply been aware. We have kept a watch on it. And that watch itself is within us. That watching, that acceptance, that loving, will lead us to a point where we will see that the beingness is actually changing form – it has become something else. And as my beingness changes form, that ‘I’, the individual entity, also changes form. The observer becomes the observed because it is the nature of the observer to become the observed.

So what have we done in these three stages? We have changed nothing, we have not even looked at that ‘I’. What we have done is, we have only been aware and observed our state of beingness. And as that beingness changes form, automatically the ‘I’ also follows it. It too changes form. That ‘I’ is completely dependent on that beingness. Absolutely. There is no ‘practice’ involved in this. Calling it a practice involves ego and effort and that is why Ashtavakra shuns any kind of practice. Here we have
not practised anything. We have only watched and looked totally,
completely, at every given opportunity. Practice is restricted to a few hours in a day but this watching is done all the time. When ‘looking’ matures, deepens, meditation happens automatically.

Another flaw in aspirants is paying too much attention to techniques of meditation and taking these as the goals rather than the means. The end is meditation but the goal becomes techniques which are actually only a means to that end. A sadhaka must be careful not to get too attached to the practice of meditation or dry techniques and rather should sink effortlessly backwards into the sense of being. In that effortless sinking every technique,
every mantra, every breath and prana disappears. And when that happens, the ego disappears too. With the disappearance of ego, meditation happens.

Finally when even the thought that “I am meditating” or “I am doing this or that” is gone, it means meditation has taken place. Meditation is the end of its own practice