The Tradition of the Upanishads and the Secrets of Meditation

The second thing is that the Upanishads use words, they have to use them, but they stand for silence.

They talk and they talk continuously, but they talk for silence. The effort is absurd, paradoxical, contradictory, inconsistent - but this is how it is possible, this is the only way. Even if I have to provoke you toward silence, I have to use words. They use words, but they are completely against words and language; they are not for them. This must be remembered continuously; otherwise it is very easy to be lost in words.

Words have their own magic, they have their own magnetism., And each word creates a sequence of its own. Novelists know, poets know. They say sometimes they only begin their novel. When it ends, they cannot say they have ended it. Really, the words have their own sequence. They begin to be alive in their own way, and then they go on.

Tolstoy has said somewhere, "I begin, but I never end, and sometimes my own characters say things that I never wanted to say." They begin to have their own life and they go on their own tracks. They become free from the author, from the novelist, from the poet. They become as free as children become free from their parents. They have their own life.

Lost in Words

So words have their own logic. Use a word, and you are on a track. And the word will create many things. The word itself will create many things, and one can be lost. But the Upanishads are not for words. That is why they use as few as possible. Their message is so telegraphic that not a single word is used unnecessarily. The Upanishads are the shortest treatises; not a single word is used unnecessarily because words can create a hypnotic sequence. But words have to be used, so be aware that you are not lost in words.

Meaning is something different. Even more than meaning - it would be good to use the word "significance". The Upanishads use words as signs, as symbols, as indications. They use words to show something, not to say something. You can say something by your words, you can show something by your words. When you show something, then the word must be transcended, must be forgotten. Otherwise words come in the eyes and they distort the whole perception.

We will be using words, but with this caution: go on remembering that not only are meanings meant, but some indications. Symbolically, the words have been used - just like a finger pointing to the moon. The finger is not the moon, but one can cling to the finger and one can say, "My teacher showed me - this is the moon!" The finger is not the moon, but the finger can be used to show. The word is never the Truth, but words can be used to show. So always remember that the finger has to be forgotten. If the finger becomes more significant and important than the moon, then the whole thing will be perverted.

Remember this second point: words are just indicators to something else which is wordless - something which is silent, something which is beyond, something which transcends.

This forgetting that words are not realities has created much confusion. There are thousands and thousands of commentaries, but they are concerned with words, not with the wordless reality. They go on discussing. For centuries, millennia, pundits have discussed what this word means and what that word means. and they have created a large literature. But so much search for meaning - and totally meaningless! They have missed the point. The words were never meant to be realities - only pointers towards something else totally different from words.

Thirdly: I am not going to comment on the Upanishad, because commentary can only be something concerned with intellect. Rather, I am going to respond, not comment. Response is a different thing - altogether different. You whistle in a valley or you sing a song or you play on a bamboo flute, and the valley echoes, reechoes & reechoes. The valley is not commenting: the valley is responding.

A response is a living thing; a commentary is bound to be dead. A response means that the Upanishad will be read here - I will not comment on it; I will just become a valley and give an echo. It will be difficult to understand it, because even if the echo is authentic you may not be able to get the same sound back. You may not be able to find out the relevance, because when a valley responds, when it echoes something, that echo is not just a passive echo - it is creative. The valley adds much. The nature of the valley adds much. A different valley will echo differently. That is how things should be. So when I say something, it is not meant that everyone is bound to say this. This is how my valley echoes it.

I am reminded of Stevens' lines. They look like a Zen poem: "Twenty men crossing a bridge into a village, are, twenty men crossing twenty bridges into twenty villages." When I read something, my valley echoes in a certain way; it is not passive. In that echo I am also present. When your valley reechoes it, it will be a different thing. When I say "a living response", I mean this.

Sometimes it may look absolutely irrelevant, because the valley will give it a shape, a colour of its own. This is natural. So I say that commentaries are criminal; only responses should be there, no commentaries - because the commentator begins to feel that whatsoever he is saying is absolutely true. A commentator begins to feel that other commentators are wrong, and he begins to feel a self-imposed duty to criticize other commentators, because he feels his commentary can be right only when other's commentaries are wrong. But that is not the case with a response. Multi-responses are possible, and every response is right if it is authentic. If it comes from your depths, then it is right. There is no outward criterion of what is right and what is wrong. If something comes out of you from your depths, if you become one with it, if it vibrates through your whole being, then it is right. Otherwise, howsoever clever and howsoever logical, it is wrong.

This is going to be a response. And when I say "response", I mean it will be more like poetry and less like philosophy. It will not be a system. You cannot create systems through responses. Responses are atomic, fragmentary. They have an inner unity, but to find that inner unity is not so easy. The unity is just like a mainland and an island: between an island and a mainland there is a unity, but deep down; deep down in the depths of the sea. the land is one. If that is understood, then no man is an island. Deep down things are one; the deeper you go, the more you reach to the oneness. So if a response is authentic, then any response, even the opposite response which may look absolutely contradictory to it, cannot be different. Deep down there will be a unity.

But one has to go deep, and commentaries are superficial things. So I am not going to give you a commentary; I will not say what this Upanishad means. I will say only what this Upanishad means in me. I cannot claim any authority, and those who claim are really immoral. No one can say what this Upanishad means. All that can be said is what this Upanishad means in me - how I echo it.

This response can create a responsiveness in you also if you are just present here. Then whatsoever I say will echo in you also. And if it can echo, then only will you be able to understand it. So just be like a valley, be in a let-go, so that you can echo freely. Be concerned with yourself being a valley rather than with the text of the Upanishad, or with what I am saying. Be concerned with yourself being a valley, and all else will follow. No tension is needed, no strained effort is needed, to understand me.

That can become a barrier. Just relax, just be silent and passive, and let whatsoever happens echo in you. Those vibrations will transport you to a different perspective, to a different vision.