The Path of Meditation: Step by Step

When you are not doing anything at all - bodily, mentally, on no level - when all activity has ceased and you simply are, just being, that's what meditation is. You cannot do it, you cannot practice it; you have only to understand it.

Whenever you can find time for just being, drop all doing. Thinking is also doing, concentration is also doing, contemplation is also doing. Even if for a single moment you are not doing anything and you are just at your center, utterly relaxed - that is meditation. And once you have got the knack of it, you can remain in that state as long as you want; finally you can remain in that state for twenty-four hours a day.

Once you have become aware of the way your being can remain undisturbed, then slowly you can start doing things, keeping alert that your being is not stirred. That is the second part of meditation. First, learning how just to be , and then learning little actions: cleaning the floor, taking a shower, but keeping yourself centered. Then you can do complicated things.

For example, I am speaking to you, but my meditation is not disturbed. I can go on speaking, but at my very center there is not even a ripple; it is just silent, utterly silent.

So meditation is not against action. It is not that you have to escape from life. It simply teaches you a new way of life. You become the center of the cyclone. Your life goes on, it goes on really more intensely - with more joy, with more clarity, more vision, more creativity - yet you are aloof, justa watcher on the hills, simply seeing all that is happening around you.

You are not the doer, you are the watcher. That's the whole secret of meditation, that you become the watcher.

Doing continues on its own level, there is no problem: chopping wood, drawing water from the well. You can do all small and big things; only one thing is not allowed and that is, your centering should not be lost. That awareness, that watchfulness, should remain absolutely unclouded, undisturbed.

Meditation is a very simple phenomenon.