Krishnamurti On Meditation.2

In the previous blog, I tried to introduce a few ideas about its importance, its nature and what it is not and how it is related to something else more important than meditation itself. In this blog, I shall go into a little more details about how and what it feels like to be in that state, according to Krishnamurti. As before, I let the master speak for himself in his own words.  All that I have added are certain headings as a kind of facility or my very personal way of trying to encapsulate the gist of the relevant passages for my own, and I hope, my readers' benefit. 

What kind of state is Meditation

Meditation is one of the most extraordinary things, and if you do not know what  it is, you are like the blind man in a world of bright color, shadows and moving light.It is not an intellectual affair, but when the heart enters into the mind, the mind has quite a different quality; it is really, then, limitless, not only in its capacity to think, to act efficiently, but also in its sense of living in a vast space where you are part of everything...A peculiar thing takes place, which no drug or self-hypnosis can bring about; it is as though the mind enters into itself, beginning at the surface and penetrating ever more deeply , until depth and height have lost their meaning and every form of measurement ceases. In this state there is complete peace--not contentment which has come about through gratification--but a peace that has order, beauty and intensity. It can all be destroyed, as you can destroy a flower, and yet because of its very vulnerability it is indestructible. This meditation cannot be learned from another.

Meditation Must Start from Life

You must begin without knowing anything about it, and move from innocence to innocence. The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement, you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. The beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is...Meditation is not something different from daily life: do not go off into the corner of a room and meditate for ten minutes, then come out of it and be a butcher--both metaphorically and actually.

Meditation must be natural

If you set out to meditate, it will not be meditation. If you set out to be good, goodness will never flower. If you cultivate humility, it ceases to be. Meditation is the breeze that comes in when you leave the window open; but if you deliberately keep it open, deliberately invite it to come, it will never appear.

Meditation is both Means and End: Freedom to enter into the Unknown

Meditation is not a means to an end: there is no end, no arrival; it is a movement in time and out of time. Every system, method, binds thought to time, but choiceless awareness of every thought and feeling, understanding of their motives, their mechanism, allowing them to blossom, is the beginning of meditation. When thought and feeling flourish and then die, meditation is the movement beyond time. In this movement there is ecstasy; in complete emptiness there is love, and with love there is destruction and creation. Meditation ..is both means and the end...What an extraordinary thing meditation is. If there is any kind of compulsion, effort to make thought conform, imitate, then it becomes a wearisome burden. The silence which is desired ceases to be illuminating. If it is the pursuit of visions and experiences, then it leads to illusions and self-hypnosis. Only in the flowering of thought and so ending thought, does meditation have significance. Thought can only flower in freedom, not in ever-widening patterns of knowledge. Knowledge may give newer experiences of greater sensation but a mind that is seeking experiences of any kind is immature. Maturity is the freedom from all experience; it is no longer under any influence to be or not to be. Maturity in meditation is the freeing of the mind from knowledge, for knowledge shapes and controls all experience. A mind which is a light to itself needs no experience. Immaturity is the craving for greater and wider experience. Meditation is the wandering through the world of knowledge and being free of it to enter into the unknown.

Meditation must be Experienced by Oneself

One has to find out for oneself, not through anybody. We have had the authority of teachers, saviors and masters. If you really want to find out what meditation is, you have to set aside all authority completely.

Meditation is not Pursuit of Pleasure or Happiness but Concept Free

Happiness and pleasure you can buy in any market at a price, but bliss you cannot buy--either for yourself or for another. Happiness and pleasure are time-binding. Only in total freedom does bliss exist. Pleasure, like happiness, you can seek and find in many ways, but they come and go. Bliss--that strange sense of joy--has no motive. You cannot possibly seek it. Once it is there, depending on the quality of your mind, it remains--timeless, causeless, a thing that is not measurable by time. Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure or the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes--unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch your mind. Once it is there, conflict has ceased. But the ending of the conflict is not necessarily total freedom. Meditation is the movement of the mind in this freedom. In this explosion of bliss, the eyes are made innocent and love is then benediction.

Meditation is total attention but not concentration

I do not know if you have ever noticed that when you give total attention there is complete silence. And in that attention there is no frontier, there is no center, as the "me" who is aware or attentive. That attention, that silence, is a state of meditation. But...meditation is not concentration, which is exclusion, a cutting off, a resistance and so a conflict. A meditative state of mind can concentrate, which then is not an exclusion, a resistance, but a concentrated mind cannot meditate.

Wrtiting, writing, writing, I have written 7 paragraphs already. Time to stop, for the benefit of my readers.