For almost 30 years MEDITATION has certainly been the one word running continuously through my daily life. Combined I must have spent a few years “in meditation”. Satori groups, meditation retreats, 10 days Vipassana courses, 5 and 7 weeks retreats in complete silence and isolation, and the daily routine of at least 3 hours of different meditation techniques. Meeting Osho I discovered active meditations. His famous “dynamic meditation” became my favourite one, and for years I woke up at 5.30 every morning to be in the hall ready to breathe, jump, cathart, dance and fall into the centre of the cyclone in utter silence. Dynamic meditation was a simple formula for a great day ahead.
After 20 years in Pune following that incredible and juicy regimen I one morning found myself in Mumbai at the feet of Ramesh Balsekar. He told me something I had never heard before and that would change my life forever. There was according to Him no need to meditate, but if you felt to, just taking a few minutes in the evening looking back at your day and investigating one event that you obviously did was enough. “Dissect that event and find out if you REALLY did it”. That was a puzzling proposition, but that investigation again and again, every single time showed the same result: I was not the doer of any action, not even that one. Actions happen through this body mind organism. There is no doer whatsoever.
For years afterwards that specific investigation did run inside like an undercurrent until one day I realized that the understanding had settled without any doubt and that the inquiry had dropped by itself.
Today I would simply say that Meditation is remembrance. Remembering who I am. Osho’s last word is SAMASATI. So is Buddha’s. “Remember who you are”.
Meditation techniques are a way to bring that remembrance to the light. Meeting Osho has been the greatest blessing in my life and meditating in His garden under his guidance was fun, juicy and the gap between the outer and the inner was bridged every single time.
I still enjoy sitting in silence with closed eyes. I still enjoy active meditations. In the same way I enjoy cooking, painting, walking, making love, having a talk with a friend. Whenever I remember who I am I am in meditation.
Most of the time I am in my centre, connected, present and enjoying the play of life. Sometimes I am identified with this body mind organism and believe I am the doer of those actions and thoughts and emotions. Now I know the way, I know the space, I know the knack. I could say that I know who I am…and yet I do go astray once in a while, and I am okay with it. The idea that staying in my centre is a greater thing, deeper and more holy is also falling apart. In fact all the ideas of who I am and who I should be are all falling apart. Something is happening which is beyond all my ideas, beyond any doing, beyond any description, and that something looks more and more like nothing.
I have been a spiritual seeker since as long as I remember. Finding out who I am was the single most important drive inside. Meditation was the motor, the main tool.
Today as the seeker is dying and the seeking is giving way to something beyond doing, meditation is also changing. I don’t quite understand what is happening and I am okay with it. Trying to understand is not important. Accepting the new unfolding is clearly all I need to let go into.
This new happening isn’t always comfortable. I often feel pregnant with something I don’t comprehend, something I can’t push nor do anything about, something that by nature I absolutely cannot name.
I am washing some dishes in the communal kitchen this morning and my friend asks me if I could write something on meditation, and I go “yes, of course”. I know that words will come in spite of me and that whatever comes will be perfect. There is complete trust. And here I am and words are flowing. Meditation is presence, meditation is spontaneity, meditation is life running through this organism called “Nirav”, through this laptop and through the birds singing in the garden. Meditation is love, meditation is freedom, meditation is easy…as easy as the wind moving through the autumn leaves.
Meditation is no mind, meditation is openness, meditation is all there is.
Meditation is remembrance.
Samasati.
nirav-art 