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would be tempting to infer that Krishnamurti was counseling
against all formal practice, but his own lifelong Hatha
Yoga routine and the yoga instruction in the schools that
bear his name belie that interpretation. What is clear
is his use of the word meditation to point toward
a perceptual state rather than a procedure, something
borne out in his more poetic writings where he often richly
describes a sensory experience and concludes by calling
it "a great meditation" or "a benediction."
An
event, an occasion — not a result!
The
fact is that most of us have experienced meditative
states, however briefly, long before embarking on any
intentional meditative practice. It can even be argued
that we are born into such a state, as many who have
gazed into the eyes of a very young infant will fervently
testify. As adults, the catalyst for a momentary shift
into meditation is usually a (preferably unexpected)
glimpse of great beauty or awesome grandeur — who
hasn't been suddenly moved to utter perceptual silence
by a first sighting of the Taj Mahal or the Grand Canyon,
the first hearing of the Mozart Requiem or whalesong?
Thought tends to quickly chime in to claim the experience
as its own, but for a brief interval, perhaps only an
augenblick, there is surely meditation. The reason these
exceptional sensory events are received so vividly is
not because something is somehow amplified or otherwise
enhanced, but rather because the habitual activity of
thought is no longer acting as an arbiter or filter
interposed between awareness and the senses — thought
has been shocked into silence.
Intentional
meditation practices comprise attempts to create conditions
conducive to a more sustained event or occasion of the
meditative state. By establishing unusual sensory or
attitudinal conditions, they seek to encourage or invite
perceptual silence and loosen thought from its typical
filtering role or position. As many a first-time meditator
and more than a few long-term practitioners can testify,
there are times when such techniques simply don't seem
to be effective, and others when their effects amount
to "a form of self-hypnosis" in the words of Krishnamurti's
admonition. Such apparent failures are not necessarily
due to shortcomings of the practice or practitioner
(although incompatibility between the two is common
enough to be worth looking into), but rather are an
indication of the non-deterministic nature of all intentional
practice, no matter how authentic in origin and skillful
in design. Simply put, the practice we call meditation
does not really cause or create the actual meditative
state; at most it can help promote the aforementioned
conducivity — it can be said to prepare the ground.
The actual meditative state's advent is just that, an
arrival that is beyond our control.
Beyond
the eventual and occasional
Interestingly,
the very fact of this intrinsic limitation of any and
all practice can itself be a profound spiritual gift,
a classic blessing in disguise. The actual meditative
state is something beyond the reach of our best intentions
— even given our most sincere efforts, it cannot
be vouchsafed as a result. It is essentially choiceless,
and it comes, to use Christian parlance, by grace. When
encountering our helplessness in this matter, there
is seemingly one last choice — we can simply accept
it as an unavoidable aspect of our practice and resume
our routine, or we can receive the fact of choicelessness
viscerally and notice that the factor that permits the
meditative state is the spontaneous absence of intent,
of all effort. The apparent arrival of the meditative
state is not an achievement in anything close to the
usual sense of that word, it is rather a surrender sans
objet — not a surrender to anything or anybody,
but, in the words of my friend Saumen Sengupta, a "surrender
in what is." When that inevitable surrender is natural
and effortless, there is a profound transformation in
human consciousness.
For
the so-called "realized" or "enlightened,"
meditation has become an ongoing reality — no longer
a rare event, it is the predominant or default perceptual
state. That once-in-a-lifetime first glimpse of the
Taj Mahal is no longer required to jar thought into
silence, and neither is an intentional meditation practice
— as a matter of fact, it generally takes some
sort of sensory trigger to engage intellect, language,
imagination, ego, or any other child of thought. Instead
of acting as an habitual perceptual filter, thought
has been relegated to the role of a situationally deployed
tool, a servant. Thus is the appearance of a causal
relationship between anything procedural and the meditative
state forever sundered, and existence in its entirety
is eternally a great meditation, world without end,
amen.
Copyright
2001 Bruce Morgen
Illustration:
The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. Courtesy NASA
Bruce
Morgen is a long-time Usenet participant and Internet
mailing list moderator. For more of his writings, see
his website.
You can send e-mail to him at editor@juno.com.
NOTE
1.
J. Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution (Perennial
Library: New York, 1977), p. 19.
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