Meditation: Beyond Concentration

It starts at concentration, it doesn't end there.

There are different schools of meditation, different methods and systems. Some systems say, “Watch the movement of your nose, watch it, watch it, watch it.” There are others that advocate sitting in a certain posture, breathing effortlessly, and practicing heightened awareness.

All this is mechanical. Another method gives one a certain word [mantra] and says that if one goes on repeating it, one will have some extraordinary transcendental experience. This is a natural form of self-hypnosis bringing out the potential of the mind.

By repeating "Om" (Sanskrit), "Amen" (English), "Amitofoo" (Chinese), "Salaam" (Arabic), "Shalom" (Hebrew), or even Yabbadabbadoo" (Flinstonian), one will certainly have an experience, because by repetition the mind becomes quiet.

It is a well-known phenomenon that has been practiced for thousands of years in India called mantra yoga. By repetition one can induce the mind to be gentle and soft. But for all that, outside of meditation, it is still a petty, shoddy, little mind.

[Krishnamurti] suggests that real "meditation" is not following any system. It is not constant repetition or imitation. Meditation is not concentration. (That is one of the favorite gambits of some meditation teachers to insist their pupils learn to collect their minds and concentrate them — that is, to fix the mind on one object, displacing all other objects, which any child can learn to do when instructed to). Meditation means balancing intention of will, to be attentive and aware, and letting IT happen:

On the one hand, one is battling. The attention narrows, and one concentrates like a laser that collects and intensifies light. On the other hand, the habitual mind wanders away to all sorts of other things. Shepherd it. Guide it back again and again -- without judgment, resentment, or condemnation -- until it settles like a still forest pool.

One is then able to be mindful of every movement of the mind wherever and however much it wanders. When the mind wanders off (and it will), it means it is insufficiently interested in the object, which should be all-consuming when attended to. If one tries to force, it will become less interested. But when the mind becomes pleasurably interested in the object, meditation is effortless. This happens because a quieted, concentrated mind gives rise to supersensual feelings of pleasure and bliss (sukha and piti).

Mindfulness meditation demands an astonishingly awake and alert mind, not a drowsy and distracted one. Serenity meditation prepares that mind, focusing until it is silent, serene (calm and coo), and collected. Then understanding the totality of life is possible -- direct insight into reality (vipassana) -- when every form of fragmentation has ceased.

Meditation is not forceful control of thought, for when thought is controlled, it breeds conflict in the mind. But when one understands the structure and origin of thought, then thought will not interfere. "With the arising of this, that arises; with the ceasing of this, that ceases." For example, when one thinks tiresome thoughts, one becomes tired. If one feels tired, one should not direct the mind in that way. The same is true of a worried, scattered, distracted, angry, or lustful mind.

That very understanding of the structure of thinking is its own discipline, which is a form of meditation (kammatthana). Real Insight Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to judge it as right or wrong, but simply to watch it as it moves through. In that watching, one begins to understand the incessant (and impersonal and unsatisfactory) movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence instituted by force is stagnant and dead. But silence that comes when thought has understood its own arising, its threefold nature, understood how thought is never free but always conditioned — this silence is an accomplishment in meditation.

Meditation is a state of mind that looks at everything with complete attention, without entanglement or bias. One sees it just as it is. And who can teach someone to be attentive? If any system teaches one how to be attentive, then maybe one is attentive to the system. And that is not attention, or it is but not the kind one should be practicing.

Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life — perhaps the greatest — and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore there is no authority. When you watch yourself in silence (internal quiet), you learn about yourself. Watch yourself -- on and off the cushion: watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the chatter, jealousy, and hate. If you are aware of all that in yourself, in choiceless awareness, that is part of meditation. So meditation (at least a gross form of mindfulness) can take place when one is sitting on a bus, listening to the birds, or walking in the woods noticing the interplay of light and shadow.

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WQ edit from Jiddu Krishnamurti (Times of India, July 23, 2009)

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