Prabhaker

You can sit very easily when you are doing something else but the moment you are just sitting and meditating, it becomes a problem. Every fiber of the body begins to move inside; every vein, every muscle, begins to move. You will begin to feel a subtle trembling; you will be aware of many points in the body of which you have never been aware before. And the more you try to just sit, the more movement you will feel inside you. So sitting can be used only if you have done other things first. You can just walk, that is easier. You can just dance, that is even easier. And after you have been doing other things that are easier, then you can sit.

Contemplation is not meditation. Contemplation means thinking. Thinking can be of two types. One is zigzag, in jumps from one object to another, a little crazy; that is ordinary thinking. Anything leads to anything. A dog starts barking and you start thinking about your girlfriend. There seems to be no relationship, but maybe your girl had said once, "I go on barking at you and you don't listen!" Suddenly the dog reminds you. Or maybe she also has a dog who barks at you whenever you go to see her. And then from one thing to another... you will not stay with anything long. The girlfriend reminds you of her mother, and so on, so forth. Nobody knows where you are going to end. When you will look retrospectively you will be surprised: just the dog barking in the neighborhood started the whole process of thought. Contemplation means remaining concerned with one object, thinking about it and only about it. Thinking has a consistency. If you are thinking about love, then you are thinking about love and all its aspects. You don't jump from one thing to another. Yes, you have a little rope just so that you can move around the subject of love, but you keep moving around it, around and around. You forget the whole world -- love becomes your world for the moment. Meditation is not contemplation either because it is not thinking at all -- consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts -- trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

Christ’s message is rejoice and be merry. But that is not the message of Christianity. Christianity’s message is: be sad, long faces, look miserable; the more miserable you look, the more saintly you are. Sometimes I really feel for poor Jesus. He has fallen in such wrong company, and I wonder how he is managing in paradise with all these Christian saints, so sad, so dull. He was not a dull man, he was not a sad man — he could not be. The word ‘christ’ is exactly synonymous with buddha. He was an enlightened person. He rejoiced in life, in the small things of life. He rejoiced in eating, drinking, friendship. He loved companionship, he loved the whole life. But Christians down the ages have painted him as very sad. They have painted him always on the cross, as if for thirty-three years he was always on the cross.

Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence. When you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart, then you start, for the first time, hearing silence. Silence has a music of its own. It is not dead; it is tremendously alive. In fact, nothing is more alive than silence. Whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation — it has to end in meditation. If it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong. That’s why much of modern art is not art. Much modern music is not music; it simply makes you sexually excited. It is just the opposite of real music. Real music helps you to transcend your biology, your physiology, your psychology. Real music takes you to the world of the beyond. Listening to great music you suddenly become silent — with no effort. Falling in tune with the music you lose your ego with no effort. You become relaxed, you fall into a deep rest. You are alert, awake, and yet in a subtle way drunk.

No, first you grow into a meditator , it will be the only contribution you can do to make this world a loving place, it will help in raising human consciousness. Poverty is not the only problem, there are thousand problems, solution is one, become more aware, more silent, more sane.

After great scientific discoveries why poverty exists at first place ? Humans have lower consciousness. The Catholic idea is relief for the poor. The idea of the Buddha will be: there is no need for any poverty in the world. Poverty is man-created, and it is in our hands to destroy poverty. It exists because there are a few people who are greedy. A small section of society goes on accumulating, while the greater proportion of society remains poor. And man has lived for centuries under such unbalanced odds. This exploitation can be completely stopped by changing of the perspective. Poverty is a by-product of greed. First, eradicate the greed of the rich. Make them more loving, compassionate, and sensitive to humanity at large. Greed is a cancer growing within them and it has to be treated. The treatment is meditation, emotional fulfillment. It’s their inferiority complex that wants to look powerful in the eyes of others.

Unless you know how to help others, how can you help others ? Unless you have a silent mind, how can you help others to reach state of silent mind ?

If you want to be happy you will have to help others who surround you to be happy. You can help others only when you have helped yourself, not before it. In fact, people who really need to help themselves always become interested in helping others. That becomes an occupation, and they can forget themselves.

All the mahatmas like Shivananda in India have big bellies and they are teaching people, "Don't eat with taste." And they themselves… , "Where does this belly come from? Stand up! Show your belly to the whole people. You are eating too much and the country is hungry. And I know that because of this belly you cannot make love to a woman. So now you are teaching everybody not to make love to any woman. It is because of this belly, not because of your religion. Everything is out of proportion: a big belly, big fat hands, the legs elephant legs, and this person is teaching the whole world, "You are not the body, you are the soul." And who are these monsters? Just bodies, with no soul at all. I can't see any space in them; they are so filled up with junk that I don't think they can have a soul also.

It's strange !!! I live in India and I always wished to live in a more civilized country, where people are less cunning and less greedy.

The goal is one, but the paths are many. And each master has to defend his path, knowing perfectly well that other paths are as valid as his. But if he starts saying that all the paths are valid, he will not have the impact, the influence on his people. The journey is long and he needs absolute trust. He is not a philosopher propounding a system of philosophy. His basic concern is that your commitment to the path should be total. To make it total he condemns all other paths, he criticizes all other ways. This is just a simple methodology to protect the disciple from influences that can take him astray.

@Leo Gura It was @Paulo Barbosa not me.

Death is a certainty, old age is a certainty. These great sufferings are not enough to break your sleep, you want to limit sufferings for the sake of a nicer experience? I'm not saying don't help a child in the forest if you find him crying and weeping. But try to understand: your own light is not burning and you start helping others.

You can learn meditation for one hour – learning is one thing – but then you have to carry whatever you have learned day in, day out. Meditation has to become just like your heartbeat. Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment -- this is meditation. Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of meditation. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours? So understand well that meditation is not just one of life's innumerable activities. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity.

To ask whether God exists is absurd. God Is Existence. Unless you become one with existence, it can't be experienced. You can't experience it, as you are, till you are separate from existence.

God has given you freedom , you can create suffering, it is your choice. It is a game, you are free to live unconsciously , create the ego, create suffering, start living consciously to end the suffering. It is a game without any purpose.

@Stoica Doru If you are physically fit try Osho's dynamic meditation ! http://www.oshodynamic.com/five-stages.html If your meditation space prevents you from making a noise, you can do this silent alternative: Rather than throwing out the sounds, let the catharsis in the second stage take place entirely through bodily movements.

Scientists Baffled by Prahlad Jani, Man Who Doesn't Eat or Drink http://abcnews.go.com/Health/International/man-eat-drink/story?id=10787036 'Starving yogi' Prahlad Jani astounds Indian scientists after two-week surveillance trial http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/starving-yogi-prahlad-jani-astounds-indian-scientists-after-two-week-surveillance-trial/news-story/d942cc065d230fce03e2638611fc11f1

Awareness means a mind that is conscious but not focused. While watching the breath, many other things will take your attention away. Nothing is a distraction in meditation, so when something else comes up, stop watching the breath, pay attention to whatever is happening until it’s possible to go back to your breath. This may include thoughts, feelings, judgments, body sensations, impressions from the outside world, etc. It is the process of watching that is significant, not so much what you are watching, so remember not to become identified with whatever comes up; questions or problems may just be seen as mysteries to be enjoyed! Concentration is a choice. It excludes all except its object of concentration; it is a narrowing. Concentration is of the mind, meditation is of consciousness. Concentration is sabotaging the whole process of watchfulness, because concentration is an act of the mind, and watchfulness is something that comes from above, from beyond. If there is any concentration... I can understand, if you start watching your breathing – in the name of watching, you are concentrating on the breathing, you are excluding everything else. Don’t exclude. Watch your breathing inclusive of all.

@DimmedBulb If you want to regain your life and cure your internet addiction, you have to cut down your daily internet time to 30 minutes. This sounds extreme. But every extreme addiction needs an extreme solution.

You are unnecessarily afraid of poor ghosts. Compared to human beings, they are very innocent people. Have you ever heard of any ghost turning into an Adolf Hitler? or Genghis Khan or Tamerlaine? Have you ever heard of ghosts creating Hiroshima, Nagasaki, preparing for the Third World War? Have you ever heard of ghosts doing any harm? Their harm, if sometimes you hear some stories, is more or less trivial - small things. You don't be worried. They are already worried very much; they are afraid of you. Ghosts are simple people, very simple. In fact, they are the same people like you, they just don't have bodies so they can't do much harm. So next time when you are alone in the room, just close the eyes and go into your fear. Don't bother about ghosts - just go into the fear. Tremble if trembling comes, but don't find any explanation that you are trembling because of the ghosts. That is just an explanation to explain away the fear.Just go into trembling, tremble for no reason at all. If you feel like screaming, scream for no reason at all - but go into the fear itself; don't bring anything else in between you and the fear. That is a trick of the mind. And if you can go deep down into the fear, you will be surprised: the deeper you go, the more and more fear dissipates, disappears. And when you touch the very core, the very bottom core of it, it has disappeared. You are simply there, utterly silent. There is no ghost there, even you are not there. All is silent, utterly silent, absolutely silent. That silence is joy, that silence is fearlessness.

What do you want from your girlfriend ? Remember, only things can be possessed; beings cannot be possessed.

Either you are concentrating on breath, instead of meditating or torturing yourself by forced sitting in an uncomfortable posture.

Enlightenment is not an experience. It is the state where you are left absolutely alone, nothing to know. No object, howsoever beautiful, is present. Only in that moment does your consciousness, unobstructed by any object, take a turn and move back to the source. It becomes self-realization, it becomes enlightenment. When you come to a point when all experiences are absent, when there is no object, then consciousness without obstruction moves in a circle—in existence everything moves in a circle, if not obstructed—it comes from the same source of your being, goes around. Finding no obstacle to it—no experience, no object—it moves back, and the subject itself becomes the object. That’s what J. Krishnamurti, for his whole life, continued to say: that when the observer becomes the observed, know that you have arrived.

And then wave merges in ocean, wave cease to exist then.