Jiddu
Krishnamurti "The
Meditator is the Meditation"
Jiddu
krishnamurti : The Single Tree on the wide
green lawn was the centre of the little world which included
the woods, the house and the small lake; the whole
surrounding area seemed to flow towards the tree, which was
high and spreading. It must have been very old, but there
was a freshness about it, as though it had just come into
being; there were hardly any dead branches, and its leaves
were spotless, glistening in the morning sun.
Because it was alone, all things seemed to come to it. Deer
and pheasants, rabbits and cattle congregated in its shade,
especially at midday. The symmetrical beauty of that tree
gave a shape to the sky, and in the early morning light the
tree appeared to be the only thing that was living. From the
woods, the tree seemed far away; but from the tree, the
woods, the house and even the sky seemed close - one often
felt one could touch the passing clouds.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
We had been seated
under the tree for some time, when he came to join us. He
was seriously interested in meditation, and said that he had
practiced it for many years. He did not belong to any
particular school of thought, and though he had read many of
the Christian mystics, he was more attracted to the
meditations and disciplines of the Hindu and Buddhist
saints.
He had realized early, he continued, the immaturity of
asceticism, with its peculiar fascination and cultivation of
power through abstinence, and he had from the beginning
avoided all extremes. He had, however, practised discipline,
an unvarying self-control, and was determined to realize
that which lay through and beyond meditation.
He had led what was considered to be a strict moral life,
but that was only a minor incident, nor was he attracted to
the ways of the world. He had once played with worldly
things, but the play was over some years ago. He had a job
of sorts, but that too was quite incidental.
The end of meditation is meditation itself. The search
for something through and beyond meditation is end-gaining;
and that which is gained is again lost. Seeking a result is
the continuation of self-projection; result, however lofty,
is the projection of desire. Meditation as a means to
arrive, to gain, to discover, only gives strength to the
meditator. The meditator is the meditation; meditation is
the understanding of the meditator.
"I meditate to find ultimate reality, or to allow that
reality to manifest itself. It is not exactly a result I am
seeking, but that bliss which occasionally one senses. It is
there; and as a thirsty man craves for water, I want that
inexpressible happiness. That bliss is infinitely greater
than all joy, and I pursue it as my most cherished desire."
That is, you meditate to gain what you want. To attain
what you desire, you strictly discipline yourself, follow
certain rules and regulations; you lay out and follow a
course in order to have that which is at the end of it. You
hope to achieve certain results, certain well-marked stages,
depending upon your persistence of effort, and progressively
experience greater and greater joy. This well-laid-out
course assures you of the final result. So your meditation
is a very calculated affair, is it not?
"When you put it that way, it does seem, in the
superficial sense, rather absurd; but deeply, what is wrong
with it? What is wrong essentially with seeking that bliss?
I suppose I do want a result for all my efforts; but again,
why shouldn't one?"
This desire for bliss implies that bliss is something
final, everlasting, does it not? All other results have been
unsatisfactory; one has ardently pursued worldly goals and
has seen their transient nature, and now one wants the
everlasting state, an end that has no ending.
The mind is seeking a final and imperishable refuge; so it
disciplines and train itself, practises certain virtues to
gain what it wants. It may once have experienced that bliss,
and now it is panting after it like other pursuers of
results, you are pursuing yours, only you have placed it at
a different level; you may call it higher, but that is
irrelevant.
A result means an ending; arrival implies another effort to
become. The mind is never at rest, it is always striving,
always achieving, always gaining - and, of course, always in
fear of losing. This process is called meditation. Can a
mind which is caught in endless becoming be aware of bliss?
Can a mind that has imposed discipline upon itself ever be
free to receive that bliss?
Through effort and struggle, through resistance and denials,
the mind makes itself insensitive; and can such a mind be
open and vulnerable? Through the desire for that bliss, have
you not built a wall around yourself which the imponderable,
the unknown, cannot penetrate? Have you not effectively shut
yourself off from the new? Out of the old, you have made a
path for the new; and can the new be contained in the old?
The mind can never create the new; the mind itself is a
result, and all results are an outcome of the old. Results
can never be new; the pursuit of a result can never be
spontaneous; that which is free cannot pursue an end. The
goal, the ideal, is always a projection of the mind, and
surely that is not meditation.
Meditation is the freeing of the meditator; in freedom alone
is there discovery, sensitivity to receive. Without freedom,
there can be no bliss; but freedom does not come through
discipline. Discipline makes the pattern of freedom, but the
pattern is not freedom. The pattern must be broken for
freedom to be. The breaking of the mould is meditation.
But this breaking of the mould is not a goal, a ideal. The
mould is broken from moment to moment. The broken moment is
the forgotten moment. It is the remembered moment that gives
shape to the mould, and only then does the maker of the
mould come into being, the creator of all problems,
conflicts, miseries.
Meditation is freeing the mind of its own thoughts at all
levels. Thought creates the thinker. The thinker is not
separate from thought; they are a unitary process, and not
two separate processes. The separate processes only lead to
ignorance and illusion. The meditator is the meditation.
Then the mind is alone, not made alone; it is silent, not
made silent. Only to the alone can the causeless come, only
to the alone is there bliss.