I love the statement that the “man of Zen walks in Zen and sits in Zen” for the simple reason that meditation cannot be just a part of your life. You cannot make a fragment of your life meditative; it is not possible to be meditative for one hour and then non-meditative for twenty-three hours. It is absolutely impossible. If you are doing that, that means your meditation is false.
Meditation can either be a twenty-four-hour affair or it cannot be at all. It is like breathing: you cannot breathe for one hour and then put it aside for twenty-three hours, otherwise you will be dead. You have to go on breathing. Even while you are asleep you have to go on breathing. Even in a deep coma you have to go on breathing.
Meditation is the breath of your soul. Just as breathing is the life of the body, meditation is the life of the soul. The people who are not aware of meditation are spiritually dead. George Gurdjieff used to say that very few people have souls – and he is right. One is born not with a soul but only with a seed which can grow into a soul – which may not grow. It will depend on you.
You will have to create the right soil, the right climate for it to grow, to bloom. You will have to provoke the spring into coming to you so that your soul can flower, otherwise you are just a body-mind. The soul is only an empty word. Meditation makes it a reality. Meditation is the climate in which the soul happens.
Zen is another name for meditation. The word zen comes from the Sanskrit root dhyan – it has traveled far. Dhyan means a state of absolute silence, of thoughtless silence, but full of awareness. A state of meditation is an innocent, silent state. You are blissfully unaware of your awareness. You are, but you are utterly relaxed. You are not in a state of sleep; you are fully alert, more alert than ever. You are alertness, rather. Dhyan is the greatest contribution of the East to the evolution of humanity.
You have to remember it, otherwise “meditation” can give you a wrong impression. Whenever the word “meditation” is used, immediately the question arises, “On what?” That question is irrelevant. If you are asking, “On what?” then you are asking what to think about, contemplate about, concentrate on – and that is not meditation.
Concentration is not meditation, concentration is an effort of the mind to focus itself. It has certain purposes of its own. It is a method in science – useful, but it is not meditation. Contemplation is a little vague, more abstract. In concentration, the object is more visible; in contemplation, the object is abstract. You concentrate on a flame of light; you contemplate on love. And in Christianity, contemplation and meditation have become synonymous.
Meditation should be given a new meaning, a new fragrance – the fragrance of Zen. Concentration is of the mind, meditation is not of the mind at all, and contemplation is just in between, in a limbo. It is something of the mind and something of the no-mind, a mixture; a state where mind and no-mind meet, the boundary. One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it.
Ananda, one of Gautam Buddha’s chief disciples, asked Buddha, “One thing always puzzles me and I cannot contain my curiosity anymore although my question is irrelevant. The question is that when you go to sleep you remain the whole night in the same posture. Wherever you put your hands, your feet, whatsoever side you lie on, you remain exactly the same, like a statue. You don’t move, you don’t change your side, you don’t move your hands,. your feet – nothing changes. You wake up in the morning in exactly the same posture that you had gone to sleep in. One night, just out of curiosity, I looked at you the whole night – not a single movement. Are you controlling yourself even in your sleep?”
Buddha said, “There is no question of control. I am awake, I am in meditation. I sleep in meditation. Just as I wake up early in the morning in meditation, every night I go to sleep in meditation. My day is my meditation, my night too. I remain absolutely calm and quiet because deep down I am perfectly aware. The flame of meditation goes on burning smokeless. That’s why there is no need to move.”
This is of great significance for you all. Meditation has to become something so deep in you that wherever you go it remains, abides with you; whatsoever you do it is always there. Only then can your life be transformed. Then not only will you be meditative in your life, you will be meditative in your death too. You will die in deep meditation.