True meditation

True meditation is making everything - coughing, swallowing, waving, movement and stillness, speaking and acting, good and evil, fame and shame, loss and gain, right and wrong - into one single koan.

Hakuin

The meditator is the meditation.
The observer is the observed.

Krishnamurti

Cultivate sensitivity through solitude

For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it is to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it.

Krishnamurti in "Life Ahead" Page 14

Meditation cannot be cultivated

If you set out to meditate it will not be meditation. If you set out to be good, goodness will never flower. If you cultivate humility, it ceases to be. Meditation is like the breeze that comes in when you leave the window open; but if you deliberately keep it open, deliberately invite it to come, it will never appear.

Krishnamurti The Only Revolution India Part 6

The meditative mind

Meditation is not a matter of being absorbed in some grandiose idea or image: that only quietens one for the moment, as a child absorbed by a toy is for the time being quiet. But as soon as the toy ceases to be of interest, the restlessness and the mischief begin again. Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imagined bliss. The meditative mind is seeing watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion - attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day. And at night, when the whole organism is at rest, the meditative mind has no dreams for it has been awake all day. It is only the indolent who have dreams; only the half-asleep who need the intimation of their own states. But as the mind watches, listens to the movement of life, the outer and the inner, to such a mind comes a silence that is not put together by thought. 

Krishnamurti "The Only Revolution India Part 3"

Meditation

Mind is a way to understand the object; meditation is a way to understand the subject.

Osho

Meditation is not concentration

Meditation is not concentration. It is simple awareness. You simply relax and watch the breathing. In that watching, nothing is excluded. The car is humming - perfectly okay, accept it. The traffic is passing - that's okay, part of life. Your fellow passenger is snoring by your side - just accept it. Nothing is rejected, You are not to narrow down your consciousness.
... A meditation in which you need certain prerequisites, in which certain conditions need to be fulfilled, is not meditation at all - because you will not be able to do it when you are dying. Death will be such a distraction.

Osho in "Body Mind Balancing" page 138

 

Meditation is the purgation of the known

MEDITATION is a very important action in life; perhaps it is the action that has the greatest and deepest significance. It is a perfume that cannot easily be caught; it is not to be bought through striving and practice. A system can yield only the fruit it offers, and the system, the method, is based on envy and greed. Not to be able to meditate is not to be able to see the sunlight, the dark shadows, the sparkling waters and the tender leaf. But how few see these things! Meditation has nothing to offer; you may not come begging with folded hands. It doesn't save you from any pain. It makes things abundantly clear and simple; but to perceive this simplicity the mind must free itself, without any cause or motive, from all the things it has gathered through cause and motive. This is the whole issue in meditation. Meditation is the purgation of the known. To pursue the known in different forms is a game of self-deception, and then the meditator is the master, there is not the simple act of meditation. The meditator can act only in the field of the known; he must cease to act for the unknown to be. The unknowable doesn't invite you, and you cannot invite it. It comes and goes as the wind, and you cannot capture it and store it away for your benefit, for your use. It has no utilitarian value, but without it life is measurelessly empty.

Krishnamurti "Commentaries On Living" Series II Chapter 52 Evaluation

Meditation has nothing to offer

MEDITATION is a very important action in life; perhaps it is the action that has the greatest and deepest significance. It is a perfume that cannot easily be caught; it is not to be bought through striving and practice. A system can yield only the fruit it offers, and the system, the method, is based on envy and greed. Not to be able to meditate is not to be able to see the sunlight, the dark shadows, the sparkling waters and the tender leaf. But how few see these things! Meditation has nothing to offer; you may not come begging with folded hands. It doesn't save you from any pain. It makes things abundantly clear and simple; but to perceive this simplicity the mind must free itself, without any cause or motive, from all the things it has gathered through cause and motive. This is the whole issue in meditation. Meditation is the purgation of the known. To pursue the known in different forms is a game of self-deception, and then the meditator is the master, there is not the simple act of meditation. The meditator can act only in the field of the known; he must cease to act for the unknown to be. The unknowable doesn't invite you, and you cannot invite it. It comes and goes as the wind, and you cannot capture it and store it away for your benefit, for your use. It has no utilitarian value, but without it life is measurelessly empty.

Krishnamurti in "Commentaries On Living Series II" Chapter 52 Evaluation

Relationship, behaviour and order are essential for meditation

Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on. But through them you can never come upon the other - never! Because if you give them all importance, you are not giving importance to the understanding of yourself which is to be watchful, to be aware, to give attention to what you are doing, every day of your life; which is to give attention to how you speak and what you say, to what you think, how you behave, whether you are attached, whether you are frightened, whether you are pursuing pleasure and so on. To be aware of the whole movement of thought; for if you are and you are really serious about it, then you will have established right relationship, obviously. Relationship becomes extraordinarily important when all things about are chaotic - when the world is going to pieces, as it is. But when there is this establishment of total relationship, whole relationship, not between you and me, but human relationship with the whole of the world, then you have the basis. From there you can go on to behaviour - how you behave. If your behaviour is based on pleasure or on reward, it is not behaviour. It is merely the pursuit of pleasure from which fear arises. Relationship, behaviour and order, these are absolutely essential if you want to go into the question of meditation. If you have not laid this foundation, then do what you like - stand on your head, breathe in for the next ten thousand years and repeat words, words - there will be no meditation.

Krishnamurti in "Total Freedom"

Immortality of the new

The death that meditation brings about is the immortality of the new.

J. Krishnamurti

Meditation

Meditation is about changing patterns within yourself by bringing your mind to a still point over and over again.

Swami Chetanananda

Wherever you are is heaven

Do not meditate only hidden in a dark corner, but meditate always - standing, sitting, moving, resting. When your meditation continues through waking and sleeping, wherever you are is heaven itself.

Hakuin

Meditation helps release patterns of behaviour

We all have deeply embedded patterns of behaviour that we act on unconsciously. We tense when the telephone rings, eat without tasting our food, or jog through the park while our mind is back in the office replaying the conversation we had with our boss or coworker. Meditation is a way of bringing these habitual behaviours to consciousness so that we can, if it's appropriate, gently release them. It helps us relax into our bodies more fully so that we are more aware of what we do and how we feel while we're doing it.

Pragito Dove in "Lunchtime Enlightenment" page 18

The Silence of Supreme Intelligence

So in meditation there is no controller, there is no activity of will, which is desire. Then the brain, the whole movement of the brain apart from its own activity, which has its own rhythm, becomes utterly quiet, silent. It is not the silence cultivated by thought. It is the silence of intelligence, silence of supreme intelligence. In that silence that which is nameless comes, nameless is. That is sacred, immovable, it is not touched by thought, by endeavour, by effort. It is the way of intelligence which is the way of compassion. Then that which is sacred is everlasting. That is meditation. Such a life is a religious life. In that there is great beauty.

J. Krishnamurti in "Mind Without Measure"