12 Comments

• A dude

  Nov 23, 2005 | 10:13 pm

  Why should one meditate at all? Is this a pleasure just like all the other things people get away to? Shut off all your communication devices and sit silently. For what? Why is one not calm in the centre of life? And what really is meditation? Is it simply a conception just like a conception of enjoyment or a conception of stress? Perhaps asking what is meditation is the true meditation.

• KarmaDude

  Nov 24, 2005 | 2:04 pm

  Meditation as the Yogi’s practiced it was not a form of pleasure or a stress reliever as people in the west practice it today. It was instead a process for discovering the inner self, one’s soul, or the deep secrets of the universe, which according to the Yogi’s is not on the outside, but deep inside an individual, and meditation was their process for discovering this inner truth.

• A dude

  Nov 25, 2005 | 3:48 pm

  The inner self, the soul, the deep secrets of the universe – all of these are one’s own imagined clutchings at a so-called Yogi’s intentions. To practise meditation with a goal in mind implies that the goal is known. If the soul is concrete it can be sought after but if it is not isn’t one only chasing one’s imagination, one’s conception of a soul? Does one even know if a soul exists? Why’s this at a higher plane than meditating for stress relief where the benefits are somewhat more obvious?!
  The moment one has a goal to be achieved the inner self is already lost. No amount of so-called meditation will bring it back.

• KarmaDude

  Nov 25, 2005 | 6:51 pm

  To a Yogi meditation is not about setting a goal and trying to find it, but to free their mind of all thoughts, have no goal in mind, so they can discover the truth.

  Now, no Yogi has come back and told us what they have dicovered, because to them it is a personal discovery, for each person to seek and find. But they did leave us with a process, so if you want to find the answers, use it, and seek within.

• A dude

  Nov 25, 2005 | 7:21 pm

  To free your mind of thoughts sounds like a goal to me. To have no goal sounds like a goal to me. To discover the truth sounds like a goal to me.

• KarmaDude

  Nov 25, 2005 | 7:38 pm

  That’s what it would be for you if you want to call an effort a goal.

• A dude

  Nov 25, 2005 | 10:52 pm

  Surely all effort is directed. Else it wouldn’t be an effort.

• KarmaDude

  Nov 26, 2005 | 12:22 am

  But that is what the Yogi is trying to achieve via meditation –reach a state of undirected effort, reach a state where thoughts don’t exist, no more thoughts to tell them what the goal or direction of the effort is, now what that means, only a yogi would know, and only you can answer that question. Because there is a catch 22 here, if you are in a thoughtless state, how do you know that? Because to know you will have to think!

  But that is what meditation is for, for you to discover the thoughtless mind, the only path to the answer will be to try and find out.

• A dude

  Nov 26, 2005 | 8:07 am

  Isn’t it a contradiction to use effort to get to an effortless state? The patterns thought weaves in terms of getting somewhere….

  Who get there
  And is there a there there?
  And is there a who who gets
  Anywhere?

• KarmaDude

  Nov 26, 2005 | 12:34 pm

  sure it takes effort to reach an effortless state. And maybe your pattern of thought is a subset of all patterns of thought, to be a definitive pattern on thought, you will have to know thought itself, maybe not, that’s for you to find out and know. And what a thoughtless mind is like, I don’t know, for I haven’t reached there, maybe there is no destination, maybe there is, only you can find out.

  Yes, the yogi was tyring to reach somewhere, a thoughtless mind, but that is not his destination, but the beginning of his journey, what happens from that point only a Yogi would know, maybe he won’t, after all it’s a quest, and nothing is guaranteed, only way to find out is to embark on such a quest.

• A dude

  Nov 26, 2005 | 4:01 pm

  When one is dead surely one is in a thoughtless state. I question this need to reach a thoughtless state for this is nothing but a chase after death. After all, why is one so dissatisfied with thought? Maybe pondering this question is meditation.

  All transformation is in knowledge alone and this is not different from thought. In order to go far one must start very near, very near…

  Good luck!

• KarmaDude

  Nov 26, 2005 | 10:47 pm

  Death, seems like all dicussions on life eventually lead to death? The problem with death in this argument is that to perceive thoughtlessness and even nothingness one has to be alive. Death does no good here, it is a state were perception of anything even thoughtlessness ceases to exist.

  Think of meditation as the tool, and your mind the canvas. Now what you can do with that tool, only you can try and find out. It is not the solution but the means.

  And finally it’s not a dissatisfaction with thought, that would be the wrong approch, it is rather a curiosity of the thoughless state. And the problem with starting near, you could be like the frog in the well, ending up in a narrow system of thought and knowledge. Some times one has to make giant leaps, to gain higher knowlodge, for knowledge is not a constant.