What is meditation?

Question: What is meditation?

Krishnamurti: Perhaps you and I can find out together what meditation is, so let us go into it. You are not waiting for an answer from me, so that you can be satisfied by words, by explanations. You and I are going to find out what meditation actually is.

What is meditation? Sitting cross-legged, or lying down, relaxed? Obviously, there must be relaxation of the body; but though your body is relaxed, your mind is very active, chattering away endlessly. Being aware of this, you say, “I must control it, I must stop it, there must be a certain sense of quietness”. So, you begin to control, to discipline your mind. Please follow all this, and you will see. You spend years in control ling, disciplining your chattering mind; your energy is spent in making the mind conform to a desired pattern, but you never succeed; and if you do succeed, your mind becomes so weary, lethargic, empty, dull. Obviously, that is not meditation. On the contrary, the mind must be supremely alert, not caught in a routine of habit, discipline.

So, I see that my mind, though it is chattering endlessly, cannot be disciplined, made to fit into a particular pattern of thought. Then how is it to be calmed? How is the chattering mind to be quiet? Just see the implications of the problem. If the observer, the analyzer, imposes a discipline on the chattering mind, then there is a conflict between the observer, the analyzer and the thing he has observed, analyzed. The thinker is struggling to make his thought conform to the pattern which he desires, which is to calm the mind; so he disciplines it, he controls, dominates, suppresses it, in which is involved the conflict of duality. There is a division between the observer and the observed, and in that division there is conflict; and meditation is obviously not an endless process of conflict.

So, how is the mind, which is ceaselessly chattering, to be quiet? When I ask that question, what is the state of your mind? Please watch yourself. What is the state of your mind when I put that question? You are accustomed to discipline, control, but now you see its absurdity, its illusory nature; therefore, the state of your mind is that you do not know how to quiet the mind. You are finished with explanations, with knowledge, which is conditioning; the actual fact is that your mind is chattering, and you do not know how to quiet it. So, what is the state of your mind? You are really inquiring, are you not? You are watching, you have no answer. All that you know is that your mind is chattering, and you want to find out how the mind can be quiet – but not according to a method. Surely, the moment you put to yourself the question, “How is the mind to be quiet, cease from chattering”? you have already entered the realm in which the mind is quiet, have you not? You know that your mind is active, ceaselessly battering, one layer against another layer, the observer fighting the observed, the experiencer wanting more; you are aware of the incessant vagaries of thought, and you actually do not know how to reduce it, how it is to be quiet. You reject all methods, because they have no meaning. To follow a method, to copy a pattern only cripples the mind through habit. Habit is not meditation. The routine of a discipline does not free the mind so that it can discover the new. So, you reject all that completely; but you still have the question, how is the mind to be quiet? the moment you put that question to yourself really, vitally, actually, what then is the state of your mind? Is it not quiet? It is no longer chattering, analyzing, judging; it is watching, observing, because you don’t know. The very state of not knowing is the beginning of quietness. You discover that as long as there is the struggle between the desired pattern and that which you are, there must be a battle; and this battle is a waste of energy, which creates inertia. So, the mind sees the falseness of all that and rejects it. As it observes, the mind becomes quiet; yet there is still the problem of the thinker apart from thought, so there is again a battle.

Meditation is all this process, not just a limited process with a particular end. It is this vast searching, groping, not being caught in any particular idea, belief, or experience, being aware that any projection of the mind is illusion, hypnosis. And if you go into it more and more deeply, not with a motive, not with any desire for a particular result, but simply watching the whole process of yourself, then you will see that, without any form of compulsion, suppression or discipline, the mind becomes creatively empty, still. That stillness will not give you any riches in this world – do not translate it so quickly into dollars. If you approach it with a begging bowl, it will offer you nothing. That stillness is free from all sense of continuity, in it there is no experiencer who is experiencing. When the experiencer is there, it is no longer stillness, it is merely a continuation of sensation. Meditation is all this process, which brings about a state in which the mind is still, no longer projecting, desiring, defending, judging, experiencing. In that state the new can be. The new is not to be verbalized; it has no words to ex plain it, therefore it is not communicable. It is something that comes into being when the mind itself is new; and this whole, complex process of self-knowledge is meditation.