There are many techniques of Meditation prescribed by masters and scriptures. However the technique prescribed by Jiddu Krishnamurti is unique and radical. The reason it is unique and radical is because he prescribes ‘techniqueless meditation’, which is very different from and may seem to be contrary to the practices taught by most spiritual masters.
We all know that there is no ‘One technique fits all’ in meditation. Different seekers, depending on thier level of mind-refinement are drawn to different methods of meditation. Jiddu Krishnamurti proposes a technique for meditation wherein their is minimum scope of relying on other crutches for rising in ones awareness.
A few of Jiddu Krishnamurti’ s quotes on meditation are shared below to provide one an insight into his thoughts and suggestions into What is Meditation and How to Meditate.
Jiddu Krishnamurti on What is Meditation ?
“I AM AFRAID the word ‘meditation’ has been so misused. There are so many systems of meditation – the Tibetan, the Chinese, the Hindu, the Buddhist – I don’t know what you mean by meditation. To me, meditation is something that cannot be cultivated or practised, following a system. It must come naturally, like a flower that blooms. You cannot force it.“
Jiddu Krishnamurti on How to learn Meditation ?
“MEDITATION IS ONE of the greatest arts in life, perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy, if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. So meditation can take place when you are sitting on a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife, husband or child.“
“MEDITATION CANNOT BE learned from another. You must begin without knowing anything about it, and move from innocence to innocence. The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain and the fleeting joy. It must begin there and bring order, and from there, move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement, you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, or what the end is.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti on How to Meditate ?
“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 idea, belief or experience, being aware that any projection of the mind is illusory. 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.“
“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 verbalised; it has no words to explain 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.”
“Imagination and thought have no place in meditation. They lead to bondage, and meditation brings freedom. The good and the pleasurable are two different things; the one brings freedom and the other leads to the bondage of time. Meditation is the freedom from time. Time is the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, and time is thought. Meditation is the going beyond and above the activities of time.“
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