Still Is For Always
All that moves will anyway be brought to a stop, but that which is still is for always. No movement in the existence is perpetual. Certain things may be on for a long time but never perpetual. All that moves is bound to exhaust itself, but that which is still is for always.
What’s being termed as meditation is essentially to move towards that stillness, to become like the core of existence. It is not that you have to strive to become like that. If you learn to penetrate, it is like that. It is not something that you do, because doing is movement. It is something that you fall back into because it’s from that stillness that movement has originated, it is from that stillness that the surface is movement.
On the surface there are many kinds of actions, many kinds of colors, many kinds of reverberance. All that you call as life, all that you generally know as life is the surface reverberance. But once you have the taste of stillness, if you wish you can play the surface; otherwise you can just fall back.
If you do not know the core, if you have never tasted the still core, forever it’s in some kind of compulsive movement. Believe me, it doesn’t matter how exciting you find life right now, one day you will tire. I hope that you don’t fall off life because you’re tired, you fall off life because you’re ripe. A fruit should fall off the tree because it’s ripe, not because it’s tired; because with ripeness comes sweetness, with ripeness comes maturity, with ripeness comes new possibility. If you’re tired and fall off, that’s not the right way to fall off from life.
So meditation is not an option, meditation is not a fanciful endeavor in one’s life. If you do not know how to be still, you can only be ill, there is no other way. You may have different names for your illness. Do you know in the 17th century it was fashionable in England to have tuberculosis? Really. Similarly there are many other ailments today which are fashionable. Doesn’t matter how much pain and suffering it causes but still it’s fashionable, but that doesn’t make it right.
The choice is only this—either you learn to be still or you will be in some form of illness. A man is ill only because he does not know how to be still. If he knew how to be still, even if the body is rotting he will not be ill. So this is not a fanciful option that one takes.
If one looks at life and life process closely enough, diving deeper into it is a natural process, touching the core of it is a success. If failure is the ideal of life, if failure is fashion, better not walk the ramp, it’s not worth it; because everything, just everything, even a little ant is trying to be successful in his life, his understanding of success. There is no human being who is looking for failure. One is successful only when he finds full expression to all that he is, and that will never ever happen without one becoming meditative. When I say meditative I am not necessarily talking about an organized instructed meditation process, but one has to become meditative, otherwise he will never know the nature of his existence. If you do not even know the nature of who you are, finding full expression to that is just out of the question.
| Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally renowned speaker, Sadhguru is the founder of Isha Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to human wellbeing. (www.isha.sadhguru.org) |
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