“Some people say that they do not
have to sit and meditate, because they have always
“understood.” But that is very tricky. I have been trying
very hard to fight such people. I never trust them at
all–unless they actually sit and practice. You cannot split
hairs by saying that you might be fishing in a Rocky
Mountain spring and still meditating away; you might be
driving your Porsche and meditating away; you might be
washing dishes (which is more legitimate in some sense) and
meditating away. That may be a genuine way of doing things,
but it still feels very suspicious.“
TRAINING
THE MIND AND CULTIVATING LOVING-KINDNESS
by Chogyam Trungpa
Adi Da
Samraj
“What is popularized, hyped, and
commonly believed to be religion, spirituality, or
meditation is invariably a form of self-meditation,
self-glorification, and self-survival. Such subhuman games
are sold to masses of people via an appeal to naive and
neurotic needs for certainty, hope, fascination,
superiority, a positive self-image, and egoic immunity from
fear and death. Thus, religion, spirituality, and meditation
become diluted, reduced to the worldly or self-preserving
levels of less than human interest. The typical follower is
childish, ultimately irresponsible, self-involved, amoral,
experientially undeveloped, weak and out of balance in the
dimensions of action, feeling, and thought, and irrationally
attached to the enclosures of cult and belief.”
Adi Da Samraj – The Enlightenment of
the Whole Body – 1978
Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable
to provide more of this essay by Adi Da Samraj –
See copyright
letter to Beezone from Adidam.
Method of the Siddhas
QUESTION: On this basis, how does formal meditation
stand? You don’t seem to think that formal meditation has
much great benefit.
FRANKLIN: If you understand what you call your formal
meditation, that understanding is meditation. The
understanding of your activity is meditation. If you have an
inclination to do some particular kind of sitting,
concentrating, yoga method, whatever, all of that is an
activity that you are already tending to do. The point is
not whether to do that or not. The point is the
understanding of that whole ordinary motivation, the process
in this moment that is producing this particular tendency
that is “formal meditation.” Intelligence is the fundamental
meditation. Consciousness is itself meditation. The usual
man is always already seeking, so it is not a matter of
doing or not doing some particular kind of motivated search.
We are always already seeking, whether at this moment we are
doing it in the form of a yogic technique, or the next
moment we are doing it in the form of a sly glance at
somebody as we pass them in the street. We are always
already doing it, so it is not the point whether we should
do a particular form of it or not. There is simply and
always the process of our own action. When there is the
engagement of action by real, unmotivated intelligence,
understanding begins to develop as a spontaneous, real
process in consciousness. As this process of intelligence
matures, it tends to appear to become a little more formal,
so that perhaps a man actually sits down, actually seems to
meditate for a half hour, an hour, or even longer periods.
He may appear to everyone else as if he is doing what they
recognize to be formal or, more properly, motivated
meditation. But that is not in fact what he is doing. He is
living consciousness. It is just that, from a practical
point of view, if the body is relaxed, sitting in a natural
pose in which its fluids and energies can move freely, such
is an appropriate manner in which to enjoy the critical
activity of real intelligence. Even so, the same
intelligence can be active under any conditions, formal or
random and circumstantial. There is simply the endless
return to this re-cognition of our own activity. The
gathering of our Ashram, our conversation together, our
sitting together, the reading or study we do, our life with
one another, everything we are doing constantly reawakens
this re-cognition in some form or other, through crises,
endurance of the resistance of our suffering, whatever. As
we pass through ordinary life in this way, and we see this
same quality, always this same disturbance, that seeing,
that understanding, which is to be no longer trapped in the
unconscious process of action, is meditation. And such
meditation is the necessary foundation of all spiritual
activity, the life of Truth.
Method of the Siddhas
Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to
provide more of this essay by Adi Da Samraj – See
copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.