Our own ways to meditate

[1]

Swami Chaitanya Keerti [1]

While on the way to Dharamsala, to participate in a meditation camp, I asked a fellow traveller, do you also meditate? He said, “I do meditate, but I do it in my own way.”

Most people who do not wish to join any meditation camp give this answer. This may be some suitable excuse for them, but as far as meditation is concerned, it is indeed the right answer. One can certainly meditate in one’s own way — and there are as many ways to meditate as there are people in the world. Everybody is born so unique in the world that he will have a unique meditation, specially meant for him.
Existence expresses itself every time in original ways. Every flower blooms in its own way, though all the flowers may look very much the same. Look at them carefully and you will notice the subtle difference. No real flower on earth is a carbon copy of another flower. On a mountain you won’t even find two stones that are similar, though the thousands of factory tiles produced out of stones are alike. Existence does not believe in duplicates or copies. Existence is so infinite that it can continue to produce original expressions till infinity. Original simply means: something that emerges out of the origin, the source. Existence celebrates originality.
There is a very significant word utsa, which means “the source”. And there is another word — utsav — that means “celebration”. Something that emerges from utsa becomes utsav. The real celebration is not possible with duplicates. It is possible only with something that is original. This whole existence is continuously celebrating because everything manifests from the source each moment.
Meditation means the realisation of this source, getting consciously connected with the source. In our mind, we may think that we have gone too far away from the source or we may behave very egoistically. This is an illusion of separation from the source. In reality, we are always connected with the source.
Meditation means returning consciously to the source. And millions of people on earth could return to their source — not in the imagination, but in reality, and each in his own way. That would be their unique method of meditation. What is important is that one meditates and not the process one adopts to meditate. What is important is that one prays and not how one prays. What is important is that one loves and not how one loves. Attaining to inner richness of love, prayer and meditation is all that is significant. What works for me might not work for you; what works for someone else may not work for the other. As said by Gautama Buddha, “Truth is what works”.
The modern enlightened mystic Osho agrees with the Buddha. He says, “Buddha has defined truth as that which works. If a lie works, it is true. And if a truth cannot work, of what use is it? Throw it into the garbage can as it is of no use. Buddha’s definition is really wonderful. He was the first pragmatist in the world.”