Meditation - 8

Why am I unable to meditate?

Mother answers:

Because you have not learnt it. A sudden fancy seizes you and you say, 'Now I will sit down and meditate.' But to sit down cross-legged, cross-armed, eyes closed is not doing meditation. You have to learn how to meditate, even as you learn to do mathematics or play on the piano. There are regular courses of meditation given by all teachers in all ages and countries. There are so many rules and regulations. There are all kinds of instructions, such as, to keep the mind quiet, to be silent and not to think, to gather all your thoughts and concentrate them, etc. You have been taught how to sit, stand, walk, eat. You do not remember the method and the discipline, because you did that when you were very young. In the same way if you were taught how to mediate in your childhood, you would not find it difficult to do today. Unfortunately you were not taught. You are not taught things of that kind. You are not taught even how to sleep. You think that to go to bed and lie down anyway is the way to sleep. Not at all. You are to learn to sleep exactly in the same way as you learn how to walk or eat. You do not learn so many things, you are not taught. As you grow in years, slowly, laboriously through unpleasant experiences, through suffering and blundering, in the end you come to know of certain fundamental things. And when you are old, and your hairs are gray, you see you are beginning to learn something, when, that is to say, it is too late. Instead of that, if your parents, the people who looked after you took the trouble of teaching you what you have to do, to do it well, to act well, to think well, to feel well, in the correct manner - then you could avoid all the blunders you have been making all your life. You are surprised when you fall ill, when you feel tired and exhausted. For you know nothing. It requires years to learn something, to learn even the most elementary things such as to be clean.

To live as one should, in the right way, is a very difficult art. It requires study, it requires practice. Try simply to keep the body healthy, the mind quiet, and the heart full of good will - these are some of the indispensable elements for the basis of decent living, you will see the thing is not easy.