Meditation Is Not Contemplation, It Is Action -- Action Of

Meditation is not contemplation, it is action -- action of the whole, of the total being. In the West particularly. Christianity has created a false impression, and meditation looks like contemplation. It is not. Because of Christianity the West has missed many things, and one of them is meditation, the rarest flowering of a human being, because they have made it equivalent to contemplation. Contemplation is thinking. Meditation is no-thinking. For DHYAN, Zen, there exists no equivalent in the English language, because meditation itself means thinking -- to meditate upon. Some object is there. Remember, dhyan is the original word. Dhyan traveled to China with Bodhidharma and in the Chinese language it became CH'AN. And then from China it traveled to Japan and in Japanese it became first ZAN, and then ZEN; but the original root is dhyan -- Ch'an, Zan, Zen. In English there is no word equivalent to it. Meditation also means thinking, a consistent thinking. Contemplation means thinking too. It may be thinking about God, but it is thinking, and dhyan or Zen is a no-thinking state. It is action, without thought. Thought needs time. "I am your mother, therefore love me." What will the child do? You are creating such problems for the child that he cannot conceive of what to do. He can pretend. he can say, "Yes, I love you." And once the child loves his mother as a duty, he will become incapable of loving any woman. Then the wife will come and it will be a duty; then the children will come and it will be a duty; then the whole life will become a duty. It cannot be a celebration, you cannot laugh, you cannot enjoy. It is a burden to be carried. This is what has happened to you. It is a misfortune, but if you understand it you can drop it. This is the key -- the inner part of it is silence, and the outer part of the key is celebration, laughter. Be festive and silent. Create more and more possibility around you -- don't force the inner to be silent, just create more and more possibility around you so that the inner silence can flower in it. That's all we can do. We can put the seed in the soil, but we cannot force the plant to come out. We can create the situation, we can protect, we can give fertilizer to the soil, we can water, we can see whether the sunrays reach or not, or how much sunrays are needed, whether more or less. We can avoid dangers, and wait in a prayerful mood. We cannot do anything else. Only the situation can be created. That's what I mean when I tell you to meditate. Meditation is just a situation; silence is not going to be the consequence of it. No, meditation is just

creating the soil, the surrounding, preparing the ground. The seed is there, it is always there; you need not put in the seed, the seed has always been with you. That seed is Brahma; that seed is atma. -- that seed is you. Just create the situation and the seed will become alive. It will sprout and a plant will be born, and you will start growing. Meditation doesn't lead you to silence; meditation only creates the situation in which the silence happens. And this should be the criterion -- that whenever silence happens laughter will come into your life. A vital celebration will happen all around. You will not become sad, you will not become depressed, you will not escape from the world. You will be here in this world, but taking the whole thing as a game, enjoying the whole thing as a beautiful game, a big drama, no longer serious about it. Seriousness is a disease.