Meditation is like the breeze that comes in when you leave the window open; but if you deliberately keep it open, deliberately invite it to come, it will never appear.
Interpretation
Meditation requires openness and invitation, but forcing it can prevent its natural occurrence.
In this quote, Jiddu Krishnamurti suggests that meditation is a naturally soothing experience, akin to a gentle breeze that brings tranquility. However, he emphasizes that if one attempts to control or force the process of meditation, just as one might force the breeze to come in, it can elude us. The quote encourages a balance of openness and receptivity, promoting a more effortless and organic approach to achieving a meditative state.
In practice
During a mindfulness workshop, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of being open during meditation.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
Her work, I really think her work is finding what her real work is and doing it, her work, her own work, her being human, her being in the world.
You are not creating a new you; you are releasing a hidden you. The process is one of self discovery. The hidden you that wants to emerge is in perfect balance.
The whole world, from the least to the greatest, must know the truth, so that man may understand the great laws that govern his life. He must learn to control his own destiny, to heal his own body and bring happiness to his own soul.
He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."
The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.