Delight in Meditation
It is easy to meditate if we don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If we want just to be blissful and we don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together.
Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. We have to take only one task upon ourselves: that we have to still our mind. And we can force our mind to be stilled, but we will become sad, we will have a long face. Osho says, “That’s why our saints — so-called saints — look sad. Sadness has become a necessary quality for being a saint. They can’t laugh, they can’t dance, they can’t sing, they can’t love, they can’t rejoice.”
Such people talk about bliss but they only talk about it. We don’t see any bliss in their eyes, we don’t see any bliss in their milieu, we don’t see any bliss radiating from their inner centre. They look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the simple reason that they have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. They have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation; and then they have forced their mind to be still.
It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden. The silence of the garden is full of music: the bees humming and the birds singing and a distant call of the cuckoo. They are all in it, essential parts of it. The garden has a very living silence, full of song and joy. The cemetery is also silent, but it is only the silence of death; because there is nobody, hence there is silence.
We can meditate, force ourselves to be silent, but we will miss God, we will miss nirvana. Things have to be spontaneous and natural, not practiced, not cultivated. Cultivated blissfulness is only a mask. We are smiling, but the smile is not in the heart. We are showing joy, but we are not joyous. Our heart is a desert; but only on the face we have put plastic flowers. They may deceive others, but they can’t deceive our own self and they can’t deceive a master.
Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means sharing with the world. Meditation we can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful we will have to come back to the world.
Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when we are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then we have to learn a totally new way of life.
