I would like to give you two things: Roots into this earth and wings to find heaven. Meditation is the earth, it is simply being here now. This very moment you can spread your roots deep, do it! Once the roots are there, your wings will automatically reach into the highest possible sky. Compassion is the sky, meditation is the earth, and when meditation and compassion meet, a Buddha is born.

Consciousness means living with a witness; unconsciousness means living without a witness. When you are walking on the road, you can walk consciously — that’s what Buddha says one should do — you are alert, deep down you are aware that you are walking; you are conscious of each movement. You are conscious of the birds singing in the trees, the early morning sun coming through the trees, the rays touching you, the warmth, the fresh air, the fragrance of newly opening flowers. A dog starts barking, a train passes by, you are breathing… you are watching everything. You are not excluding anything out of your alertness; you are taking everything in. The breath goes in, the breath goes out… you are watching everything that is happening.

 

 

Samadhi is a word very difficult to translate into English; there exists no parallel. But in Greek there is a word which is parallel; that word is ataraxia. The Greek word means quiet, calm, of deep inner contentment. That is the meaning of samadhi so contented, so deeply contented, that nothing disturbs now, nothing distracts now.

So deeply in tune with existence, in a sort of atonement — at-one-ment — that now there is no problem. There is no other who can disturb; the other has disappeared. The other disappears with your thoughts. The thoughts is the other. In the gaps is the samadhi, ataraxia. In the gaps is calm and quiet.

Not that when you have attained to it you will not be able to think, no. Not that your capacity to think will disappear. In fact, just on the contrary, when you live in the gap you become capable of thinking for the first time.

Before it you were just victims, victims of a social atmosphere, victims of a thousand and one thoughts surrounding you — not a single thought of your own. They were thoughts; you were not capable of thinking. Those thoughts had settled on you as birds settle on a tree by the evening. They had entered in you. They were not original; they were all borrowed.

You had been living a life which is a borrowed life. That’s why you were sad. That’s why there was no life in you. That’s why you looked dead, there was no vibration. That’s why there was no joy, no delight. Everything was blocked by borrowed thoughts. Your whole stream was blocked. You could not flow because of borrowed thoughts.

When you become a part of samadhi, ataraxia, a deep inner calm of the gaps, intervals; you become for the first time capable of seeing, of thinking — but now these thoughts will be your own. Now you will be able to create an original thought. You will be able to live an original life, fresh, fresh as the morning, fresh as the morning breeze. You will become creative.
In samadhi you become a creator because in samadhi you become part of God.

There is a saying of Pascal’s that most of man’s troubles come from his not being able to sit quietly in his chamber. Yes, that is true. If you can sit quietly in your inner chamber, almost all the troubles will disappear. You create them by running hither and thither. You create them by unnecessarily getting attached to your thoughts — which are not yours. You create them because you cannot sit at rest.

The real way circulates everywhere;
How could it require practice or enlightenment?
The essential teaching is fully available;
How could effort by necessary?
Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust;
Why take steps to polish it?
Nothing is separate from this very place;
Why journey away?

- Dogen

Every moment is a new opportunity to more fully experience and express the value of your life. The value you live is the value you give. What you get out of life is not merely a result of what you put into it. What you get out of life and what you put into it are precisely one and the same. Every moment is an opportunity to invest yourself in meaningful purpose. The quality of that investment at any given time is what defines the true quality of your life. Fulfillment is not about acquiring something that exists outside of you. It is about more richly and more completely experiencing the unique, magnificent value that is already and always within you.
Life’s circumstances do not, in and of themselves, enhance or detract from the value of your life. Each event, each circumstance gives you a new way to explore and experience that value. The best you can live is the best you are willing to give, and there’s no limit to what that can be. Fully invest yourself in each moment, and delight in the limitless treasure that is already yours.

When you meditate on “Who am I?” you will come across this point, and it will dissolve. And the deeper you will go… then deeper questions will come: first sociological, theological, then biological. You have a man’s body or a woman’s body: ...the question will arise, “Am I a man or a woman?” The consciousness is neither. The consciousness cannot be male or female. The consciousness is simply consciousness; it is just the capacity of being a witness. Soon you will pass that barrier too; you will forget that you are man or woman.

And so on, so forth. When all the old identities are dropped, nothing remains, only the question resounds in the silence: “Who am I?” The question cannot go on, on its own; it needs some answers, otherwise it cannot persist. A point comes when asking becomes absurd… the question also evaporates. That is the moment which is called self-knowing — ATMAGYAN. That is the moment when, without receiving any answer, you simply know, you feel, who you are.