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.
Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
Living out here, I have found that many creatures would prefer not to fight. But if your first instinct is to reach for your sword, you will never discover that.
Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.
I am a collection of dismantled almosts.
Nothing focuses your mind quite like flying a jet. That's one reason NASA requires that astronauts fly T-38s: it forces us to concentrate and prioritize in some of the same ways we need to in a rocket ship.
Loving kindness towards ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. It means we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.
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