Illusions

"Silence and self-control are disciplines of the mind. ... We usually associate silence with speech – the absence of speech. Real silence, however, is a desire-free, disturbance-free, peaceful mind. When there is peace of mind, the self is seen, and all ignorance-born, self-imposed limitations come to light and therefore disintegrate. A mind that is thus ever peaceful, ever alert is itself meditation."

The Song of God
Venkatesananda


I'm sure I have mentioned it before, but sitting on your butt isn't all there is to meditation. We should look to our zafu as no more than the place where we learn how to meditate and where we regularly return to perfect it. It is like your desk in a school classroom, it's where you learn the skills needed to live a better life, not what life is all about. The real practice of meditation takes place everywhere else — throughout the day, in all situations, with everyone we meet. Meditation is the method we employ to face the world, and in using it we find that we have unlimited abilities to handle what life throws at us, unlimited abilities to grow.

Siting on the zafu is where we get our eyes checked and any necessary corrective eyewear supplied. It is where we learn to see who we really are, who "WE" really are, or, maybe a little more accurately, what "WE" really is. It is here that we learn to see through the delusions we have taken for granted all our lives.

Once the glasses are in place, then, and only then, can we truly say we are ready to deal with the world, because before then, what we think we see, what we "know" we see, is only an illusion. So, submit to the discipline, find that silence tucked away between two thoughts, and then with your new eyes, get off your butt and use those skills in every other aspect of your life.