Meditation Methods
Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai
Houston, TX, U.S.A., November 12, 1993
(Originally in English)
Q: I heard on some of Your tapes that You recommend not mixing
practices. Perhaps You can clarify for us what You intended by that.
M: Only when it has anything to
do with breath control; that is all. Otherwise, there is not much there.
For example, there are many kinds of so-called meditation. People say
anything is meditation, so we are confused. But actually there are different
types. There is a kind of mantra practice; they recite something. People
also call that meditation, so that's confusing. People tell you to pay
attention to your breathing- you breathe in and breathe out, and that
they also call meditation. Some people say you have to pay attention
to the solar plexus, the abdomen, all the time; that they also call
meditation. Fine, there is nothing wrong with that.
But
we abuse the word "meditation" too much and confuse people;
because otherwise, I would say that everyone meditates anyhow. This
morning when some of the television interviewers said, "We are
not used to meditation; we don't know what is meditation, and you tell
us to meditate," I said "Yes, you meditate all the time; some
people meditate on money, some people meditate on girls, some people
meditate on drugs when they don't have enough of them." That's
their meditation. When you pay attention to something to a very extravagant
degree that is when you meditate.
Therefore,
I say to you, "Be concentrated, be one-pointed with my teachings".
That's why you get the best results. If you meditate on my teachings
and meditate on money at the same time or meditate on a mantra at the
same time, of course, you are divided and that's very logical. I am
not a dictator. I just tell you what is good for you. Whatever you want
to do, you have to pay all your attention to that point. Whether you
meditate, you fix the car, or you drive a taxi, if you don't pay attention,
you will get into trouble.
That's
very simple, but people think I am forbidding you this and that. No,
everything I tell you is just good advice as a duty of a teacher. Whatever
you know, you have to tell them. Of course, you make the choice. If
you don't follow my advice, it's okay. You are responsible for your
actions, the success of your meditational practice. But I am responsible
to tell you what is good for you, so don't misunderstand that it's a
kind of prohibiting or dictating. Everything I tell you is the age-old
essence of a practitioner who wants to get away from all the traps of
this materialism and rise above this mind-matter controlling power so
that he can realize there is something greater than his own body and
his own machine brain, the computer.
That's
it. All of these are kind of secret codes, secret methods, to speed
yourself on the highway of spirituality. There is nothing dictating
about that because if you don't do it, I will never say anything to
you. I will never scold you. I will never ring you and say, "Hey,
you didn't do it." Or I will never check up on it. It's all your
choice. The path of freedom is a path of responsibility, self-responsibility,
so I never impose anything. Just to suggest, just to tell you, "This
is a good way. If you do it, you surely will get that. If you don't,
okay, you'll get half or maybe three quarters."
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