STILLNESS

I was not much of a writer. My first writing stint was I guess writing out a police report. I had lost my security pass to enter my office building. As it was a high-security area I was asked to lodge a report with the police. And so I made my way to the nearest police station. The officer on duty asks if I could write and handed me a piece of paper and pen. I began to write the whole days event. He watched me for a while and asks what I was doing. I replied "Writing a report." He replied in an angry tone, "Ringkas sudahlah. Tak payah buat karangan", meaning "Make it short, no need to write an essay" and snatched the paper and pen from me. He wrote the report for me. It had these words on it. "Hilang pass keselamatan - Lost Security Pass." To my small mind, I thought if I gave them the details of my day's travel as in Gulliver's Travels it might aid them in locating it. 

But miraculously I got back the pass when I decided to trace my path and finally landed at the doorsteps of the headquarters of the postal department after stopping over at a couple of banks. It just was minutes before the counters open. As the shutters were half raised to allow staffs to enter I took a peep inside the building. A lady who saw me from her place at the customer service counter flagged me to come in. She went through the drawers at her desk and pulled out my pass asking if it was mine. A miracle indeed.

Continuing my writings on Experience, Pico Iyer a travel writer and journalist in a TED talk mentions that it is not our experience that makes our lives - its what we do with it. Imagine a hurricane he says, that "suddenly sweeps down your town, and reduces every last thing to rubble. One man is traumatized for life. But another almost feels liberated and realizes this is a great chance to start his life anew. It's exactly the same event but radically different responses. There is neither good or bad as  Shakespeare told in Hamlet but thinking makes it so."

And so we are thrown into a situation and they watch us come out of it. They watch how we fare. Now I understand when Agathiyar told me I needed the experience and that it was all his doing when I faulted along the way.

And so Agathiyar put me into an exact situation to see how I fared immediately after I went for a Nadi reading where he had counseled me about anger management earlier.

The power of thought can either calm you down or bring you to the verge of lunacy. While one breaks down in the face of an event another sees a blessing out of it.

Pico goes on to speak about a very valuable component that we are missing in life - sitting still and appreciating the stillness of the moment.

"We all know it is one of our greatest luxuries - the empty space. In many a piece of music its the pause or the rests that gives the piece its beauty."

True. When Gowri Arumugam came over with the draft version of her song that had yet to be mastered, "Paadavanthene Kannurangaayoh Agatheesane", that was to be one of the songs that went into her first devotional album "Agathiyar Geetham" released by her company Raagawave Production, the unexpected moment of pause she decided to include in the track stunned me and brought me to tears as I sat listening to it played in her car. We had sat together earlier penning the words for the lyrics of this and other songs at ATM and she had sung a demo but there was no pause then. At the eleventh hour, she thought of pausing at that point that as Pico says gave beauty to the piece. Bravo Gowri Arumugam for including that thought and the silence in the track.

Osho too gives importance to the pause or silence that is held between the syllables or words in a mantra asking us to concentrate on and enter that space, that moment of brief silence. Osho in "The White Lotus", Jaico Publishing House, 2004, says,

A real meditation is not verbal, a real meditation is utterly silent. A real prayer is not verbal, a real prayer is an absolute silence in the heart. Nothing stirs, but deep gratitude is felt. It is feeling not thinking. Words are inadequate to express the truth. To be silent is the bridge from the ordinary mind to the cosmic mind, from mind to no-mind. 

Lord Muruga upon breaking Arunagiri's fall from the temple tower at Tiruvannamalai, instructs him to sit still. What was the secret to sitting still?

Osho's discourse might shed some light here.

When people come to me and they ask, ‘How to meditate?’ I tell them, ‘There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that’s all. That’s the whole trick of meditation – how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.

When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the center, it settles down towards the center. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Non-doing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read the Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.

Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed – courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that – the courage to be meditative.

According to Osho, the technique that’s especially effective when practicing meditation is to become an “observer of the mind.”

Don’t do anything – no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of god – just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don’t disturb it, don’t prevent it, don’t repress it; don’t do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.

As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes aflame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing – without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.

Meditation is just being delighted in your own presence; meditation is a delight in your own being. It is very simple – a totally relaxed state of consciousness where you are not doing anything. The moment doing enters you become tense; anxiety enters immediately. How to do? What to do? How to succeed? How not to fail? You have already moved into the future.

If you are contemplating, what can you contemplate? How can you contemplate the unknown? How can you contemplate the unknowable? You can contemplate only the known. You can chew it again and again, but it is the known. 

Meditation is just to be, not doing anything – no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are. And it is a sheer delight. From where does this delight come when you are not doing anything? It comes from nowhere, or, it comes from everywhere. It is uncaused, because the existence is made of the stuff called joy. It needs no cause, no reason. If you are unhappy you have a reason to be unhappy; if you are happy you are simply happy – there is no reason for it.  

(Source: https://hackspirit.com/osho-reveals-almost-everyone-gets-meditation-wrong-correctly/)

True. Lord Muruga did not give initiation or mantra and have Arunagiri sit in contemplation or chant it or visualize it. He only said, "Sit doing nothing" or "Summa Eru".

Pico enlightens us of the nature of the Japanese city Kyoto that brings stillness to the mind. He describes the beauty of Kyoto in Japan a beautiful city encircled by hills filled with more than 2000 temples and shrines where people have been sitting still for 800 years or more where the day stretches out like a meadow. He says, "We need to take conscious efforts to open up space in our lives, nothing is so urgent as sitting still."