The chattering mind

You cannot sit even for a single minute, the mind goes on chattering: relevant, irrelevant, meaningful, meaningless thoughts go on. It is a constant traffic and it is always rush hour. You see a flower and you verbalize it; you see a man crossing the street and you verbalize it. The mind can translate every existential thing into a word, everything is being transformed. These words create a barrier, these words become an imprisonment. This constant flow toward the transformation of things into words, of existence into words, is the barrier. It is an obstacle to a meditative mind. So the first requirement toward a meditative growth is to be aware of your constant verbalizing, and to be able to stop it. Just see things; do not verbalize. Be aware of their presence, but do not change them into words. Let things be without language; let persons be without language; let situations be without language. It is not impossible, this is natural and possible. It is the situation as it now exists that is artificial, it is a created situation, but we have become so habituated to it, it has become so mechanical, that we are not even aware of the transformation, of the translation of experience into words. The sunrise is there. You are never aware of the gap between seeing it and verbalizing. You see the sun, you feel it, and immediately you verbalize it. The gap between seeing and verbalizing is lost; it is never felt. In that interval, in that gap, one must become aware. One must be aware of the fact that the sunrise is not a word. It is a fact, a presence, a situation. The mind automatically changes experiences into words. These words are accumulated and then come between existence (the existential) and consciousness. Meditation means living without words, living non-linguistically. Then these piled up memories, these linguistic memories, become obstacles towards meditative growth. Meditation means living without words, living in a situation non-linguistically. Sometimes it happens spontaneously. When you are in love with someone it happens. If you are really in love, then presence is felt—not language. Whenever two lovers are intimate with one another they become silent. It is not that there is nothing to express; on the contrary, there is an overwhelming amount to be expressed. But words are never there; they cannot be. They come only when love has gone. If two lovers are never silent, if they are always talking, it is an indication that love has died. Now they are filling the gap with words. When love is alive, words are not there, because the very existence of love is so overwhelming, so penetrating, that the barrier of language and words is crossed. And ordinarily, it is only crossed in love. Meditation is the culmination of love: love not for a single person, but love for the total existence. To me, meditation is a living relationship with the total existence that surrounds you. If you can be in love with any situation, then you are in meditation…. Society gives you language, it cannot exist without language; it needs language. But existence does not need it. I am not saying that you should exist without language. You will have to use it, but the mechanism of verbalization must be a mechanism that you can turn on and off. When you are existing as a social being, the mechanism of language is needed; without it you cannot exist in the society. But when you are alone with existence, the mechanism must be turned off; you must be able to turn it off. If you can’t turn it off the mechanism has gone mad. If you can’t turn it off—if it goes on and on, and you are incapable of turning it off, then the mechanism has taken hold of you. You have become a slave to it. Mind must be an instrument, not the master. But it has become the master. When mind is the master, a non-meditative state exists. When you are the master, your consciousness is the master, a meditative state exists. So meditation means mastering the mechanism, becoming a master to the mechanism. Mind, and the linguistic functioning of the mind, is not the ultimate. You are beyond it and existence is beyond it. Consciousness is beyond linguistics; existence is beyond linguistics. When consciousness and existence are one, they are in communion. This state is called meditation. The communion between consciousness and existence is meditation. Language must be dropped. I don’t mean that you must push it aside, that you must suppress it or eliminate it. What I mean is that something which is needed in society has become a twenty-four-hour-a-day habit for you and is not needed as such. When you walk, you need to move your legs but they must not move when you are sitting. If your legs go on moving while you are sitting then you are mad, then the legs have gone insane. You must be able to turn them off. In the same way, when you are not talking with anyone, language must not be there. It is a talking instrument, a technique to communicate; when you are communicating something, language should be used; but when you are not communicating with anybody it should not be there. If you are able to do this—and it is possible if you understand it—then you can grow into meditation. I say “you can grow” because life processes are never dead additions, they are always a growing process. So meditation is a growing process, not a technique. A technique is always dead; it can be added to you, but a process is always living. It grows, it expands. Language is needed, it is necessary, but you must not always remain in it. There must be moments when you are existential and there is no verbalizing. When you just exist, it is not that you are just vegetating—consciousness is there, and it is more acute, more alive, because language dulls consciousness. Language is bound to be repetitive but existence is never repetitive. So language creates boredom. The more important language is to you, the more linguistically- oriented the mind is—the more bored you will be. Language is a repetition, existence is not. When you see a rose, it is not a repetition. It is a new rose, altogether new. It has never been and it will never be again. For the first time and the last time, it is there. But when we say this is a rose, the word ‘rose’ is a repetition: it has always been there; it will always be there. You have killed the new with an old word. Existence is always young, and language is always old. Through language you escape existence, through language you escape life, because language is dead. The more involved you are with language, the more you are being deadened by it. A pundit is completely dead because he is language, words and nothing else. Sartre has written his autobiography. He calls it: Words. Meditation means living, living totally, and you can live totally only when you are silent. By being silent I do not mean unconscious. You can be silent and unconscious, but that would not be a living silence—again, you would have missed. So what to do? The question is relevant. Watch—don’t try to stop. There is no need to do any action against the mind. In the first place, who will do it? It will be mind fighting mind itself. You will divide your mind into two: one that is trying to boss over, the top-dog, trying to kill the other part of itself—which is absurd, it is a foolish game. It can drive you crazy. Don’t try to stop the mind or the thinking—just watch it, allow it. Allow it total freedom. Let it run as fast as it wants. You don’t try in any way to control it. You just be a witness. It is beautiful! Mind is one of the most beautiful mechanisms. Science has not yet been able to create anything parallel to mind. Mind still remains the masterpiece—so complicated, so tremendously powerful, with so many potentialities. Watch it! Enjoy it! Don’t watch like an enemy, because if you look at the mind like an enemy, you cannot watch. You are already prejudiced; you are already against. You have already decided that something is wrong with the mind—you have already concluded. And whenever you look at somebody as an enemy you never look deep. You never look into the eyes; you avoid. Watching the mind means: look at it with deep love, with deep respect, reverence—it is a gift from existence to you!Nothing is wrong in mind itself. Nothing is wrong in thinking itself. It is a beautiful process as other processes are. Clouds moving in the sky are beautiful—why not thoughts moving in the inner sky? Flowers coming to the trees are beautiful—why not thoughts flowering in your being? The river running to the ocean is beautiful—why not this stream of thoughts running somewhere to an unknown destiny? Is it not beautiful? Look with deep reverence. Don’t be a fighter, be a lover. Watch the subtle nuances of the mind; the sudden turns, the beautiful turns; the sudden jumps and leaps; the games that mind goes on playing; the dreams that it weaves—the imagination, the memory; the thousand and one projections that it creates.
Watch! Standing there, aloof, distant, not involved, by and by you will start
feeling…. As your watchfulness becomes deeper, your awareness becomes deeper, gaps start arising, intervals. One thought goes, another has not come; there is a gap. One cloud has passed, another is coming; there is a gap.
In those gaps, for the first time you will have glimpses of no-mind, you will have the taste of no-mind. Call it the taste of Zen, or Tao, or yoga. In those small intervals, suddenly the sky is clear and the sun is shining. Suddenly the world is full of mystery because all barriers are dropped. The screen on your eyes is no longer there. You see clearly, you see penetratingly; the whole existence becomes transparent. In the beginning these will be just rare moments, few and far in between. But they will give you glimpses of what samadhi is. Small pools of silence—they will come and they will disappear. But now you know that you are on the right track—you start watching again. When a thought passes, you watch it; when an interval passes, you watch it.Clouds are beautiful; sunshine also is beautiful. Now you are not a chooser. Now you don’t have a fixed mind: you don’t say, “I would like only the intervals.” That is stupid—because once you become attached to wanting only the intervals, you have decided again against thinking. And then those intervals will disappear. They happen only when you are very distant, aloof. They happen, they cannot be brought. They happen, you cannot force them to happen. They are spontaneous happenings. Go on watching. Let thoughts come and go—wherever they want to go— nothing is wrong! Don’t try to manipulate and don’t try to direct; let thoughts move in total freedom. And then bigger intervals will be coming. You will be blessed with small satoris, mini-satoris. Sometimes minutes will pass and no thought will be there; there will be no traffic—a total silence, undisturbed. When the bigger gaps come, you will not only have clarity to see into the bigger gaps you will have a new clarity arising; you will be able to see into the inner world. With the first gaps you will see into the world: trees will be more green than they look right now. You will be surrounded by an infinite music—the music of the spheres. You will be suddenly in the presence
of godliness—ineffable, mysterious, touching you although you cannot grasp it; within your reach and yet beyond. With the bigger gaps, the same will happen inside. Godliness will not only be outside, you will be suddenly surprised—it is inside also. It is not only in the seen; it is in the seer also—within and without. But don’t get attached to that either. Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises. Finally, eventually, one day, you become master. Then when you want to think, you think; if thought is needed, you use it; if thought is not needed, you allow it to rest. Not that mind is simply no longer there—mind is there, but you can use it or not use it. Now it is your decision. Just like legs: if you want to run you use them; if you don’t want to run you simply rest—legs are there. In the same way, mind is always there. No-mind is not against mind; no-mind is beyond mind. No-mind does not come by killing and destroying the mind; no-mind comes when you have understood the mind so totally that thinking is no longer needed. Your understanding has replaced it.