Éric Baret: Interview #4

[Guest guest]

INTERVIEWER: Sometimes people decide that they are going to meditate

at such and such time, for a set amount of time. What is the value

of

meditation as a deliberate practice?

 

Its only value is to create a sense of separateness from what is

not " meditation " . It cuts one off from life. There cannot be any

intent in meditation. Meditation calls to you, you don't call it. It

is like asking something of a teacher: it is an insult to the

teacher. The teacher tells you what he needs to tell you: you just

keep your mouth shut and listen. You don't ask him anything. If you

ask him, there is no room for an answer, because you are full of

expectations. When with a teacher, you just listen; you ask nothing.

In the absence of asking, in the absence of grabbing, there is space

for the teaching to be expanded upon. Of course the teacher we talk

about can be called " life " too. Meditation calls to you at certain

moments of the day. You have completed one activity and you are not

yet engaged in another one: you sit quietly, or you lie down

quietly,

or you stand on your head quietly. You just face what is here now.

Immediately your body becomes the obvious object of observation.

 

First, you encounter the gross elements: fear, anxiety, heaviness,

tension. These dissolve rapidly into vibration, into light, into

heat. What remains is a feeling of space, of vibrating light, and it

resonates in your silence, in your presence. You are happy, you have

no needs, you have no future. Meditation calls to you.

 

But to meditate has meaning only if you have the same attitude

towards it as you have towards going to the toilet in the morning.

You don't do it to get enlightened. You do it because it is natural,

like when you wake up, you go to the toilet, you brush your teeth,

you take some water in your mouth, you chew it, and you spit it out.

It is totally normal. You have nothing to do at four in the morning.

If like most people you have neighbours you cannot make any noise.

If

you are sane of mind, you don't turn on an artificial light; for

this

would be an insult to beauty. You don't want to burn down your house

with a candle, therefore you don't light one, therefore you cannot

read. Nor will you put on any music because the neighbours are

psychopathic. Your dog is still sleeping, your wife lives with the

fantasy of having a husband. You have time on your hands. What can

you do? Nothing! So, you remain still.

 

The normal position for a happy body is the sitting position, so you

sit. You don't meditate, you just don't do anything. The moment the

thought " I meditate " comes, it is pure fantasy. Why do you stay

there, why don't you do something else? It all comes back to exactly

the same thing. You never meditate; you are just receptive to

whatever presents itself, to the body feeling. There is nothing to

think about. You are brought back to this resonance, to this

openness. You will feel the sun rising in your openness, and then

you

go on with your life.

 

But meditating every morning and knowing that you are meditating is

like trying to be humble for half an hour. Jean [Klein] used to say

that meditating is like somebody who does not want to take a train.

If you don't want to take the train, you don't have to do anything

about it. You just don't take the train! If your life is such that

you live in a peaceful country free from war, if you live alone, if

your dog is dead, then in the morning you find yourself regularly

going to the toilet, brushing your teeth and sitting: it is just a

matter of being practical. After that, some people will do some

exercises — life is movement — called yoga. But to think that at six

o'clock I must meditate is just like thinking that at six o'clock I

must not take the train. There is nothing to be done about it. In a

certain sense it may even cut us off from real meditation, that is

to

say those moments in life when silence beckons to us.

 

It reminds me of a friend of mine who became a famous guru. Another

friend went to see him and told me: " I feel that he has reached some

silence but that silence hasn't reached him... " I thought this was a

particularly bright comment about this " realized " friend. If you

meditate with a purpose, at a certain time, you may reach silence,

but silence will never reach you. True meditation envelops you in

silence. It can happen at any time, when you are making love,

drinking, watching TV. So when you feel silence enveloping you,

there

is no more TV for you, there is nothing else, just silence. So, you

give yourself to this silence more and more often.

 

If it happens in the morning, it is beautiful. When our lives are in

harmony, we wake up from deep sleep, not from the dream state.

Normally, in the morning, there is a kind of humility left over from

deep sleep, a call to remain still. You can call it meditation; in

the Kashmir Tradition, they just call it living in a natural way.

But

if one goes into the dream state after deep sleep, of course

meditation has to come as a decision, because in the dream state we

are already in the becoming process. Living harmoniously you go from

deep sleep to meditation or the waking state. So, in a certain way

you acknowledge the waking state, the light, the physical world,

from

the point of view of deep sleep, from the point of view of silence.

 

 

The duration of meditation is irrelevant. You cannot " meditate for

one hour " nor for one second. But the body lives according to

certain

rhythms. If one has the chance to eat regularly, to sit regularly,

to

sleep at the same time each day, in a certain way it may become more

easily evident to you that meditation does not depend on a sitting

position. But very few people are lucky enough to always eat at the

same time and sleep at the same time. So, for a yogi to sit at two

in

the morning is not a practice, it is just what happens. There is

nothing to it. When you become old and weak, you wake up later;

nothing is lacking.

 

When I met Jean Klein, he used to sit in the morning from three to

eight, doing yoga, pranayama and meditation. Later on, he was

confined to a wheelchair and he could not do it any more, but

nothing

was any different. There are just moments in life when the body is

ready to sit regularly and can thus express the beauty of life,

provided the sitting is effortless. If there is somebody to make

love

with, if there is a fight to be fought, if there is something else

to

be done, it is all exactly the same. You should not strive or push

to

do it. It resonates, it comes from inside.

 

When a musician feels a calling for music, he gets up at five

o'clock

and he writes music. It is for the joy of the music. Sitting is

purely for the joy of sitting. Otherwise it is reduced to this

fascist fantasy as in the Zen tradition, where you want to attain

something. This led to Soto and Rinzai involvement in the Manchurian

and Second World wars. The contributions of the Zen monasteries to

the fascist expression of the Japanese army in China were sustained

by the Zen attitude of wanting to reach satori, to do zazen. This

was

very clearly an example of wanting to " do meditation " . It is a form

of war, it creates war, if it is done with the slightest intention.

If it is something you don't know about and you are just drawn to

sit

happily and later on you are happy swimming, it is beautiful.