When I talk around me with people, I can see that some of them have a lot of preconception about meditation. Some of them think that meditation is a boring thing, some others that it is to be sited in a temple, saying “Om”, burning incense and saying mantras… This is of course a form of meditation – and can be a very powerful one if you know what you are doing, but meditation is much more than that. Much, much more!

Ultimately, the meditation is a skilful means to really bring about, basically, mindfulness. Because the mind is distracted – and distraction is the root core of all our problems – with mindfulness we bring our mind home to create even more mindfulness and awareness. We slowly uncloak or peel away all the barriers and obstructions to slowly find and reveal our true heart, our fundamental nature as well as compassion and wisdom, to ultimately attain the realisation of the nature of the spirit, to the enlightenment. In the Mahāmudrā, the highest Tibetan meditation teachings tradition, when we talk about meditation in that respects it is often to mean binding to the recognition of our true nature.

From the yogi experience point of view, the people from the west are often seen as “practical seekers”. They are seeking for practical means, practical things, but sometime trying to be practical is not practical at all! As we are trying to be practical, we search answer to the fundamental questions like: How can we relate?, how can we be there? … It’s goal oriented, but sometime we are really out there! And sometime we miss it, because the answer we seek is not out there, but actually here, inside of us. We must find it and realise it personally to disarm our own aggressiveness, our negativity, and there is a way to do it.

So we have to understand that, contrary to what our ego makes us think, our personality is not one continuous flow, but more a suite of episodes influenced by our mood, our emotions, but also our personal cultural background, the environment and so on… On one moment we can be so many people: sometime we can be aggressive, even negative, we can be that, and at the same moment a wonderful person, because we have both the light and the shadow inside us.

Stairs at Varanasi, India.

The point to the spiritual path is really to teach you what to adopt and what to abandon. Abandon the negative aspect and adopt the more positive and wholesome aspects of yourself, and there is a way to do it.

It’s a choice in fact. We have to be educated, aware, and beware, because sometime we don’t know how to make a choice, because we don’t have the wisdom to discerne. We canot discern because we don’t have the wisdom to look beyond the projections, the illusions of our mind, to find the pure spirit that exist behind them. That insight, that wisdom, we have to cultivate by the teaching in ourselves so we can discerne for ourselves, not waiting for someone to tell us what to do or not to do, but decide for ourselves, in consciousness.

So to begin very simply, one of the most important points for all of us is to become real, to become authentic, genuine, so the all thing is to strip away all that is not natural. A natural striptease! Freed away, striped away, we become free of ourselves. There is so much stories, so much cinema in our mind, so much… That is why there is no peace, so much pressure and also so much speed. So we need to kind of slow down. Slow down is not meaning becoming extremely slow! When we are very mindful, conscientious, we can be very efficient by accomplishing things in a very short span of time. Because sometime our live is so filled with activity, but what does it bring to you ultimately? We are engage in a lot of activities, but we do a lot of things without meanings.

What have I accomplished? Sometime we have to question that. Sometime we just get carried away. We need to simplify. Facing death help us sort out the paradise. Because we realise we could die any day. When you come to face death you come to face life, face yourselves and sort out the paradise. In one hand we can be so many things, and busy, and confused, but next moment if you know how to kind of stop, take a break or come home, just quietly, very simply. It’s an incredible thing to be able to settle, purified and freed… Sometime it is as simple as that. Just to sit and to be with yourself. Just to be. Things actually dissolve, melt away, ordinary mind seemed to dissolve and there is a sens of transcendance, a sens of peace. Something that can change your way with yourself and the other by getting to the next level of consciousness, not like an effort, but more like a natural behaviour that unit us back to the world.

Freely inspired by the words of Sogyal Rinpoché