DHYANO-THE INNER PEACE

Ma Dhyano. Dhyano means meditation. In English and in all the western languages, the words that can be used for dhyano fall short; they don’t express its reality.
Meditation only hints at it; it does not express it totally, but that’s the closest word that can be used. Meditation gives you a feeling as if you are meditating upon something, as if there is an object, and you are meditating on it – meditating on a flame, meditating on God, meditating on the sunrise; but there is an object. The word ”meditation” implies an object, and that’s the difference: dhyano does not connote any object. It is simply a state of inner silence: no thought, no content, no object. One simply is.
There is nothing to be known, nothing to be felt, nothing to be contemplated upon, nothing to be concentrated upon, nothing to be meditated upon. The whole mind has to be put aside. One is simply the silence, the stillness which is left behind when the mind becomes quiet. That is dhyano,
and that is true meditation. It is a very natural state. It does not need any effort. All that it needs is understanding, watching.

Concentration needs effort. Meditation in the western sense also needs practicing, but in the East we have come across a space which needs no effort, which is already ours. Just as inside the rosebud there is space, so inside you there is a beautiful space – utterly quiet, calm, cool. We have not to create it; we have only to help the bud to open. And once the bud opens we will know the
space; the space opens up.

I am giving you a very small name, but it contains the whole secret of all the religions; it contains the
experience of all the Buddhas. If you can have even a taste of it, just a drop of it will be enough to
transform you. So start sitting silently with closed eyes. Just being, not doing anything: no mantra, no chanting.
Thoughts will go on passing; let them pass, watch. They will come and they will go; watch them coming, watch them going. Just like the breath comes in and goes out, just watch the breath too. As silence grows you will start hearing the heartbeat; watch that too. As the silence deepens, only the watcher remains.
That is meditation: when only the watcher is there and there is nothing to watch. Then the watcher turns upon itself, then the watcher watches itself, then the witness witnesses itself. Then the observer itself becomes the observed too. That is the pinnacle, the highest peak, that human consciousness can reach. Beyond that there is nothing. Beyond that the same silence, the same
coolness, the same bliss, continues forever.