Yoga Sutra

 

In fact, wherever meditation happens, there is a special quality. Meditation brings special quality. It is not in the objects, it is in you. When you meditate on something, you give your inner being to it. Suddenly it becomes sacred, holy. Things are not holy; meditation makes them holy. You can meditate on a rock, and suddenly the rock becomes the temple. No Buddha is so beautiful like that rock when you meditate on it. What is meditation? It is showering the rock with your consciousness. It is moving around the rock, so absorbed, so deep in rapport, that the bridge is there between you and the rock. The gap disappears you are bridged. In fact, you don’t know now who is the observer and who is the observed. The observer becomes the observed, the observed becomes the observer. Now you don’t know who is the rock and who is the meditator. Suddenly, the energies meet and mingle, and there is the temple. Don’t unnecessarily create distractions – then you become miserable.

 

Somebody was here and he is doing a certain type of mantra for many years, and he says, ”Distraction comes again and again.” I asked, ”What is the distraction?” His wife has died and he loved her very much. And I used to know that woman; she was really a beautiful person. He has never remarried. He really loved her. No other woman ever attracted him. Now she is dead and the vacuum is there, and he feels the loneliness. Because of this loneliness, he went to some teacher, that ”How to get rid of the memory of my wife?” So he gave him a mantra. Now, he has been chanting the mantra for at least three years, and suddenly again and again while he is chanting the mantra like a robot, the wife comes, the face appears. He has not been able to forget the wife. The mantra has not proved strong enough, so he was here, very miserable. He said, ”Three years have passed and I am always haunted by her memory, and it seems that I cannot get out of it. And even this mantra has not helped. And three years, really and religiously I have been doing it.” I said, ”You are a fool. There is no need to do this mantra. Repeat your wife’s name; make it a mantra. Keep her photo before you: look at the photo make it the image of the divine.” He said, ”What are you saying? She is my distraction.” So I said, ”Make the distraction your meditation. Why create conflict?”

 

Distraction can be made the very object of meditation. And it is a distraction because there is some appeal deep down, some harmony. That’s why the mantra proved impotent, futile because the mantra is just over imposed. Somebody says some word and you repeat it, and the word has no appeal for you. It never existed for you before, it has no roots in you. The wife is very deep. Love is deeper than any mantra, so why waste your time? He said, ”I will try.” And just after a few days, he wrote a letter, that ”This is tremendous! I am feeling so calm and so peaceful. And really, my wife is so beautiful. There is no need to think that she is distracting me.”

 

Remember this, because you may be doing many things like that. Whenever you feel something is distracting, that simply shows that you are naturally attracted towards that, nothing else. So why create conflict1 – move into the same direction; make it an object of meditation. Be natural, don’t be suppressive and don’t create conflict, and you will attain.

 

Nobody ever attains through conflict. Conflict will create a split personality. Move to the natural attraction; then you are one, then you are whole, then you are together. Then you are one piece, not a house divided against itself. And when you move as one piece there is a dance in your step and there is nothing which is not divine.

 

You may be surprised – it happened: one great Buddhist monk, Nagarjuna, was staying in a small village. Somebody came... somebody became very attracted to him. But the man said that ”Your style of life, the way you move like an emperor in the robes of a beggar, appeals deeply. I would also like to become a religious man, but there is a trouble. I have a cow, and I love her too much. And she is so beautiful. And I cannot leave her.” Just a cow... He had no wife, no children, he got never married, but he loves the cow. And he felt a little foolish while he was saying this. He said, ”Because I know you will understand, that’s why I am saying. But this is my whole trouble: so much attachment with this cow. And I have brought her up and she has become so much one with me and she loves me. So what to do1 So Nagarjuna said, ”There is no need to go anywhere. If somebody loves someone so deeply, then there is no need to move anywhere. Make this love your meditation. Meditate on the cow.”

 

Don’t create any conflict. Remember, if love and meditation are in conflict, meditation will be defeated. Love will be victorious because love is so beautiful. Meditation can be victorious only on the wings of love. Use love as a vehicle.