Non-Doing Through Doing

Non-doing is meditation, but when I say non-doing is meditation I do not mean that you need not do anything. Even to achieve this non-doing, one has to do much. But this doing is not meditation. It is only a stepping stone, only a jumping board. All "doing" is just a jumping board, not meditation.

You are just on the door, on the steps.... The door is non-doing, but to reach the non-doing state of mind one has to do much. But one should not confuse this doing with meditation.

Life energy works in contradictions. Life exists as a dialectic: it is not a simple movement. It is not flowing like a river, it is dialectical. With each move life creates its own opposite and through the struggle with the opposite, it moves forward. With each new movement the thesis creates the antithesis. And this goes on continuously: thesis creating antithesis, being merged with antithesis, and becoming a synthesis that then becomes the new thesis; then again, there is the antithesis.

By a dialectical movement, I mean it is not a simple straight movement; it is a movement divided unto itself, dividing itself, creating the opposite, then meeting with the opposite again. Then, again, dividing into the opposite. And the same thing applies to meditation, because it is the deepest thing in life.

If I say to you, "Just relax," it is impossible because you do not know what to do. So many pseudo teachers of relaxation continue saying, "Just relax. Don't do anything; just relax." Then what are you going to do? You can just lie down, but that is not relaxation. The whole inner turmoil remains, and now a new conflict is there - to relax. Something over and above is added. The whole nonsense is there, the whole turmoil is there, with something added - to relax. A new tension is now added to all the old tensions.

So a person who is trying to live a relaxed life is the most tense person possible. He is bound to be because he has not understood the dialectical flow of life. He is thinking that life is a straight flow; you can just tell yourself to relax and you will relax.

It is not possible. So if you come to me, I will never tell you to just relax. First be tense, as utterly tense as possible. Be tense totally! First let your complete organism be tense, and go on being tense to the optimum, to your fullest possibility. And then, suddenly, you will feel a relaxation setting in. You have done whatsoever you could do, now the life energy will create the opposite.

You have brought tension to a peak. Now there is nothing further; you cannot go on. The whole energy has been devoted to tension, but you cannot continue with this tension indefinitely; it has to dissolve. Soon it will begin to dissolve; now be a witness to it.

Through being tense you have come to the verge, to the jumping point; that is why you cannot continue. If you continue further, you may just burst and die. The optimum point has been reached, now the life energy will relax by itself.

It relaxes. Now be aware and see this relaxation setting in. Each limb of the body, each muscle of the body, each nerve of the body is just going to innocently relax without anything being done on your part. You are not doing anything to relax it; it is relaxing. You will begin to feel many points in the organism relaxing. The whole organism will just be a crowd of relaxing points. Just be aware.

This awareness is meditation. But it is a nondoing; you are not doing anything because being aware is not an act. It is not an act at all; it is your nature, a very intrinsic quality of your being. You are awareness. It is your unawareness that is your achievement, and you have achieved it with much effort.

So to me, meditation has two steps: first, the active, which is not really meditation at all, and second, the completely nonactive, the passive awareness that is really meditation. Awareness is always passive, and the moment you become active you lose your awareness. It is possible to be active and aware only when awareness has come to such a point that now there is no need of meditation to achieve it, or to know it, or to feel it.

When meditation has become useless, you simply throw meditation. Now you are aware. Only then can you be both aware and active, otherwise not. As long as meditation is still needed, you will not be able to be aware during activity. But when even meditation is not needed....

If you have become meditation, you will no longer need it. Then you can be active, but even in that activity you are always the passive onlooker. Now you are never the actor: you are always a witnessing consciousness.

Consciousness is passive... and meditation is bound to be passive, because it is just a door to consciousness, perfect consciousness. So when people talk about "active" meditation, they are wrong. Meditation is passivity. You may need some activity, some doing, to get to it - that can be understood - but this is not because meditation itself is active. Rather, it is because you have been active through so many lives, activity has become so much a part and parcel of your mind, that you will even need activity to reach nonactivity. You have been so involved in activity that you cannot just drop it. So persons like Krishnamurti may continue to say, "Just drop it," but then you will continue to ask how to drop it. He will say, "Do not ask how. I am saying: just drop it! There is no 'how' to it.

There is no need for any 'how'."

And he is right in a way. Passive awareness or passive meditation has no "how" about it. It cannot have, because if there is any "how" then it cannot be passive. But he is wrong, too, because he has not taken the listener into account. He is talking about himself.

Meditation is without any "how," without any technology, without any technique. So Krishnamurti is absolutely correct, but the listener has not been taken into account. The listener has nothing but activity in him; to him everything is activity. So when you say, "Meditation is passive, nonactive, choiceless; you can just be in it. There is no need of any effort; it is effortless," you are just speaking a language that the listener is unable to understand. He understands the linguistic part of it - that is what makes it so difficult. He says, "Intellectually, I understand completely. Whatever you are saying is completely understood." But he is unable to understand the meaning.

There is nothing mysterious about Krishnamurti's teachings. He is one of the least mystical teachers.

Nothing is mysterious; everything is obviously clear, exact, analyzed, logical, rational, so anyone can understand it. And this has become one of the greatest barriers because the listener thinks he understands. He understands the linguistic part but he does not understand the language of passivity.

He understands what is being said to him - the words. He listens to them, he understands them, he knows the meaning of those words. He correlates; a whole correlated picture comes to his mind.

What is being said is understood; there is an intellectual communication. But he does not understand the language of passivity. He cannot understand. From where he is, he cannot understand. He can understand only the language of action, activity.

So I have to talk about activity. And I have to lead you through activity to the point where you can just jump into nonactivity. The activity must come to an extreme point, to a verge point, where it becomes impossible for you to be active - because if activity is still possible, you will continue.

Your activity must be exhausted. Whatever you can do, you must be allowed to do. Whatsoever you can do you must be pushed to do it to the very point where you, yourself, cry, "Now I cannot do anything; everything has been done. Now nothing is possible; no effort is possible. I am exhausted."

Then I say, "Now, just drop!" This dropping can be communicated. You are on the verge, you are ready to drop; now you can understand the language of passivity. Before this, you could not understand. You were too full of activity.

You have never been to the extreme point of activity. Things can be dropped only from the extreme, never from the middle. You cannot drop it. You can drop sex - if you have been totally in it, you can just drop it; otherwise not. You can drop everything that you have gone to the very limit of, where there is no further to go and no reason to go backward. You can drop it because you have known it totally.

When you have known something totally, it becomes boring to you. You may want to go into it further, but if there is no further to go, then you will just "stop dead." There is no going back, and there is no possibility of going on further; you are at the point where everything ends. Then you can just drop, you can be passive. And the moment you are passive, meditation happens; it flowers, it comes to you. It is a "dropping dead" into passivity.

So to me, it is effort that leads to no effort; it is action that leads to no action; it is mind that leads to meditation; it is this very material world that leads to enlightenment. Life is a dialectical process; its opposite is death. It is to be used, you cannot just drop it.

Use it, and you will be thrown into the opposite. And be aware: when you are thrown on the waves, be aware. It is easy. When you come from a tense climax to the point of relaxation, it is very easy to be aware, very easy. It is not difficult then because to be aware you have to just be passive, just be witnessing.

Even the effort of witnessing should not be there; it is not needed. You are so exhausted through activity that you will feel, "Damn it all - enough!" Then meditation is, and you are not. And once tasted, the taste is never lost again. It remains with you wherever you move, wherever you go.

It remains with you. Then it will penetrate your activities also. There will be activity, and there, in the very center of your being, there will be a passive silence. On the circumference, the whole world; in the center, the Brahman. On the circumference, every activity; in the center, only silence. But a very pregnant silence, not a dead silence, because out of this silence everything is born, even the activity.

Out of this silence, every creativity comes; it is very pregnant. So whenever I say "silence," I do not mean the silence of a cemetery, the silence of a house when no one is there. No, I mean the silence of a seed, the silence of a mother's womb, the silence of the roots underground. There is much hidden potentiality that will be coming soon.

Activity will be there but now the actor is no more, the doer is no more. This is the search; this is the seeking.

There are two antagonistic traditions: yoga and SAMKHYA. Yoga says that nothing can be achieved without effort. The whole of yoga, the whole of Patanjali's yoga, raja yoga, is nothing but effort.

And this has been the main current, because effort can be understood by many. Activity can be understood, so yoga has been the main current. But sometimes there have been freaks who say, "Nothing is to be done." A Nagarjuna, a Krishnamurti, a Huang Po - some freaks! They say, "Nothing is to be done. Do not do anything. Do not ask about the method." This is the tradition of samkhya.

There are really only two religions in the world: yoga and samkhya. But samkhya has always appealed only to a very few individuals here and there, so it is not talked about much. That is why Krishnamurti appears to be very novel and original. He is not, but he seems to be because samkhya is so unknown.

Only yoga is known. There are ashrams and training centers and yogis all over the world. Yoga is known: the tradition of effort. And samkhya is not known at all. Krishnamurti has not said a single word that is new, but because we are not familiar with the tradition of samkhya, it appears to be new.

Only because of our blissful ignorance are there revolutionaries.

Samkhya means knowledge, knowing. Samkhya says, "Only knowing is enough; only awareness is enough."

But these two traditions are just dialectical. To me, they are not opposed. To me, they are dialectical and a synthesis is possible. That synthesis I call effortlessness through effort: yoga through samkhya and samkhya through yoga - non-doing through doing. In this age, neither of these two opposite, dialectical traditions, by itself, will help. You can use yoga to achieve samkhya - and you will have to use yoga to achieve samkhya.

If you can understand Hegelian dialectics, this whole thing will be clear to you. The concept of dialectical movement has not been used by anyone since Marx, and he used it in a very non- Hegelian way. He used it for material evolution, for society, for classes, to show how society progresses through classes, through class struggle. Marx said, "Hegel was standing on his head, and I have put him on his legs again."

But, actually, the contrary is the case. Hegel was standing on his legs; Marx put him on his head. And because of Marx, the very pregnant concept of dialectics became contaminated with communism. But the concept is very beautiful, very meaningful; it has much depth in it. Hegel says, "The progress of an idea, the progress of consciousness, is dialectical. Consciousness progresses through dialectics."

I say any life force progresses through dialectics and meditation is the deepest phenomenon happening, the explosion of the life force. It is deeper than an atomic explosion because in an atomic explosion only a particle of matter explodes, but in meditation a living cell, a living existence, a living being, explodes.

This explosion comes through dialectics. So use action, and remember non-action. You will have to do much, but remember that all this doing is just to achieve the state in which nothing is done.

Samkhya and yoga both appear simple. Krishnamurti is not difficult; neither is Vivekananda. They are simple, because they have chosen one part of the dialectics; then they appear very consistent.

Krishnamurti is very consistent, absolutely consistent. In forty years of talking he has not uttered a single inconsistent word because he has chosen a part of the whole process, the opposite of which is denied. Vivekananda is also consistent: he has chosen the other part.

I may look very inconsistent. Or, you can say, I am only consistent in my inconsistencies. Use dialectics: relax through tension - meditate through action.

That is why I talk about fasting. It is an action, a very deep action. Taking food is not so great an activity as not taking it. You take it, and then you forget about it; it is not much of an activity. But if you are not taking food, it is a big act; you cannot forget it. The whole body remembers it; each single cell demands it. The whole body gets in a turmoil. It is very active - active to the very core. It is not passive.

Dancing is not passive, it is very active. In the end you become movement; the body is forgotten, only movement remains. Really, dancing is a most unearthly thing, a most unearthly art, because it is just rhythm in movement. It is absolutely immaterial so you cannot hold on to it. You can hold on to the dancer, but never to the dancing. It just withers in the cosmos. It is there, and then it is not there; it is not here, and then suddenly it is here - it comes out of nothing and it is here - it comes out of nothing and then, again, goes into nothing.

A dancer is sitting here; there is no dancing in him. But if a poet is sitting here, poetry may be in him; poetry can exist in the poet. A painter is here: in a very subtle way, painting is present. Before he paints, painting is there. But with a dancer nothing is present, and if it is present, then he is simply a technician and not a dancer. The movement is a new phenomenon coming in. The dancer becomes just a vehicle: the movement takes over.

One of the greatest dancers of this century was Nijinsky, and in the end he just went mad. He may have been the greatest dancer in all of history, but the movement became so much for him that the dancer was lost in it. In his last years he was unable to control it. He could begin dancing at any moment, anywhere, and when he was dancing, no one could say when it would end. It might even continue the whole night.

When friends asked him, "What has become of you? You begin, and then there is no end," Nijinsky said, "'I' am only in the beginning. Then something takes over and 'I' am no more - and who dances, I do not know."

He went mad. He was in a madhouse; he died in a madhouse.

Take any activity and go to the limit where there is either madness or meditation. Lukewarm search will not do.