From Last Talks at Saanen 1985, Saanen, 21 July 1985

SO WHAT IS truth? Is there such a thing as truth? Is there such a thing—an absolute, irrevocable truth, not dependent on time, environment, tradition, knowledge, what the Buddha said, or what somebody said? The word is not the truth. The symbol is not the truth. The person is not the truth. Therefore there is no personal worship. K is not important at all. So we are seeking what is truth. If there is any. And whether there is something that is beyond time. The ending of all time. And they have said that meditation is necessary to come upon this. To have a quiet mind. We will go into that.

What is meditation? According to the dictionary, the word means to ponder over, to think over. Also it has a different meaning, both in Sanskrit and in Latin, which is to measure—which means, of course, comparison. There is no measurement without comparison. So can the brain be free of measurement? Not measurement by the ruler, by the yardstick, in kilometres, miles, but can the brain be free of all measurement, of becoming, not becoming, comparing, not comparing? Can the brain be free of this system of measurement? I need to measure to get a suit made. I need measurement to go from here to another place; distance is measurement, time is measurement. So can the brain be free of measurement, that is, of comparison, and have no comparison whatsoever so that the brain is totally free? This is real meditation. Is that possible living in the modern world with all the noise, the vulgarity, the circus that is going on in the name of religion, making money, having sex, breeding children? Can one be free of all that? Not in order to get something; to be free.

So meditation is not conscious meditation. It is not collective meditation, group meditation, solitary meditation, according to Zen, Buddhist, and Hindu systems. Meditation can’t be a system because then you practise, practise, practise, and your brain gets more and more dull, more and more mechanical. So is there a meditation that has no direction, which is not conscious, deliberate? Find out.

That requires great energy, attention, passion. Then that very passion, energy, the intensity of it, is silence. Not contrived silence. It is the immense silence in which time and space are not. Then there is that which is unnameable, which is holy, eternal.