A few thousand years ago, there was a tribe in India. No one in the tribe had ever ventured outside their small community.
The other unique thing about that tribe was that no one had ever tasted salt. They didn’t know what salt was or that it had anything to do with food.
Once a traveller, a rich merchant, lost his way in the woods and ended up in their community. The members of the tribe were shocked to see someone dressed so differently, wearing gems and jewels. This was markedly different from the banana leaves covering their privates. The traveler smelled nicely of exotic scents. They didn’t know such things existed. The chief hosted the merchant, who was in turn taken aback when he ate their meals. He kept asking for salt and they said there was no such thing. Not knowing the customs, the merchant thought it was best not to press them for salt. At least, there were bananas that tasted as they should. He enjoyed their hospitality for a few days and while departing, extended an invitation to the chieftain. He promised that he would send someone to personally travel with the chief.
Surely enough, three months later, the merchant’s people came to take the chief to their village. They crossed the woods, travelled through many villages, got on a boat and journeyed through a long river before finally reaching the merchant. The chief was welcomed with open arms and the merchant gave him the best room to stay. Musicians, dancers and courtesans entertained him. He was served the best wine, the finest fruits.
The real surprise, however, came when he tasted the meal. It tasted a million times better than anything he’d ever had.
“There’s something special about this food,” he exclaimed. “It’s so fulfilling. I don’t know how to put it but even though our food looks the same, that has no taste compared to your food.
This must be the food that the gods eat.”
The merchant was very pleased with the praise and asked that the chief be served another helping of the dishes. Each bite the guest took, he couldn’t help but be amazed. All kinds of surreal tastes tickled his taste buds as he relished every single bite of the sumptuous meal. After the meal was over, he requested that he be given a tour of the kitchen where this heavenly food had been prepared. The merchant gladly led the chief into the kitchen.
There he examined each ingredient, every spice and when he got to salt, he was intrigued for he had only seen white sugar but never white salt. He tasted it and jumped in joy.
“Eureka!” he shouted, “this is it! This was the taste in my meal. What is it, my friend? Tell me, I must carry this back home to my people.”
“Oh this? It’s just salt.”
Instantly the merchant understood the tasteless meals he had to force down his throat back in his guest’s village. The village folk had never tasted salt. The chief still excited about his discovery asked him how much salt they put in the food.
“Generally, a teaspoon full. It depends on the quantity of the food.”
“Wow!” The chief exclaimed. “You know what, don’t worry about the meal. I’ll just eat salt now. If a pinch of it made the meal so tasty, I wonder what a bowl full would taste like.”
“Sir, it’ll be repulsive!”
Ignoring the host’s warning he put his mouth to the bowl of salt and took a mouthful, only to spit a moment later, cursing and crying for water.
“Salt is used to enhance the taste of the meal, my friend,” the merchant said giving him a class of water. “It’s not the meal in itself.”
Similarly, meditation is not the meal. It is the salt in your meal.
The salt of meditation is designed to accentuate the taste of the meal called life. It can’t replace life, it can’t be your life. On the other hand, it needs to be taken in the correct quantity so you may enjoy your life. It does not go in desserts, but only in your entrees and main course.
What I mean to say is that the bliss promised from meditation cannot come from just meditation alone. It is not a substitute for love, compassion, humility, empathy and other virtues. Meditation is simply one of the methods to mould yourself into the person you wish to be, a process that can help you discover your primal state of peace and bliss.
Meditation is a way of life.
It is not a panacea, meditation is not the answer to everything. It cannot help you regain lost love or limbs. It won’t set everything right in your life. Even when you are in supreme bliss, it doesn’t mean that your stock or real estate investments won’t go south, or that you will never meet with an accident or that your partner will never cheat on you. All of those things can and will still happen. What meditation will do to you is give you the grace and mindfulness to ease through life.
If you have a difficult boss or an abusive partner, your meditation will not change their nature, not directly anyway. It won’t bring discipline or compassion in them. If your divinity could change others directly then Jesus of Nazreth, the messiah, would not have been crucified. If meditation was transformational then a hatemonger would not have poured melting glass in the ears of Mahavira.
Meditation is your personal journey, an intimate one. It is only about you. It does not change anything directly in others. Meditation remodels you so that you become a catalyst of positive change, not in your own life but in the lives of most of those who are connected with you. This is the only way meditation affects the lives of those around you. Gradually, the light in you starts to transform you. The way you think, act or react changes and that change, often (not always) brings a change in those around you.
These worthy rewards from meditation come from doing correct meditation and correct meditation alone. Not all that looks white is salt and if it is not salt, it will not add taste to your meal no matter how salt-like it may appear. Similarly, not all those who meditate are actually meditating – just sitting still is not meditation. Even chameleons and crocodiles can sit still for hours but they are not in meditation. Feeling relaxed after your meditation does not mean you meditated well and sleeping through your meditation is definitely not meditation. If you wish to benefit from meditation, it has to be done correctly, accurately, just like Arjuna’s arrow pierced right through the eye of the fish.
What is Meditation
Many years ago there was a widely reported incident in the news that a guard at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba allegedly flushed a detainee’s holy book down the toilet. This had become a raging news item and numerous talk shows with pseudo-experts were hosted by various TV channels worldwide.
Amidst all that, a reporter in Australia phoned Ajahn Brahm, who was the abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine, Western Australia. The reporter was doing a feature taking statements from various religious heads.
“What will you do, Ajahn Brahm,” the reporter asked, “if someone took a Buddhist book and flushed it down your toilet?”
The abbot answered, “Sir, if someone took a Buddhist holy book and flushed it down my toilet, the first thing I would do is call a plumber!”
They shared a brief laugh before the venerable Ajahn Brahm went on to say most beautifully, “Someone may blow up many statues of the Buddha, burn down Buddhist temples, or kill Buddhist monks and nuns. They may destroy all this, but I’ll never allow them to destroy Buddhism. You may flush a holy book down the toilet, but I’ll never let you flush forgiveness, peace and compassion down the toilet.”15
This is meditation if you ask me. It is your ability to retain your virtues in the face of all adversities. This grace and presence of mind comes with correct practice of meditation. The journey of meditation has three important milestones. In the first stage, meditation is an act. You sit down and you train your mind to behave and be a certain way. It requires discipline and determination. Once you champion the art of meditation, you get to the second stage where it becomes your second nature. A sort of effortlessness arises in your meditation and the virtues, which you had to work hard to imbibe earlier, increasingly become a part of you. In the third stage, meditation becomes a state of your mind. You no longer do meditation, you are in meditation. A state of bliss that remains unperturbed under most circumstances. An altruistic sense arises naturally for the welfare of others, severing your attachments and bonds with all things meaningless.