“Meditation does not involve doing, achieving, or transforming. From the perspective of Advaita Vedānta, there is no distance between the subject who meditates and what is sought through practice. There is no journey, since there is no duality: what is, is already present. Silence is not conquered; it manifests spontaneously when the search ceases, when the will to change stops completely.
The mind, by its very nature, remains in motion: it names, discriminates, anticipates. It seeks to improve, to possess, to control. But such impulses do not lead to the real, but unfold within the realm of illusion—māyā. In this sense, meditation is not a method aimed at obtaining a particular state. It is, in its most rigorous formulation, an unmediated recognition of what already is. Tat tvam asi — “You are that,” affirms the Chāndogya Upaniṣad — not as metaphysical consolation, but as direct observation. Not as conceptual elaboration, but as unmediated presence.
Zen, although it uses a different language, refers to the same experience. Satori is not a psychological achievement or a progressive acquisition. It is the dissolution of all attempts to achieve. Only when the effort to calm the breath, correct the mind, or induce calm ceases can a lucidity without direction or effort emerge. Then one understands that there was never any separation from the moment. And that this moment, when unmanipulated, contains within itself a fullness that takes no form.
The real is not opposed to mental noise. Even the most intense agitation occurs in the field of an unfluctuating consciousness. It is not a matter of suppressing thoughts, but of realizing that they do not constitute identity. The error lies not in thinking, but in identifying with what is thought. When the struggle against what appears—whether it comes from the external world or the inner realm—ceases, a clarity is revealed that does not depend on favorable conditions. In Zen, this openness without appropriation is called mushin—“no-mind”; in Advaita, sākṣin—“the pure witness.” Both concepts refer to the same foundation: that which remains unchanged in the midst of change.
Meditating, then, does not mean withdrawing from the world or seeking refuge within. It is opening oneself completely to what is, without imposing interpretations or rejecting what arises. Adding nothing, subtracting nothing. Without preference, without aversion, without purpose. In this radical openness, a stillness arises that does not depend on physical immobility, a force that does not originate in effort.
One should not meditate to perfect oneself, achieve liberation, or exercise control over the mind. Such motivations strengthen the illusion of the self as an agent. To meditate is to cease denying what already is. And in that cessation—sudden, unprovoked—an understanding may arise: one was never asleep, only dreaming of being someone separate from the present, someone lacking who had to achieve something external.
Awakening is not a change of state. It is realizing that there never was another.
Prabhuji
