Many people are interested in this thing called meditation, and as a result, there's a growing volume of advice -- most of it well-intentioned -- to help folks become meditators.
If you happen to be on of these meditation-interested people, then that's good. But before you dive into meditation, there's one core thing that really, really needs to be understood at the deepest layer of your being.
Meditation is not a doing. It's not an object of achievement. It's not a goal. It's not an activity. It's absolutely nothing like anything else that you do -- because, again, it's not a doing.
Meditation is impossible to describe in words, because all words are -- by definition -- objects. Even to say that something is "object-less" is impossible, because the mere term -- object-less -- is an object.
Confusing, isn't it?
The best-known meditators -- Buddha, Lao Tzu and many others -- have, out of compassion, suggested some words that function as pointers -- nothing more than pointers -- towards the inner essence of meditation. They've used words like non-doing or non-being, or nirvana or no-mind. And, indeed, they've been wildly misunderstood by millions of people who try to fit these terms into an objectified-world; into a world that is dominated by external concepts, be they physical things or conceptual definitions.
When you go into meditation, the idea to take with you is that you aren't meditating. There is no YOU to meditate. Rather, you are opening yourself up to the inner space that is by no means your personal property but is most certainly your universal birthright.
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