The art of meditation is a way of getting in touch with reality. The reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality, because they confuse the World as it is with the World as they think about it and talk about it and describe it.

For, on the one hand, there is the real World and on the other a whole system of symbols about that World which we have in our minds. These are very useful symbols all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages and the principle disadvantage is that we can confuse them with reality.

Just as we confuse money with actual wealth. And our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves,with ourselves.

So in the same way the difference between myself and all the rest of the universe is nothing more than an idea, it is not a real difference. And meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe. And what that requires is that we shut up …

That is to say that we become internally silent, and cease from the interminable chatter that goes on inside our skulls.

Most of us think compulsively all the time. That is to say, we talk to ourselves. I remember when I was a boy, we had a common saying: ‘Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.’ Now, obviously if I talk all the time, I don’t hear what anyone has to say.

And so, in exactly the same way, if I think all the time – that is to say – if I talk to myself all the time, I don’t have anything to think about except thoughts. And, therefore, I’m living entirely in the world of symbols, and I’m never in relationship with reality.

Alright now that’s the first basic reason for meditation. But there is another sense and this is going to be a little bit more difficult to understand. We could say that meditation doesn’t have a reason, or doesn’t have a purpose. And in this respect, it’s almost unlike all other things that we do, except perhaps making music and dancing.

Because, when we make music, we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of a composition. If that were the purpose of music, to get to the end of the piece, then obviously the fastest players would be the best.

And so likewise, when we are dancing, we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor, as we would be if we were taking a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point. When we play music, the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation.

Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. And, therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive – that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life – you’ve got your eye on the future and you are not meditating.

Because, the future is a concept; it doesn’t exist. As the proverb says, ‘Tomorrow never comes.’ There is no such thing as tomorrow; there never will be, because time is always now. And that’s one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking; there is only a present – only an eternal now.

It’s funny then, isn’t it, that one meditates for no reason at all. Except we could say, ‘for the enjoyment of it,’ and here I would interpose the essential principal that meditation is supposed to be fun. It’s not something you do as a grim duty.

The trouble with religion as we know it, is that it is so mixed up with grim duties, ‘we do it because it’s good for you, it’s a form of self-punishment’.

Well, meditation when correctly done has nothing to do with all that. It’s a kind of digging in the present; it’s a kind of grooving with the eternal now. And it brings us into a state of peace where we can understand that the point of life, the place where it’s at, is simply here and now.