It has been estimated that the average person has sixty thousand separate thoughts each and every day. The problem with this is that we have the same sixty thousand thoughts today that we had yesterday, and we’ll repeat them again tomorrow. Our minds are filled with the same chatter day in and day out. Learning to be quiet and meditate involves figuring out a way to enter the spaces between your thoughts; or the gap, as I call it. In this silent empty space between your thoughts, you can find a sense of total peace in a realm that is ordinarily unknowable. Here, any illusion of your separateness is shattered. However, if you have sixty thousand separate thoughts in a day, there is literally no time available to enter the space between your thoughts, because there is no space!
Most of us have minds that race full-speed day and night. Our thoughts are a hodgepodge of continuous dialogue about schedules, money worries, sexual fantasies, grocery lists, drapery problems, concern about the children, vacation plans, and on and on like a merry-go-round that never stops. Those sixty thousand thoughts are usually about ordinary daily activities and create a mental pattern that leaves no space for silence.
This pattern reinforces our cultural belief that all gaps in conversation (silence) need to be filled quickly. For many, silence represents an embarrassment and a social defect. Therefore we learn to jump in to fill these spaces, whether or not our filler has any substance. Silent periods in a car or at a dinner are perceived as awkward moments, and good conversationalists know how to get those spaces occupied with some kind of noise.
And so it is with ourselves as well; we have no training in silence, and we see it as unwieldy and confusing. Thus we keep the inner dialogue going just like the outer. Yet it is in that silent place, where our ancient teacher Pythagoras tells us to let our quiet mind listen and absorb, that confusion will disappear and enlightened guidance will come to us. But meditation also affects the quality of our nonsilent activities. The daily practice of meditation is the single thing in my life that gives me a greater sense of well-being, increased energy, higher productivity at a more conscious level, more satisfying relationships, and a closer connection to God.
The mind is like a pond. On the surface you see all the disturbances, yet the surface is only a fraction of the pond. It is in the depth below the surface, where there is stillness, that you will come to know the true essence of the pond, as well as your own mind. By going below the surface, you come to the spaces between your thoughts where you are able to enter the gap. The gap is total emptiness or silence, and it is indivisible. No matter how many times you cut silence in half, you still get silence. This is what is meant by now. Perhaps it is the essence of God, that which cannot be divided from the oneness.
These two pioneering scientists, who are still quoted today in university courses, were studying the nature of the universe. They struggled with the mysteries of energy, pressure, mathematics, space, time, and universal truths. Their message to all of us here is quite simple. If you want to understand the universe, or your own personal universe, if you want to know how it all works, then be quiet and face your fear of sitting in a room alone and going deep within the layers of your own mind.
It is the space between the notes that makes the music. Without that emptiness, that silence in between, there is no music, only a noise. You too are silent empty space at your center, surrounded by form. To break through that form and discover your very creative nature that is in the center, you must take the time to become silent each day, and enter that rapturous space between your thoughts. No amount of my writing about the value of daily meditation will ever convince you. You will never know the value of this practice unless you make the commitment to do it.
My purpose in writing this brief essay on the value of meditation is not to tell you how to meditate. There are many fine courses of study, manuals, and audio guides to give you instruction. My purpose here is to emphasize that meditation is not something that is exclusively for spiritual seekers who want to wile away the hours and days of their lives in deep contemplation, oblivious to productivity and social responsibility. Meditation is a practice advocated by those who live by their faith in reason, by number crunchers and authors of theorems and believers in Pascal’s Law. You may feel much as Blaise Pascal did when he wrote, “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.”
Here are some suggestions for overcoming your terror and learning to be silent and able to sit quietly in a room alone:
Practice noticing your in and out breaths as a way to cultivate turning inward to the silent self. You can do this in the middle of meetings, conversations, even parties. Just notice and follow your breathing for a few moments, many times during your day.
Give yourself time this day to simply sit in a room alone and observe your mind. Keep track of the various thoughts that enter, exit, and lead to the next thought. Your awareness of the frenetic activity of your mind will help you to transcend the frenzied pace of thoughts.
Read a book on meditation to learn how the practice can be initiated, or join a meditation group. Many teachers and local organizations can get you started on this path. The Chopra Center for Well-Being in La Jolla, California, headed by my friend and colleague Deepak Chopra, teaches meditation as a part of its large offering of services.
Many CDs and tapes are available to guide you in meditation. Find one that appeals to you. I have published one entitled Meditation for Manifesting in which I teach a specific meditation called JAPA. I guide you through a morning and evening meditation using my voice to assist you in repeating the sounds of the divine. The profits go to charity.
Do not believe what you have heard.
Do not believe in tradition because it is handed down many generations.
Do not believe in anything that has been spoken of many times.
Do not believe because the written statements come from some old sage.
Do not believe in conjecture.
Do not believe in authority or teachers or elders.
But after careful observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and it will benefit one and all, then accept it and live by it.
BUDDHA
(563 B.C.–483 B.C.)
Founder of Buddhism, one of the world’s major religions, the Buddha was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama in northeast India, near the borders of Nepal. Seeing the unhappiness, sickness, and death that even the wealthiest and most powerful are subject to in this life, at age twentynine he abandoned the life he was living in search of a higher truth.
The name Buddha is actually a title that translates to the “awakened one” or the “enlightened one.” It is the title given to Siddhartha Gautama, who left behind the princely life at the age of twenty-nine and went on a lifelong search for religious understanding and a way of release from the human condition. It is said that he discarded the teachings of his contemporaries and through meditation achieved enlightenment or ultimate understanding. From then on he assumed the role of teacher, instructing his followers in the “dharma,” or truth.
His teachings became the basis for the religious practice of Buddhism, which has played a major role in the spiritual, cultural, and social life of the Eastern world, and much of the Western world as well. I have deliberately chosen not to write, in this essay, on the tenets of Buddhist doctrine, but rather to take this often-quoted passage of the Buddha and discuss its significance to you and me today, some twenty-five centuries after the death of the enlightened one.
The key word in the passage is “believe.” In fact, the key phrase is “Do not believe:” Everything you carry around with you that you call a belief has become your own largely because of the experiences and testimonies of other people. And if it comes to you from a source outside yourself, regardless of how persuasive the conditioning process might be, and of how many people just like you have worked to convince you of the truth of these beliefs, the fact that it is someone else’s truth