When to Drop the Technique

All the great masters say this, that one day you have to drop the method. And the sooner you drop it, the better. The moment you attain, the moment awareness is released in you, immediately drop the method.

Buddha used to tell a story again and again. Five idiots passed through a village. Seeing them, people were surprised because they were carrying a boat on their heads. The boat was really big; they were almost dying under the weight of it. And people asked, “What are you doing?” They said, “We cannot leave this boat. This is the boat that helped us to come from the other shore to this shore. How can we leave it? It is because of it that we have been able to come here. Without it, we would have died on the other shore. The night was coming close, and there were wild animals on the other shore; it was as sure as anything that by the morning we would have been dead. We will never leave this boat. We are indebted forever. We will carry it on our heads in sheer gratitude.”

Methods are dangerous only if you are unaware; otherwise, they can be used beautifully. Do you think a boat is dangerous? It is dangerous if you are thinking of carrying it on your head for your whole life, out of sheer gratitude. Otherwise, it is just a raft to be used and discarded, used and abandoned, used and never looked back at again; there is no need, no point.

If you drop the remedy, automatically you will start settling in your being. The mind clings; it never allows you to settle in your being. It keeps you interested in something that you are not: the boats. When you don’t cling to anything, there is nowhere to go; all boats have been abandoned, you cannot go anywhere; all paths have been dropped, you cannot go anywhere; all dreams and desires have disappeared, there is no way to move. Relaxation happens of its own accord. Just think of the word relax. Be…settle. You have come home.

One moment all is fragrance, and the next moment you are searching for it and you cannot find it, where it has gone. Only glimpses will happen in the beginning. Slowly, slowly, they become more and more solid, they abide more and more. Slowly, slowly, very slowly, they settle forever. Before that, you cannot be allowed to take it for granted; that will be a mistake.

When you are sitting in meditation, a session of meditation, this will happen. But it will go. So what are you supposed to do between sessions? Between sessions, continue to use the method. Drop the method when you are deep in meditation. The moment comes, as awareness is getting purer and purer, when suddenly it is utterly pure: drop the method, abandon the method, forget all about the remedy, just settle and be.

But this will happen only for moments in the beginning. Sometimes it happens here, listening to me. Just for a moment, like a breeze, you are transported into another world, the world of no-mind. Just for a moment, you know that you know, but only for a moment. And again the darkness gathers and the mind is back with all its dreams, with all its desires and all its stupidities.

For a moment, the clouds had separated and you had seen the sun. Now the clouds are there again; it is all dark and the sun has disappeared. Now even to believe that the sun exists will be difficult. Now to believe that what you had experienced a moment before was true will be difficult. It may have been a fantasy. The mind may say it might have been just imagination. It is so incredible, it looks so impossible that it could have happened to you. With all this stupidity in the mind, with all these clouds and darkness, it happened to you: you saw the sun for a moment. It doesn’t look probable, you must have imagined it; maybe you had fallen into a dream and seen it.

Between sessions, start again, be in the boat, use the boat again.