120. What is the real aim of life?

What is your ultimate aim in life?

To earn more?

To stay forever young, healthy, beautiful?

To have better, longer-lasting relationships?

To improve your personality?

The list is endless. For each individual, there will be a specific goal or many goals.

But every single goal, without exception, points to the same thing: a yearning to be in ananda or bliss. Can anyone say, 'I am not interested in being happy, being fulfilled, being blissful?' No!

Each of us is searching for bliss, but we search in many different ways. However intellectual, however sophisticated may be the ways in which we express it, we are all seeking only bliss. Only the ways in which we are searching are different.

Each of us is searching for bliss, but we search in many different ways.

But ninety-nine percent of us are not even aware that bliss is our true goal! Because we are unaware, we search outside ourselves for this bliss. We search everywhere in the outside world for something which is there within us, just waiting to be discovered.

A small story:

One evening, a man was searching hard for something in the courtyard in his house. His wife asked him what it was. He replied that he had dropped a gold coin. His wife also joined in the search. Soon, others gathered and practically the whole neighborhood was searching for the lost coin.

Suddenly one neighbor asked the man, 'Where exactly did you drop the coin? How come we still haven't found it?'

The man replied, 'Oh, I lost the coin inside the house.'

Everybody searching became angry and asked him, 'Then why are we searching here?'

The man replied, 'The problem is I have no lights inside my house. So I started searching by the light of this streetlamp here!'

This is exactly what we do in our own lives. We are all experts in searching for answers in the wrong places. We search for bliss everywhere, in money, power, relationships, ideologies, but we don't move in the one obvious direction – inwards.

What is bliss?

In life everyone has experienced some moments of great happiness. But it has always been for a reason. It is a nice feeling but it has two disturbing qualities: the feeling doesn't last and it is the result of some cause or reason. You are happy because you got a promotion; you are happy because you were cured of some disease; you are happy becauseyou bought a new car.

The state of that happiness does not seem to remain forever. It is there temporarily, and when it changes or goes away, once again you feel pain. Only the happiness you experience for no reason at all, which does not die for any reason, is real and permanent happiness. This is what is called bliss. Such happiness doesn't depend on anything outside of you.

The word 'ananda' itself means, 'that which cannot be reduced, which cannot be lost'. Ananda does not translate into 'happiness'. You will be surprised to know, it simply means 'that which cannot be reduced or lost'. Bliss is that thing which does not reduce for any reason.

What is Meditation?

Relating to space – the only element that can reflect consciousness

Meditation is falling in tune with nature, with Existence. This is your natural state, your true state of bliss. This is connecting with the Ultimate Consciousness.

You see, the universe or the macrocosm is made up of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air and space. In the same way, the body, the microcosm, is also made up of the same five elements. We can relate to the macrocosm, the Whole, the Divine, through any or all of these five elements. The microcosm can experience the macrocosm by relating with these five elements that pervade both.

Relating to the macrocosm through the earth element is worshipping through idols or deities. Deities are made of the earth element, such as clay, brass, copper, etc. So worshipping through them is worshipping through the earth element. Relating through the water element is offering abhishekas, holy baths to deities, or bathing ourselves in holy rivers. Relating through the fire element is performing homas, fire rituals. Relating through the air element is chanting mantras, divine chants. Relating through the space element is meditation. Through these five ways, we can relate to the macrocosm.

Out of the five elements, space is the only element that can reflect consciousness. The four grosser elements, earth, water, fire and air, cannot relate with or cannot reflect consciousness. Only space can reflect consciousness. And the way to relate with space energy is meditation.

Technique to raise consciousness

Any technique, any method which raises your consciousness is meditation.

Meditation can even be a simple breathing technique. It can be a simple repetition of a word or simply sitting. In the Zen tradition, just sitting is meditation. You may think this is the easiest thing to do but in fact, just sitting is the most difficult meditation. Anything can become meditation if it raises your consciousness.

Intensely blissful in the present

Meditation is just being blissful in the moment. When you are at complete peace Meditation is

in the present moment, you are already in a state of meditation. just being blissful in the moment.

Recall any moment in your life when you have experienced extreme beauty: the sun rising suddenly from behind a mountain, or the first time you heard a lovely piece of music. Suddenly you became totally still, wordless. In the presence of that beauty you became spellbound, you couldn't think any more. You were just silent, relaxed, in thoughtless awareness. You were completely dissolved in that beauty. That moment was meditation!

After a few moments your inner chatter started again. Your mind said, 'What a beautiful sunrise!' The moment the words appeared, you were out of meditation! You can either think or meditate. You can never do both.

Meditation is just being. It is experiencing the present moment without resistance.