INSTRUCTIONS🔗

This meditation can be done anywhere, anytime. Wherever you are at the moment, note the signals that are coming to you through your senses. You can see the flowers in the garden. You can hear the birds sing. You can feel an ant creep up your leg. What do you do? Simply close your senses. Just imagine that you have become blind. Imagine that you cannot hear the birds, cannot feel the creeping of the ant. Imagine that you have turned into a statue, that you have frozen. Imagine that you can no longer move. Go deeply into this feeling. You can do it! How? Just stop breathing for a single moment, and your senses will close on their own. When breath stops, sensation also stops. Hold your breath and see. Can you feel the irritation on your skin? Even the sounds recede into the distance. Your body actually feels frozen. You cannot lift your arm! This is an excellent technique for relaxation. When you can no longer flow outward, when you can no longer receive information through the senses, you become thrown back upon yourself. You become an island of silence. In that silence, you will find your own center. Now, even when you look out, even when you listen, you will be doing it from that point of silence at your center. And once you discover this point, you will never again get lost in the uproar of the senses. At will, you can shut out your senses, you can become the witness of your senses.

Laughter as meditation

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

How often do you laugh? When we laugh, we are completely unaware that we are performing a great spiritual practice! Laughter is the most intimate way of connecting with your source. So easy, and so powerful. This is one meditation that every single person has already practised, sometime in life. Laughter is a tremendous source of energy. Just laugh, and you can feel the energy surge from the source and flood you. When you laugh, you lose your boundary. You lose your sense of self. You become possessed by the laughter. And have you noticed? It is impossible to think and laugh at the same time! When you are laughing – suddenly, you experience a moment when thought is no longer possible. You experience no-mind! The laughter I am talking about is not giggling. It is not a sarcastic half-smile, half-laugh. It is a beautiful, expansive laughter, laughter that fills your being and overflows from you.

It is laughter for no reason. Actually you always start laughing for some reason – but once you start, the laughter takes hold of you! Then you laugh simply because you are laughing, that’s all. Just the joy of laughing keeps you laughing. You are not even aware of that. The Japanese monk Hotei was known as the Laughing Buddha. His whole spiritual message could be condensed into a single act – laughing! He would wander from place to place, stand in public places and simply begin to laugh – a roaring, belly laugh. His whole body would be shaking with laughter. The laughter would rise from him and spread all around in a great wave of energy. And his laughter was so infectious that the whole town would be laughing with him. The whole town would be blessed with laughter. Without techniques, without effort, without even being aware of it, an entire town would glimpse the state of no-mind. What a supreme meditation technique laughter is!

LEAP BEFORE YOU LOOK! Techniques for sudden enlightenment

Every morning, first thing upon waking, stretch yourself like a baby. Have you noticed babies stretching when they wake up after sleep? Stretch this way and that, bend and twist your body. Feel every muscle being stretched! Then, without opening your eyes, begin to laugh. At first it will require some effort. But soon real laughter will begin to bubble up within you. If nothing else, just your comic attempts at laughter will be enough to make you really laugh! Once the laughter takes you over, just let go. There is no duration. Laugh till you are tired of laughing. As you progress, you will find that you are able to sustain the laughter longer and longer. The Buddha has said that if one can laugh continuously for just forty-five minutes, one can become enlightened! Just forty-five minutes of laughing! So laugh as long as you can. You will find the energy to keep laughing surge within you. Long after you finish laughing, the waves of laughter will still be there in you, just beneath the surface. Just a few minutes of morning laughter can transform your whole day!