a bird starts calling
Concentration is not meditation. They are totally different things, in fact, diametrically opposite. In concentration you narrow your consciousness to one point; in meditation you open up your consciousness to all directions. For example, when you listen to the sounds... a bird starts calling, a child cries, and a thousand and one things are happening -- you have to be just open to all, with no choice. Concentration is a choice; meditation is a choiceless awareness. If you concentrate then you will just concentrate on the sound of this bird and you will not allow any other sound to interfere. You narrow down your mind completely so that everything else is excluded, and you are only focussed on one sound. Then it is concentration. But concentration is a kind of tension; it is unnatural, and it will tire you, it will exhaust you. You will be distracted again and again. And when you are distracted, you will feel miserable because you are failing, you are not up to the mark, you have not been able to concentrate. But you are trying to do something unnatural, that's why you are failing. You will feel guilty, inferior, and these are the dangers of it. And even if you succeed -- one can succeed if one is stubborn enough -- in creating an unnatural state, then too you will not be getting anywhere really. If you succeed in concentration your mind will become more powerful. You will be able to do mathematics in a better way, your memory will become better; your calculation, your logic will become more sophisticated. But these are not the spiritual things. You will become more skillful in the mind, more efficient; but the real thing is how to go beyond the mind. You will be polishing the mind more and more, and polishing is not going beyond it. The mind has to be transcended, and the only possibility of transcending is: just relax and let things be as they are. A very very passive awareness -- that is the meaning of meditation. A passive awareness sitting silently, watching... and that too has not to become a tension. If sometimes you forget watching, perfectly good! When you remember, you watch again; when you forget, you forget. This is relaxation, this is accepting life as it comes. Then great joy arises out of it. You are never tired and you are never distracted because nothing can distract you. Distraction is possible only when you are trying to concentrate. When you are in meditation there is no distraction. Somebody shouts; you listen to that too. Somebody sings a song; you listen to that too -- whatsoever happens. You have no fixed idea of how things should be; you allow things to be as they are. Who are you to fix that things should be like this? Being in that state of silence, of passive awareness.... Lying on your bed or sitting on your chair, or just on a morning walk -- anywhere you can do it. Try that!
