Rest in Peace - 10.29.09

“So there’s a reason why people are hesitant to meditate, and that they’re not interested in meditation. And that’s because,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us, “meditation is too much like death.” And death means many things to the ego: detachment, stillness, silence, emptiness, nothingness. And, even worse, “you say to the dead, ‘Rest in peace.’” And the one thing that the ego does not want is peace because it gets its kicks from the vicissitudes of pleasure and pain; the cheap thrills of the egoic notion of “happiness.” To rest in peace is to be free from the most powerful desires and wants. And, eventually, “we recognize that the desire is a defense against the fear—and it always leads back to the fear, or a vexation, or some kind of suffering—and is never what we really wanted, because what we really wanted was to find the place that is at peace. . . . And what we find then is that meditation is not what the ego thinks, it’s not boring, it’s not a lack of involvement, but it is actually a transcendence that enables us then to return to the world, reborn; the death is not the end.” And through this death and rebirth we enter back into the world in a state of love, with a willingness to give and help others without any hidden agendas or ulterior motives because “often at the ego level, desire masquerades as love.” But liberation allows one to be free of the desire to be appreciated, to be needed—or any of the various ways that the ego tries to express love—and allows one to show true compassion and love in every act. Recorded the evening of Thursday, October 29, 2009.