Hamsa

Wednesday Evening Meditation Discourse
January 30, 2002

Meditation is a very difficult thing to understand with the mind because the mind can’t understand meditation. So the truth is that everything being said about meditation is to motivate you to meditate, and when you actually enter into true meditation everything will be wonderful. We pretend like we’re explaining meditation to the mind, and the mind hears what is being said and gets enthusiastic about it. But the mind cannot understand meditation, nor can it meditate.

Meditation is effortless, silent, present awareness. Not you being present, but Presence itself. Silence. Stillness. And when the mind is still, it is gone!

So first, what is the mind? The mind is the voice in our heads that talks to us constantly. What it likes to talk about most is…you! And one of the things about talking to yourself constantly in your head is that you think in a language. Most of us here, when we think, we think in English. But it doesn’t matter what language you think in. Thinking fragments reality. And one of the reasons is the nature of language. It’s dualistic. Because in language every sentence is divided up into a subject and an object. So if I say, “I like coffee,” there’s an “I” and there’s “coffee,” and there’s something going on. And already the universe is divided into two entities. The “I” entity is called the subject. The other entity is the object.

So in a thinking world, in our minds, we’ve already divided the infinite into two: yin and yang. That’s one reason thinking is very limited in understanding reality. Because when you think about reality, you’re already thinking in a nonrealistic state. The mind has already, by its process, divided the world up. And we don’t realize that. It’s just a given.

So when we’re attempting to meditate, the mind likes to think. And one of the simplest techniques — and a technique is not meditation, but it can lead to meditation — is to give the mind something to think about — a mantra. The mantra we use, Hamsa, contains the ultimate subject and the ultimate object. It takes all possible subjects and objects and breaks them down into two. Ham is the ultimate subject. It means “I am.” How do you know you are? Because you’re aware. The only thing you can be certain of is that you are aware: there is awareness. If there weren’t awareness, none of this would matter. The reason it matters is that there’s awareness. That awareness is called Ham.

And what is it aware of? Well, anything. Everything. And whatever it’s aware of is “that”: Sa. Ham + Sa means I am (the subject) that (the object). So the mantra Hamsa, by using the tendency of the mind to think dualistically, acknowledges the unity of all experiences: I am that. I am he. I am she. I am it. I am that. I am this. Whatever arises in consciousness arises out of consciousness, and you are that.

When we’re meditating, in the technique we use here, we use something outside of our mind to focus our awareness. And the something outside the mind that we use is the breath. The reason we use the breath, as we’ve talked about many times, is because it’s going on effortlessly without thought. You don’t breathe — you’re being breathed. So when you take awareness out of your mind and put it in your breath, you’re moving energy away from the mind into that cosmic phenomenon: there’s one breath breathing all of us.

And to help focus on the breath we use the mantra Hamsa. Breathing in Ham is the subject, “I am.” So as the breath comes in you think Ham. When the breath goes out, you’re the universe creating everything — Sa — meaning, “I am that.” Breathing in — Shiva. Breathing out — Shakti. Shiva is consciousness without an object. Breathing out is all objects. The Relative and the Absolute, Shiva and Shakti, are not two. So there’s a simple identification: Hamsa. You simply watch the breath breathe you. If you can’t feel the breath and relax into the breath, and if your mind stays busy, then let it think, but think the mantra with the breath. Hamsa. Soham. It doesn’t matter which way you do it. That I am, I am that. It’s the ultimate subject and object.

As you watch the breath, feel the breath — and you don’t force the mantra, you just hear it, feel it in the breath — the brain starts calming down, relaxing, and all of the sudden your thoughts…start…slowing….down….. And the breath will also slow down. The breath will go out and pause. It’ll come in and pause. The breath will get really slow. And as the mind slows down, there’ll start to be gaps between the thoughts. And the spaces between the thoughts are silence. And that’s meditation. So you relax into those spaces, and as those spaces widen, you drop the technique. The breathing will continue to be there. If you need to go back, you’ll still be breathing. But drop the technique and simply rest as Silence itself.

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