Myths about Meditation

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, one of the popular beliefs about meditation is that your mind will stop and you will not have any thoughts. A lot of the so-called Gurus say that your mind should be completely blank — no thoughts, and if any thought comes, that means, you are doing it wrong. That does not sound very correct to me. So what exactly is meant when you say stilling the mind or acquiring the mind?

Acharya Prashant (AP): The mind has to value stillness. That is called ‘meditativeness’. Mind, at every point, at every moment, is a choice. The choice on one side is restiveness (lack of rest). Choice, on the other side, is restfulness. Then, what is meditation? — to be in the right choice continuously, 24×7. That is ‘meditation’. You cannot stop the movement of the mind.

The mind is nothing but movement.

You just have to ensure that it moves rightly. That is meditativeness. And meditativeness is that when, just by chance, when there is no need for the mind to move, then you do not become uncomfortable and start forcing it to move. When the mind is moving, it is moving in the right direction. When it is not moving, then it is not moving rightly. Because it is quite possible, be cautious, that there might be a need for the mind to move and yet…