Meditation is a serious business - a lot of people have become very serious about it. I am not talking about Isha meditators, many meditators in the world have become so serious that they have even forgotten how to smile because, in their effort to be aware of something, they have forgotten everything.

Meditation means you don’t have to grin every moment of your life. You learn to smile with your bones; you learn to smile with every aspect of who you are. You do not have to necessarily show your teeth. Try, without using your lips, to just smile. Really, without showing your teeth, simply smile. Now see if you can smile with your eyes; just use your eyes and smile. Then see if you can smile with your hand. If even the bones in your body begin to smile, that is meditation - not becoming rigid and frigid within yourself; that is not meditation. That is preparing for the final journey – to rest in peace! That is preparation for the grave.

So you must smile with your bones, not just your lips, not just showing your teeth. Meditation is like the blossoming of a flower; a flower does not blossom in parts, when it blossoms everything is on. To make yourself like that - that if you sit with eyes closed or eyes open, there is a smile on your face, or even if there isn’t a smile, it doesn’t matter, everything is at its best, that is flowering. That is meditation.

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So if you are rolling your eyeballs up and sitting, this is to see that the smile moves from just being upon the lips to every cell in the body. You are trying to ingest the smile. A smile is not an expression; other people may see it as an expression, but if you are in a certain state of relaxation and pleasantness, even if there is nobody around you, there will be a smile on your face.

Let It Rattle

I would know
you are happy
if your bones did Smile
and I hear the rattle.
Not the cackle of an old witch
nor that of an infant.
But the gentle smile of the
flower, fruit and leaf. The smile
of plains, mountains and rivers.
The absorbing smile of the
ocean, earth and moon.
Let me see, feel and hear
the smiles of your bones.
Before the maggots eat through your marrow…

Love & Grace