In plain words
Many people are teaching in the world today, but their teachings satisfy only themselves. But in the spiritual life no teachings at all are of use except the one principle of Prema. Do bhajans, do japa, do dhyāna, do yoga: they keep saying all this. They themselves do not know what yoga is. They themselves do not know what dhyāna is. What I mean is that the whole of life is one dhyāna. Because this is a way of life. If we want to read a book, we cannot read it without doing meditation there, without concentrating. If we want to write a letter, we cannot write it unless we concentrate to write it. Walking, reading, talking, eating, writing everything is meditation. If you want to go out from here but have no aim, no ‘Which is the way?’, where will you go? So to find out, ‘Where is the way?’ and to go by that way is itself dhyāna. That is, following a path where no obstacles arise for us is itself dhyāna. Then some people speak of sukha-dhyāna. What is sukha? Is it the comfort of the body? The comfort of the mind? The comfort of the senses? The comfort of Buddhi? No, no. The heart is always at ease. For this body there is no such thing as comfort. However steadily one sits, some kind of movement keeps going on. Slow and steady wins the race. What is race? Life is race. What is slow? Haste makes waste, waste makes worry, so do not be in a hurry. Do not be hasty. Do not do as sādhana every odd thing you come across. Whatever you do is itself sādhana of God. All is the very form of God. Whoever I speak with, it is just as if I am speaking with God. So wherever I go, it is nothing but a circumambulation of God. Whatever word I speak is itself a mantra of God.
When we hold to this, ‘sarvaṃ viṣṇumayaṃ jagat’, as our Dharma, no sādhanas of any kind are needed. But until such sacred Prema grows in us, we must do some sādhanas. Step by step:
‘Jñāna is better than practice; dhyāna excels Jñāna; than dhyāna, the giving up of the fruit of action; from giving up, Śānti comes at once.’