Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Meditation is paradoxical. All meditations is, is an attempt to stop trying to do anything. “How can you create a technique for not trying to do anything?” asks Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “If you do, then the very technique defeats the effort of not making any effort.” This is akin to the problem of self-reference which “has become a very big business, actually, since Bertrand Russell and Kurt Gödel. . . . Basically it comes down to the ‘liar’s paradox,’ you know, the guy from Crete who says ‘I’m lying.’ Is he telling the truth when he’s saying he’s lying? Well, if he’s telling the truth, he isn’t lying.” And, at the same time, if he’s lying then he’s telling the truth. “Anyway, you can go around and round forever in this, and this is basically all the ego is: it’s basically a voice in your head attacking you, and then you defend yourself against that voice. It’s two voices of self-reference, but they’re both delusional.” “And the problem is that the ego does