Context
Nidagha has practiced rigorous meditation for years. Ribhu reveals that even meditation is ultimately to be transcended.
The Dialogue
Nidagha: "Master, I have meditated for twelve years. Sometimes great peace arises. Yet I have not attained the final state."
Ribhu: "Who meditates?"
Nidagha: "I do, upon Brahman."
Ribhu: "So there is you, and there is Brahman, and between them there is meditation? This is duality pretending to seek non-duality."
Nidagha: "But the sages prescribe meditation as the path."
Ribhu: "Meditation is medicine for the belief in separation. When the disease is cured, you do not continue taking medicine. You have been curing a disease you never had."
Nidagha: "Then should I stop meditating?"
Ribhu: "Stopping is also a doing. Do not stop. Do not continue. Simply see: there is no meditator separate from Brahman who could ever meditate upon Brahman."
Nidagha: "What remains when meditation ends?"
Ribhu: "What was always here before meditation began. The peace you touch in deep meditation is not achieved—it is revealed. It is your nature, briefly uncovered when the doing stops. But you imagine you must do something to reach it."
Nidagha: "So my years of practice..."
Ribhu: "Were Brahman practicing. Were Brahman pretending to seek Brahman. Nothing was wrong, nothing was wasted. But the game is seen now. The seeker and the sought were one pretending to be two."
Nidagha: "Then I simply am."
Ribhu: "You have never done anything else."
✨ Key Lesson
Meditation serves to quiet the mind that believes it is separate, but ultimate realization comes when even the meditator-meditation-meditated structure is seen through.