Thinking is a wandering away, going astray. Whenever you think about anything, immediately you have started going away. I am here, you can be with me - but if you start thinking about me you are on a journey going on and on, and the more you get into thinking the further away you will be. Thinking is a way to escape from reality, it gives you an inner direction, it makes you a path in your mind and you move on it.
A thinker is never here and now, he is never in the present, he is always somewhere else. A meditator is always here and now, he is nowhere else. That's why thinking is the only barrier in meditation. You have to become aware and by and by the more you become aware, the more you stop cooperating with thinking.
I bring a rose to you and you start thinking. Immediately the mind says, "Beautiful !I have never seen such a beautiful rose!" Or I have seen a few other roses also just like this" and you go on. And then your mind can raise the question, " What is beauty?" Nobody knows, nobody has come to any conclusion.
One of the great British philosophers of this century, G. E. Moore has written a book, Principia Ethica, one of the best logical attempts to define what is good. And after two or three hundred pages of compact logical reasoning, he says that it is difficult to define what is good. In the end he says it is indefinable - but after two or three hundred pages of arguments!
One of the keenest minds goes on trying and trying and trying from this way and that; from this door and that he knocks and knocks and he comes to the conclusion that good is indefinable - why? He says it is a simple quality just like yellow. How do you define yellow? What will say if somebody asks. what is Yellow?" You will say "Yellow is Yellow". How will you define it?
A rose is a rose is a rose. How are you going to define it? If you say it is beautiful, do you know what beauty is? As anybody ever defined it? NO they say beauty is indefinable. If you compare it with other roses... do you know that everything is incomparable? How can you compare it with other roses? This rose is just this rose, it is no other rose. Why do you bring other roses in?
And when you bring other roses your mind is cluttered then you have many things in the mind and they will become a barrier and this rose will not be a able to approach you. And here was something real - it could have penetrated you, it fragrance could have penetrated you. The rose was ready to know at your heart, but your started thinking about it. And by the time your come back the rose will be here, because the rose will not wait - it will have faded. It had a message it brought something of the unknown with it. But that unknown is delicate. It cannot continue for ever and ever.
