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In this first meeting of the meditation camp, I would like to talk about the first step for a meditator, a
seeker. What is the first step? A thinker or a lover follow certain paths but a seeker has to travel on
a totally different journey. For a seeker, what is the first step on the journey?
The body is the first step for a seeker – but no attention or thought has been given to it. Not only at
certain times, but for thousands of years, the body has been neglected. The neglect is of two kinds.
Firstly, there are the indulgent people who have neglected the body. They have no experience of life
other than eating, drinking and wearing clothes. They have neglected the body, misused it, foolishly
wasted it – they have ruined their instrument, their veena.
If a musical instrument – for example, a veena – is ruined, music cannot arise out of it. Music is an
altogether different thing from the veena – music is one thing, the veena is another, but without the
veena music cannot arise.
Those people who have misused the body through indulgence are one type and the other type of
people are those who have neglected the body through yoga and renunciation. They have tortured
the body, they have suppressed it and they have been hostile towards it. And neither the people who
have indulged the body nor the ascetics who have tortured the body have understood its importance.