Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
Banat Banat Ban Jaye
Sustain unhurried daily meditation, trusting that small repeated practice gradually ripens into deep inner stillness.
In 4 lines: “Banat banat ban jaye” — doing it, doing it, one day it is done. Sit a little every day and let the mind settle of itself rather than forcing it. Expect nothing on any single day and keep building; trust the slow ripening. The brief calms lengthen, over time, into deep inner stillness.
What it is
“Banat banat ban jaye” — roughly “doing it, doing it, one day it is done” — was Lahiri Mahasaya’s encouragement to persevere in meditation: as you keep building something through patient repeated practice, suddenly one day you find it complete.
It captures the temperament of his whole teaching — not a special technique but the attitude that carries a technique: unhurried, daily, trusting the slow ripening of practice rather than chasing breakthroughs.
Paired with it is the goal that patience serves: the deep inner stillness in which, as Lahiri put it, one comes to “behold yourself as the Infinite Essence, free from every form of misery.” As a practice this is a steady, low-drama daily sitting held with patience, in which one lets the mind settle into quiet again and again, trusting accumulation.
It operationalizes repetition installing patterns (The Inner Creates the Outer), the stillness that reveals what thought obscures (The Inner Creates the Outer), gathered attention (The Inner Creates the Outer), and the lineage’s balance of effort with grace (The Inner Creates the Outer).
The Method
A faithful rendering of the attitude as a practice:
- Sit daily, without drama. Take the same modest meditation period every day. The discipline is the regularity itself, not the quality of any single session.
- Let the mind settle — don’t force it. As you sit, allow restless thought to subside of itself. The aim is the quiet that comes when activity calms, not a fight to silence the mind.
- Hold the long view. Adopt “banat banat ban jaye” as the working attitude: expect nothing on any given day, and keep building. Lahiri’s counsel was “Continue ceaselessly on your path… whose power lies in practice.”
- Meet impatience with patience. When you want results, return to the practice rather than to striving. “He only is wise who devotes himself to realising, not reading only” — and realising comes through steady doing.
- Rest toward stillness. Let each settling deepen into quiet; over time the brief calms lengthen into the deeper inner stillness the practice points toward.
- Trust the ripening. The teaching’s promise is that the cumulative weight of unhurried practice, not any single effort, brings the result — “one day you see it’s done.” (Sourcing note: “Banat banat ban jaye,” “behold yourself as the Infinite Essence, free from every form of misery,” “Continue ceaselessly… whose power lies in practice,” and “He only is wise who devotes himself to realising, not reading only” are short attributed phrases via the lineage and Autobiography of a Yogi. The numbered protocol describes the attitude faithfully; it is not a hidden technique.)
Source & Lineage
“Banat banat ban jaye” is preserved as one of Lahiri Mahasaya’s characteristic sayings — a Hindi/Bengali idiom of perseverance he gave to disciples to sustain them on the long path.
Lahiri taught chiefly by direct transmission and example rather than writing; his sayings survive through disciples and, in the West, through Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi.; lineage. The breath discipline this patience serves is; the life-context for it is.
Common refinements
Chasing the breakthrough. The attitude is the opposite of result-grasping; wanting “it” to be “done” today is the very impatience the saying dissolves.
- Forcing stillness. Clamping the mind shut produces tension. Let thought subside; invite quiet rather than impose it.
- Quitting on a flat day. Single sessions look like nothing — the result is the accumulation. Resume the next day rather than judging the practice by one sitting.
- Reading instead of doing. Lahiri’s caution: realisation is in the practice, not in study about it.