On the occasion of International Yoga Day

Actually speaking, meditation is not doing something. It is not an act, rather it is being. Meditation cannot be practiced. You can, however, prepare yourself for meditation to happen. Because, doing involves thought and activity. But meditation is a state of mind that is thoughtless and actionless. All the techniques or efforts are just to prepare ground for meditation to take place.

Meditation brings you happiness, joy, satisfaction and finally it brings a kind of order in life. It brings peace of mind as it helps you to live in the present moment.

Although, there is no fixed method or technique for meditation, we should do something in the beginning for meditation to happen. However, meditation should be spontaneous, natural and without much effort. Meditation may happen naturally if you just sit quietly and do nothing, just observing yourself, the thoughts and emotions etc. If thought and emotion comes, just watch them without any likes or dislikes. Don’t try to control thoughts, and also don’t run after thoughts and emotions too.

In fact, meditation is a life long journey. You may start it at some point of time and it continues throughout your life. There is no guarantee that meditation brings immediate result or gain. It, however, takes you to a timeless journey. In deep meditation, you transcend both time and space. Meditation is to give attention to yourself, to give time to yourself. It is just being with yourself, not doing something different.

Out of 24 hours in a day you may sleep for eight hours and for the rest of the time, you either run to compete with others, or to please your family, friends or boss. You hardly give any time to yourself. Meditation actually means to give time and attention to yourself. In a day, you should give at least 30 minutes or an hour to your body, breath, mind, thought, emotions and so on. Allocating some time, say an hour, for yourself on regular basis can bring revolutionary change in your life. It will certainly make you happy, joyful, brings peace in mind and ultimately makes your life beautiful and orderly.

Meditation is a part of Yoga. It is also called Raj Yoga or the highest path of Yoga. We just celebrated International Yoga Day on June 21. Yoga doesn’t mean just breathing techniques and physical exercises, though that helps you to attain sound mental and physical health. Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra, describes Yoga as the secession of the ripples in the mind. “Yoga Chitta Vritti Nirodha.” He doesn’t talk much about the physical aspects of Yoga. Rather he talks about purification of mind through Yama and Niyama and then describes about concentration, meditation and Samadhi or Dharana, Dhyan, Samadhi. Yoga means union, union between the individual consciousness and the Universal consciousness. It means coordination among the body, speech and mind. In fact, a Yogi means an integrated person, who has no conflict and no contradictions, and therefore, he experiences inner peace, the absolute peace.

According to Vimala Thakar, a renowned meditation practitioner and scholar, consciousness has two movements: concentration and attention. Concentration is attention confined by motive, by direction. It has certain boundaries. But attention is an involuntary cerebral activity. The brain attends to different things though the five senses, for eg. it attends to sound, picture, smell tests etc. Attention is therefore, free, it has no motive, no boundary, no direction.

“We usually swing between attention and concentration. Concentration means to give attention to a particular thing. But attention means to see things in its totality. Therefore, attention leads to awareness, which has no boundaries,” she writes in her book Blossoms of Friendship.

“If you sustain that attention for some time than you will move to awareness. Awareness is the nature of intelligence. It is not meditation yet, but it leads you to the threshold of the state of meditation. Awareness has a movement, the movement of intelligence. But in meditation there is no movement of thought. There is only vibration.”

“When the attention is sustained, the sensitivity of the whole body begins to unfold itself, to operate and function, so that there is no longer a cerebral activity, but the total existence becomes eloquent.

Meditation is to-be the state of the iss-ness of life, the to-be-ness of life.

Meditation is a state, where the human consciousness, unconditioned and conditioned, spontaneously ceases to operate.”

Broadly speaking, there are two types of meditation:

Active Meditation and Passive Meditation:

In passive meditation, you just sit quietly and watch your body, breath, mind, thought and emotions or jut be aware of your being. Active meditation can be practiced while walking, doing works or eating food.

– You can meditate while walking, by being aware of each and every step you take or being aware of your movement.

– You can meditate while doing some works or while doing physical exercise. Be aware of each and every movement of your body while doing any work or physical exercise.

– You can meditate while eating food. Just be aware while taking food, be aware while chewing it and be aware of the taste and smell of your food.

The Techniques:

There are many techniques of meditation You can begin with your incoming and out going breath. You can be aware of the air you inhale and exhale for meditation to happen. You can hear a sound, say the sound of the ringing bell and meditate upon that. You can also meditate on an idol of Buddha or Krishna, or just a flower or Om. You need to give full attention of your mind and become aware of that sound, object or idea for practicing meditation. Your breath, sound, object, idea, emotion, anything can be the tool for meditation. But the essence of meditation is Awareness. You can just be aware without any object or sound or idea. Just be aware of yourself. But in the beginning you need some tool for meditation. Later on, with good practice, you can leave the tool and become just aware.