February 10, 2025, Monday
Nepal 1:37:26 pm

Meditation is not the movement, just vibration of life

The Nepal Weekly
December 17, 2024

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 in mind as it helps you to live in the present moment without regretting much about the past happenings and without worrying about the future.

Although, there is no fixed method or technique or procedure for meditation, we should do something in the beginning for meditation to take place. However, in the beginning it is better to learn meditation from some one who is experienced. Trying to imitate meditation from Youtube or practice from the book may hardly work. As you cannot swim by reading books on swimming or by watching a Youtube video on swimming, exactly the same thing applies here. Though there is no hard and fast rule for meditation, one can just observe the body, the breath, the feelings, emotions and the thought process. One can also practice mindfulness in day to day life. One can be aware while brushing the teeth, eating,  walking, doing some works, talking etc. There is no harm if you practice mindfulless by just being aware of whatever you do. It broadens your awareness, brings joy and peace of mind.

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, you need to watch them without liking or disliking. 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. Meditation will not bring immediate result or gain. It 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 giving 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 orderly and beautiful.

Meditation is a part of Yoga. It is also called Raj Yoga or the highest path of Yoga. Yoga doesn’t mean just breathing techniques and physical exercises. The famous book on Yoga called Patanjali Yoga Sutra doesn’t talk much about Hatha Yoga or physical exercise. Rather than that it talks about meditation and Samadhi. It describes the techniques of disciplining and calming the mind.

Maharshi Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra, describes Yoga as the act of emptying the mind from thought or secession of the ripples in the mind.

“Yoga Chitta Vritti Nirodha,” says the book defining Yoga in one of its sutras. He talks about purification of mind and disciplining the character through Yama and Niyama and then describes about concentration, meditation and Samadhi or Dharana, Dhyan, Samadhi under the 8-fold path of Yoga. Yoga simply means unity or harmony. Harmony among mind, body and speech can be termed as Yoga. It means union between the individual consciousness and the Universal consciousness. In fact, a Yogi means an integrated person, an individual without conflict or contradictions, and therefore, he experiences inner peace, the lasting peace.

According to Vimala Thakar, a renowned meditation practitioner, 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.

According to Vimala, 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.  

“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.

Meditation is a state where the human mind conditioned or unconditioned, spontaneously cease to operate. “Meditation is a state of being, where intellect as well as intelligence cease to move outward from their centres,” writes Bimala in her book “Blossoms of Friendship.”

“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 not the movement, from the centre towards frontiers or beyond.  In meditation there is just vibration. It is the vibration of life. Life vibrates, it doesn’t move. the Meditation is to-be the state of the is s-ness of life, the to-be-ness of life.”