Meditation and its many meanings


Meditation is not an act; it is the art of doing nothing. The rest in meditation is deeper than the deepest sleep that you can ever have. When the mind becomes free from agitation, becomes calm and serene and is at peace, meditation happens. When the mind is engaged in some activity, it gets tired.

So any type of concentration, contemplation or any activity in the mind can drain your system. Meditation is that which doesn’t drain you, but just gives you deep rest and we withdraw from all sensory activities like seeing, listening, smelling, tasting. It is almost like sleep, but not exactly sleep.

Meditation is not concentration; it is de-concentration, letting go. When can you rest? Rest is possible when you have stopped all activities. When you stop moving around, stop working, talking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking—then you get rest or sleep. In sleep you are left with only involuntary activities like breathing, heartbeat, food digestion, blood-circulation, etc. 

But this is not total rest. When the mind settles down, only then total rest or meditation happens. There are three modes to our consciousness: waking, dreaming and sleeping; and a fourth mode is the meditative state. That is, you are aware from within and yet fully in a deep state of rest. Meditation calms the mind and gives it deep rest.

What happens in your mind when you have to wait for something? Do you notice the time passing by? In waiting, you observe every moment that is passing by and this very waiting can take you into meditation. When you have to wait, you can either be frustrated or meditative. Feeling time is meditation.

Meditation is that journey from sound to silence, from movement to stillness. It complements activity, though it appears to be completely opposite. For a layman, we can categorize the whole thing in seven layers of existence: body, breath, mind, intellect, memory, ego and the reference point of change which we call the “self.”

You know in life, we notice everything is changing. And how do we know the change, if there is no reference in the mind? There is something in us that is not changing. That something that has been with us, we call it the Self or the non-changing aspect of our consciousness. So, meditation is a journey to the non-changing reference of our Self, the consciousness.

Now, many people ask how to quiet the mind in meditation or how to get into a deeper meditation? So I would say, first accept the noise and not fight it. You fight with it and feel that you should not have this noise. The more you want to get rid of it, the more it will stick to you. The principle of consciousness or mind is such that resistance does not eliminate it but makes it grow. So first you have to let go and not resist it.

Second focus on the five different ways of getting into meditation. Breathing will help you get rid of the noise. Proper food can also make an impact on meditation. Exercise, posture and refined emotions, good understanding, all of these will aid meditation. 

Effort and effortlessness

 

Anything that is natural does not require effort. You bathe in the morning. Do you bathe with a lot of interest? Do you brush your teeth with a lot of interest? No, you don’t. Just because you have to do it, you do it! It’s natural and effortless!

Like when you are smiling naturally, that smile is effortless. But if you are asked to smile then that becomes a difficult task. Doing an action that requires effort is aasakti. However, doing work that comes naturally and gives you inner peace is done in nirasakti.

If you ask those who prepare food every day, they would be able to prepare it without much effort. However, if the same task is handed to a person who never cooks, he will flip through the pages of a recipe book again and again, to prepare the same food. He will keep tasting the food to check the balance of spices. So wherever effort is applied, the job is done with aasakti, and this leads to feverishness.

You being feverish about going to, for example, Mysore is aasakti; and effortlessly driving your car to Mysore is nirasakti. Nirasakti is not disinterestedness or depression; it is just an effortless attitude. The next effortless thing is meditation. If you put effort into meditation, that is it! You will not be able to do it. Meditation happens effortlessly.

All other things need effort – memorising anything requires effort, learning skills need effort. If you want to learn the computer, it takes you some time to adjust to the keyboard! If you want to learn some sport, you have to give 100% effort. If you want to play the sitar, you have to put in effort. And if you need to tell a lie? – 500% effort! This is because when you tell a lie, you forget what you have told, and it needs a lot of effort to keep it in mind!

Life is a combination of effort and effortlessness and they are complementary. If you work dynamically, you sleep well. If you have memorised well, you remember automatically. If you are doing service, you are able to love more, because there is satisfaction and your heart is opening up. If you can see beauty everywhere, you can appreciate beauty!

When you can do this, things become effortless; even jobs requiring effort, will not be strenuous. Do you see? When you want to do something, when the heart is in it, when there is an appreciation of beauty, then even effort is not strenuous.