Meditation or Dhyan is basic and essential to spiritual growth. Meditation is advised by all cultures and religions. All Saints, Men of God, Avatars and Gurus speak of meditation and recommend meditation as it helps us to overcome the vagaries of the mind and have a successful life in the material world and spiritual world.
Meditation is done in many ways. Some of us do meditation with mantra, some with a passage from a sacred scripture, some with inspirational words, some with the image of a favourite form of God and some watch the incoming and outgoing breath. The result of all forms of meditation is same. It is being aware of what is going in your mind and in your life. Meditation is doing an action with awareness.
Let us do a simple meditation. We sit on the asan and do deep breathing for a few minutes. Then we pray to God and Guru to bless us with Grace and Love during meditation. Our backs are straight and our eyes are closed. We start chanting the SitaRam mantra silently. As we chant the mantra, our thoughts run in all directions. They run in a chaotic manner at lightning speed. We are chanting the SitaRam and suddenly we are planning the dinner menu. Oh, the rice stock is over and we must order! There is a list of items to buy. Must call the Grocer. He is such a cheat! Nowadays all are cheats. See the Government. Oh, what is there to see? Must watch the new serial on the T V..... Damn – Why such thoughts flood my mind? I must focus on the mantra. SitaRam, SitaRam, SitaRam.... Gurudeva please forgive me for such ugly thoughts and lack of focus when I try to meditate.... As usual one thought leads to another and our mind jumps to a connecting topic. We whizz through past, present and future with great speed. We think of everything but the mantra.
Then what should we do? How do we meditate? How do we overcome our mind? It is very simple. Keep doing the mantra and watch your mind with AWARENESS. DO NOT REACT TO THOUGHTS. JUST WATCH THEM. As your mind wanders from topic to topic, keep chanting the SitaRam mantra. Watch the mind as if you are watching people walk in the market or as if you are channel surfing. There is no emotion involved in it. It is mere watching.
There will be times when we forget to watch our thoughts and mind and we start reacting to the thoughts. Oh, how dare he say that to me? I will show him what the truth is! He will pay for what he has done to me. She thinks she knows all? Let it be. I will show her how much she knows.... When you become aware that you are no longer watching but participating and have forgotten the mantra, bring your attention back to the mantra and start chanting again. When we keep doing this exercise of bringing back the mind and focus to mantra chanting again and again, a time comes when we stay with mantra for longer periods of time and there is less wandering of mind.
We also become aware of how angry, judgmental, vengeful, attached, lustful and egoistic we are. When we watch the mind and keep chanting the mantra, we become aware of the quality of thoughts but we do not react. Then we find that the power of thoughts to disturb us goes away. We also understand that we are not our mind. We are not our thoughts. We are not our ego.
As we sit for our daily practice of meditation, we chant the mantra and watch ourselves within awareness in a passive manner. Over a period of time, the speed at which the thoughts are churned out within us slow down and a time comes when there are gaps between our thoughts. During this time we lose awareness and feel we have fallen asleep. This is Samadhi state of meditation. During such gaps, the awareness within us or our consciousness rises to a different realm of existence. Here, we absorb peace, wisdom, love and knowledge and come back to body consciousnesses Though we do not recall at earlier stages about what we received or where we went, the knowledge and wisdom are available to us at the time of our need and when we get up from meditation, we feel loving and peaceful.
Anyone can practice this simple meditation and get excellent results. Let us do our daily SitaRam mantra japa, meditation and follow the teachings of the Guru and have a better life.
