Here's ... How to begin with meditation?

Roy Eugene Davis

(THIS ARTICLE SHOWS YOU THE WAY. IT TELLS YOU HOW EXACTLY SHOULD YOU BEGIN MEDITATION)

Meditation is the natural process of withdrawing attention from environmental, physical and mental processes and consciously directing it inward to a chosen focus. But not many people know how to practise meditation for personal benefit and spiritual growth. The beneficial effects of regular meditation include stress reduction, strengthening of the immune system, more orderly thinking, improvement in powers of concentration, and a slowing of the ageing process.

Meditation practice is recommended by doctors as a harmless way for patient-clients to be more responsible for their own total well-being. The primary purpose of meditation practice, however, is to bring forth clear states of awareness that will make authentic spiritual growth easier to experience.

Cultivation of inner contentment prevents us from getting swept away by circumstances. Engaging in self-examination and self-discipline is important in order to clear away any of the psychological conflicts that might pose a problem. Study of ‘lower’ or secular knowledge helps us function effectively in the world. Many get educated so that they can live more effectively. But also important is the acquisition of higher knowledge or metaphysics to inquire about God, cosmic mind, manifestation of universes, our relationship with God: Why are we here, and for what purpose? Then the formal practice of meditation begins.

First, decide to practise meditation for at least 30 minutes a day. Sit upright in a comfortable chair or assume a crosslegged posture on the floor. Hold your head erect, with attention flowing into the area situated in the front region of the brain which is related to creativity, will power and discernment. Next, inhale and exhale deeply once or twice to elicit physical relaxation. Remain still for a few minutes until you feel calmly poised.

If you have a devotional temperament, invoke the presence and blessings of God or your favourite deity or object of worship. If you have a guru, reverentially acknowledge him. Make a conscious effort to be aware of your natural breathing rhythm. When inhalation occurs, mentally recite a chosen word or mantra such as God, peace, joy, or any other pleasant word that is agreeable to you. When you exhale, feel happy and peaceful. Feel the sound of the mantra spontaneously emerging into your mind and awareness. Continue this procedure without any anxiety about the results of practice.

When a state of mental calmness is experienced, disregard your breathing, listening only to the mantra. Eventually, allow even the mantra to fade away and rest in a state of mental peace and clarity of awareness for a while, until you feel inclined to conclude the session.

For optimum results, meditate once or twice a day. Do this for at least 30 days before trying to evaluate the results. When you are proficient in the practice of meditation, you could extend the session by calmly contemplating the essence of your being — your true Self — and your relationship with the Infinite. Or you may just sit longer in that calm state until you feel fulfilled.

When engaged in daily activities and relationships, endeavour to maintain a state of mental calmness and Self-awareness. Cultivate cheerfulness and optimism. Maintain your emotional balance. Adhere to wholesome routines of activity and rest. Maintain a healthy lifestyle: choose a nutritious diet and exercise regularly. Let all of your thoughts, feelings and actions be wholesome and constructive. You will then be empowered to live enjoyably, effectively and successfully.

Meditation Needs Neither Focus Nor Concentration

Jiddu Krishnamurti

(THE ARTICLE BELOW DESCRIBES MEDITATION IN IT'S ESSENCE, IT'S COMPOSITION AND IT'S ULTIMATE MEANING.)

There are different schools of meditation, different methods and systems. There are systems which say: “Watch the movement of your big toe, watch it, watch it, watch it”.

There are others which advocate sitting in a certain posture, breathing regularly or practising awareness. All this is utterly mechanical. Another method gives you a certain word and tells you that if you go on repeating it, you will have some extraordinary transcendental experience. It is a form of self-hypnosis. By repeating ‘Amen’, ‘Om’ or ‘Coca-Cola’ indefinitely, you will obviously have a certain experience because by repetition the mind becomes quiet. It is a well-known phenomenon which has been practised for thousands of years in India; it’s called mantra yoga. By repetition you can induce the mind to be gentle and soft, but it is still a petty, shoddy, little mind.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration. It is one of the favourite gambits of some teachers of meditation to insist on their pupils learning concentration — that is, fixing the mind on one thought and driving out all other thoughts, which any schoolboy can do because he is forced to. It means that all the time you are having a battle between the insistence that you must concentrate on the one hand and your mind on the other which wanders away to all sorts of other things; whereas you should be attentive to every movement of the mind wherever it wanders. When your mind wanders off, it means you are interested in something else.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased. Meditation is not control of thought, for when thought is controlled, it breeds conflict in the mind; but when you understand the structure and origin of thought, then thought will not interfere. That very understanding of the structure of thinking is its own discipline, which is meditation. Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old — this silence is meditation.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention. Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life — perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy — if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus, or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds, or looking at the face of your spouse or child.

Excerpted from Wisdom From The Known: Chapter XV. May 11 is Jiddu Krishnamurti’s 113th birth anniversary.

Why Meditation?

Today's Humans face numerous issues in their life, such as pscychological, social, professional, relation-ship based, financial, dreams, desires, failures, successes, choices, analyses and many others.

Only a human with perfectly normal mental and physical state can expect to lead a normal life, else he is bogged down with numerous problems as described above. Since all of us consider ourselves perfectly normal, we are unable to notice the stress caused by external influences and internal beliefs.

All of us have faced similar problems in our lives at some stage or the other. Whatever problem one might have faced, the best solution always comes from self, no expert (except angels and godly persons) can provide customised solution for you.

Meditation, deals at both Mind and Body level.

It eliminates the negative thoughts.

It provides stability and balance.

It removes mental blocks.

It gives direction.

So, what to do?

Find a source or guru to learn meditation from.

Practice it daily. As sure as Sun rises in the east.

As you would visit toilet daily, brush your teeth daily, take bath daily, eat three meals daily.

How can you ignore not to clean your mind daily?

What happens if you dont brush your teeth for 10 days? You smell filth. No one dare come near you.Think you have not cleaned your mind all your life. What a human being are you now???

Develop Consciousness, Not Character

You need not learn from others what is right and what is wrong. You need to simply go inwards. Open up small windows into your own being. Get a glimpse of who you are. The deeper you go, the clearer you will see...
— Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Our relationships have little happiness as they are too burdened by complaints about others. Everybody finds faults with everybody else. No one looks at one’s own faults. This is the root cause of all conflicts. Why? Osho says: “Our eyes are focused on others; we are other-oriented. We only see the others—it is not only a question of faults—we never see ourselves. Even if we want to see ourselves, we look in a mirror. We create an image. When there’s an image, the other appears. Otherwise, we have forgotten how to look in. As a consequence, we can’t see our own faults. Nobody can.” How should we get rid of our faults? Osho, the enlightened mystic, finds it very easy. He says: “The moment you start seeing your faults, they start dropping like dry leaves. To see them is enough. To be aware of them is all you need. In that awareness, faults evaporate. One can go on committing an error only if one remains unconscious of it. Even if you try to change, you will commit the same error in some other form. You will substitute it but won’t drop it because deep down you don’t see it as a fault. That’s why everyone thinks himself so beautiful, so intelligent, so virtuous, so saintly—and nobody else agrees! The reason is simple: When you look at others, you see their reality. But, about yourself, you carry fictions, beautiful fictions. All that you know about yourself is more or less a myth; it has nothing to do with reality.” The moment you see your faults, a radical change sets in. Hence all the buddhas down the ages have preached only one thing: Awareness. Not character, for that’s taught by priests and politicians. Buddhas teach you consciousness, not conscience. Conscience is a trick played on you by others. Others tell you what is right and what is wrong. They force their ideas on you. From your very childhood, when you are so vulnerable that it’s possible to make any impression on you. They condition you. That conditioning or conscience dominates your whole life. It’s a social strategy to enslave you! Buddhas teach consciousness. It means you needn’t learn from others what is right or wrong. You simply go in. The deeper you go, the more consciousness is released. When you reach the centre, you’re so full of light that darkness disappears. Osho suggests: “You need a 180° turn. That’s what meditation is all about. Close your eyes, start watching. Initially, you will find only darkness, nothing else. And many may get frightened and rush out, where there’s light. But that light won’t enlighten you. You need inner light, which cannot be extinguished even by death, an eternal light. You are born with it, but you never look at it. You must open up small windows into your own being from where you can have a glimpse of who you are!”