THE NATURE OF MEDITATION

 

Meditation is the course of action of deep, consistent and controlled breathing, focussing on a point with full devotion without the mind becoming distracted by extraneous factors, with an intention of acquiring peace and relaxation in order to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of both the mind and the body. Proper breathing forms an integral part of meditation. Breathing has to be slow, consistent and controlled, while you breathe in deeply through the nose. The practice of breath control and posture were specifically designed to teach a person how to concentrate without the mind influenced by external distractions. The benefits of excluding all external distractions including a wandering and fickle mind is that you learn how to leave all your tension, worries and preoccupation aside for that brief while. This gives you a more relaxed, focused and concentrated work-out. In this way, tranquillity is established in life.                   

Meditation is occasionally described as "listening to the silence between thoughts". Our attempt in meditation is directed towards consciously mounting the periods of such silence. It is normally an inwardly oriented personal exercise, which individuals do by themselves. It refers to self-regulation practices that focus on training, attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and in that way promotes general mental health and development and/or definite capacities such as calm, clarity and concentration. A practitioner can focus intensively on one particular point (so-called concentrative meditation), on all mental events that enter the field of knowledge (so-called mindfulness meditation), or both specific focal points and the field of knowledge. A fundamental element of meditation involves logic relaxation: not 'to intend' to analyse the possible psychophysical effects, not 'to intend' to judge the possible results, not 'to intend' to create any type of expectation regarding the process.

Meditation is commonly confused with different types of concentration. The aim of concentration exercises is to focus our full undivided attention on a particular aspect of functioning of our mind and/or the body in order to carry out a certain goal or develop a positive skill. Exercises such as yoga, tai-chi, breathing exercises, visualization are all types of concentration. On the contrary, meditation is an exercise, aiming to avert thoughts in a natural way, by intensely relaxing the physical body and then trying to keep the mind totally "blank" with no thoughts at all. This position may be sustained for a few seconds or a few hours, depending on your skill. Purity of the mind realized during meditation is indispensable to gain access to higher self. It appears that our higher self does not allow any impurity. When we get satisfactorily close to our higher self, the inner illumination becomes much brighter than the sun and the bliss cannot be explained in any human language. We have to achieve an absolute purity of the mind during meditation to get that far. We should have pure purposes and then intensively concentrate for some time on the "inner sound" and "inner light".

The posture during meditation is also significant. The easiest posture is a comfortable sitting position, with your spine straight and erect. If you lay down, you will most likely fall asleep. Joining your hands and crossing your legs is sought-after, because you make the bio-energy field around you denser and therefore more thorough. Sitting cross legged is another good pose, but requires some fitness and training. Yet another good position, although rarely used today is a squatting pose with your arms crossed over your knees, similar to position of a foetus in a womb. Various postures are taken up in meditation. Sitting, supine and standing postures are used. Popular are the full-lotus, half-lotus, Burmese and kneeling positions. Meditation is sometimes done while walking, known as Kinhin, or while doing a simple task mindfully, known as Samu.

The doors of meditation are open for all irrespective of caste, creed, class, sex, age, race, culture or community etc. Every person can practise meditation without any discrimination. There is no barrier of language, race, religion or faith etc. Meditation is an art as well as science. It is a universal phenomenon. It is not limited to any particular section of people. Any person belonging to any part of the world can avail from it without any hindrance and prejudice.  If we look back into the past, we will find that saints, monks or yogis, who had got a taste to practise meditation, belonged to different parts of the world. There was nothing common among them except the interest in meditation. Apart from it, a woman can also obtain equal benefits from the practice of meditation. In fact, physical appearance and differences do not matter. Our souls are alike. Meditation is the worship of God and a woman can also participate in the worship.