21 Apr The Truth About Meditation (Yoga in Heston)

The Truth About Meditation

Namaste.

I hope you are all well and happy!

In modern times the definition of what constitutes meditation has become so broad it encompasses a very wide range of mental activities.

When someone says they are meditating they may be practicing visualization, relaxation, daydreaming, reflecting, reminiscing or even just sitting there trying to think of nothing and making their mind blank.

In truth none of the above is meditation according to the older contemplative traditions such as yoga, Some popular ideas of how to meditate are even potentially harmful, especially the idea of not thinking and making the mind blank.

To quote Swami Prabhavananda, if making the mind blank were desirable, this condition could be “easily achieved by asking a friend to hit you over the head with a hammer.”

The scholar and Lama Alan Wallace recalls in one of his books that while training in meditation at a Tibetan monastery one gentleman was determined to make his mind blank and think of nothing while meditating. This eventually lead him into such a mindless condition that he needed help to be fed and clothed.

It’s not the mind’s nature to be blank, and trying to force it into that state is both futile and harmful. Please don’t do this!

Concentration (Dharana): The key to Meditation

To understand what meditation is in yoga we have to first look at dharana (concentration). In yoga, concentration means something very specific. You may have heard of the terms “One Pointedness” or “One Pointed Attention”. These refer to giving something our undivided attention.

Usually our attention is spread all over the place, with our mind jumping from thought to thought. When we sit to meditate we fix our minds on a mantra (for example). Our goal is to give the mantra our undivided attention. For it to count as Dharana (concentration) we have to sustain this for a least 12 seconds.
Benefits of Building Concentration (dharana) 

“The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun. When they are concentrated, they illumine.”
– Swami Vivekananda
Concentration means focused attention, and it has many uses and benefits. It assists in studying, enables faster comprehension, improves the memory, helps in focusing on a task, job or goal, and enables us to ignore meaningless and irrelevant thoughts which sap our energy.

All this of course, assists us in achieving goals and in acting more efficiently. When this skill is well-developed, the mind obeys us more readily.

This ability plays an important role in meditation, gaining mental mastery, and attaining peace of mind. Without it, the mind just jumps restlessly from one thought to another, not allowing you to meditate properly and deprives you of inner peace.

The Restless Mind

Thoughts, constantly claim our attention, wasting our time and energy on unimportant and useless matters. They actually, rule our life. We have become so used to this condition that we regard it as natural.

While breathing, we do not need to pay attention to each inhalation and exhalation. We normally become conscious of the process of breathing, only when we have some difficulty with breathing, such as when our nose is clogged due to a cold.

It is the same with thinking. We become conscious of the constant chatter of our thoughts, and of our inability to calm them down, only when we need to concentrate, solve a problem or study. We are also acutely aware of them, when we have worries or fears.

Concentration Settles the Mind

Imagine being in a room full of loudly buzzing bees flying all around you disturbing your peace of mind. That’s what it’s like in our minds with our thoughts buzzing around constantly. Our natural instinct is to charge around trying to swat all the annoying “bees”. All this does is agitate them and make the situation worse.

If we stay very still, the bees will settle down and land and the room will be peaceful. By practicing one pointed attention on our our breath or a mantra we are training our attention to stop jumping around all over the place. Once our attention stays fixed our mind settles and becomes clear and we can finally see our mind clearly without all the swarms of bees constantly blocking our view.

We may avoid training the mind to be one-pointed because we’re accustomed to thinking of concentration as a mental effort. Concentration seems tension-inducing somehow, and not particularly “spiritual.” But the sustained inward focus that is a prelude to meditation is neither stressful nor unpleasant—it is relaxed, focused awareness, a state of mind that is soothing and calming, once you get the hang of it.

Meditation (dhyana)

We saw that to achieve dharana (concentration) requires around 12 seconds of unbroken one pointed attention.

If we can sustain this unbroken one pointed attention for 144 seconds (12 x 12) or 2 minutes 24 seconds, we will have reached a state of meditation (dhyana).

In this state of mind we are wholly focused on one point, like a yogic version of the flow state or being “in the zone.”

“In dhyana, psychological and chronological time come to a standstill as the mind observes its own behavior,” explains iconic yogi BKS Iyengar in his 1966 commentary on the Yoga Sutras. “Maintaining the same intensity of awareness, the attentive awareness moves from one-pointed concentration to no-pointed attentiveness.”

What this means is that you may have been giving a mantra your undivided attention but now it falls away leaving you experiencing just pure consciousness, which is an incredibly peaceful, relaxing and restorative state.

This is as far as I have personally got in my meditation practice. When I sustain my concentration on a mantra in this way it settles my mind and puts it in a peaceful place. This lasts for hours after my meditation session.

It allows me to cope better with stress and all the challenges life throws at me. When I miss a meditation session I become short tempered and angry. With meditation my positive moods are much more resilient, which allows me to stay patient and compassionate when caring for my parents

Samadhi (Union / Oneness)

In yoga samadhi is regarded as the final stage,

If our mind can maintain one-pointed attention for 12 x 12 x 12 seconds (28 minutes, 48 seconds), we will have entered samadhi. (This is one of the reasons why we meditate for at least 30 min)

The word ‘Yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘Yuj’, meaning ‘to join’ or ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’. The Yogic scriptures explain that the practice of Yoga ultimately leads to the union of individual consciousness with that of the Universal Consciousness

According to yoga philosophy, each of us perceives ourselves to be separate, individual and isolated like drops of rain. The practice of Yoga leads to the union of our individual consciousness (the rain drop) with that of the universal consciousness (The Ocean). In Samadhi, we get to see first hand that our sense of separateness is an illusion and experience the oneness which is Ultimate Reality.

In more mundane terms, our minds construct a “Self” as well as make mental maps and models to help negotiate our way through the world. In Samadhi all these fall away and we perceive the world directly, as it really is.

How To Start Meditating

Trying to meditate without first training the mind to concentrate is like trying to write a novel before learning to read. Until the mind is trained to concentrate, it will never flow into a meditative state.

With that in mind, a good place to start is breath counting. Bring all your attention to your breath and silently count each breath. When you get to 10 start again  If you lose count it’s because your attention wandered off! Just calmly start again and practice until you feel you’re ready for the next stage.