How to Sustain Your Meditation

(Image: Ralf Kunze from Pixabay)

Sometime back, I had written a post titled How to Sit Down in Meditation. Well, I tried following my own advice – and discovered that I was able not only to sit down in peace but do so for a longer period than before.

I understand that a lot of people do take the plunge into meditation but find it difficult to sustain their poise. They either get distracted easily, become fidgety after only a few minutes, or exhibit downright impatient behavior. Yet others, who can sit down longer, feel bored and keep wondering if they are indeed progressing in their meditation practice.

Before I proceed further, a disclaimer is in order: I’m no expert on meditation and do not advocate any particular type of meditation. What I’m sharing here is based on my own simple practice – one that I have been experimenting with and self-checking on for the past six years or so. Sometimes I wish I had a guru who I could look up to and who was accessible to me for accelerating my own path – and since I don't, I content myself with taking guidance from the inner light each one of us has.

Maybe this post will nudge some fellow seekers and practitioners to offer their own tips and suggestions.

As for me, I have usually observed three phases to my meditation routine. The first one is indeed sitting down quietly and comfortably (to the extent possible and that you can accept in your heart). In this phase the focus is on kind of “settling down” amidst the turmoil around – and within – you. In my experience, this phase can be as little as a few seconds to as much as five or even ten minutes.

The second phase, or the middle phase, begins with longer, steadier breaths, accompanied with fewer and less distracting thoughts.

Here, let me take a little detour into the human mind that is like a non-stop factory of thoughts: before you’ve dealt with one, another thought emerges. Even in sleep, our mind keeps fabricating all sorts of thoughts in real and surreal scenarios. So it’s quite a feat to “empty your mind” of all thought.

As such, the “strategy” I personally adopt is not to vigorously fight the onslaught of thoughts. Doing so makes you unnecessarily agitated, making the quietude of meditation even more slippery. Instead, what I do is “engage gently” with the thoughts. Why did such and such thought occur? Why now? What does the thought “want” from me? Can I lay it to rest without dwelling too much on it? Such “thinking about thinking” often takes me to the root cause or a better understanding, allowing me to retire each thought to a gentler, rather than violent, end. Alongside, I also bring my attention back to the process of meditation – sitting comfortably, and breathing gently and deeply.

Sometimes, I just let the thoughts be and merely nod or smile internally in their direction: gradually, they become fewer in number and fade away of their own accord. Perhaps they realize that there’s no further nesting ground for them “in here”!

This middle phase is rather tricky and may take up a significant portion of your meditation time. My personal goal has been to keep it within 10-15 minutes – but sometimes a rogue thought or two get the better of “me” and keep me in their tangle much longer.

Let us now come to the third phase – perhaps the whole point of why we are meditating in the first place.

In the second phase, you have a fairly good awareness of and, possibly, concern about your environment. A noise here or there bothers you, the thought avalanche has subsided but the mind is still fizzing in its Ego-bubble, and your body demands to be adjusted every now and then to ease out any discomfort. However, the third phase of meditation is when you surrender yourself wholly to the beauty of your being. At some point of the second phase, you hear a voice in your head: “Now is the time – to stop time in its tracks, as it were.” Somewhere inside, you realize that your mind-body-soul is ready to go deeper in its meditative state.

So you say goodbye to the last approaching thought – of bodily or mental discomfort, of your social life, of your surroundings… – and turn completely to your inner, here-and-now reality. Sitting. Breathing. Unthinking. Even the image or mantra you were using to concentrate should ideally dissolve into what I can possibly call your “meditative consciousness.”

At this moment, your senses become keener and your awareness, clearer. A feeling of peace and deep love begins to spring forth from every atom of your being. From deep within you, a realization sweeps across your arteries and veins that this state is where you have always wanted to belong: it’s your innermost natural tendency, to be shorn of any pain or attachment or fear. You want to remain in this peaceful, meditative state for God-knows-how-long.

While I have tried to describe this third phase, words often fail. And I must admit it without any reservation that reaching and sustaining the third phase continues to be challenging. Body-mind aches or erstwhile-overcome distractions often make an unwelcome appearance just when you think you have nailed it.

The reality is, there is no nailing; there’s only scaling – the ever-subtler, ever-peaceful, ever-joyous heights of what’s come to be known as meditation.

Keep at it, my dear meditator, keep at it. I know I will :)

(Also read – Beyond Asana: Yoga, its Ancient Roots…)

The Many Kinds of Silence and Why They Matter

I have written a few notes on meditation, so tackling silence should be no problem. Or so I thought—until my fingers, poised on the keyboard, began fighting the majestic pull of silence welling up in my mind.

“Why are you doing this?” it chided me even as I managed the first sentence. “Haven’t there been enough books and articles already on the power of silence, its significance in our increasingly noisy lives, and other such?”

The questions gave me pause and I fell silent for a moment. But the answer as to why I must put down my own ode to silence had often hovered in a quietening corner of my mind—in several of those daily meditative sessions that have become an inseparable part of me.

I remember reading and reflecting on the author Vikram Seth’s reply to the question posed to him, besides other intellectuals and celebrities, by an Indian magazine: “What does luxury mean to you?”

You know how Mr. Seth responded?

He said, “A quiet mind.”

Vikram Seth is a highly recommended, prolific author but these are the only three words of his I have read: a quiet mind. And I don’t think I’ll ever need to read another one uttered or written by him to appreciate the depth of meaning this ‘Suitable Boy’ can infuse into his writing (though I’m not saying I won’t :)

Those three words—a quiet mind—have haunted me ever since. And as my experimentation with meditation reached its own gradations of quietude, I knew that this ‘connect’ was real.

There is a constant flicker of movement and noise in human life—and, thanks to humans, in animal life too. If you are stuck, like me and hundreds of millions others, in a messy, nerve-jangling city, there is no long-term solution other than to reverse-migrate to far-off, less-maddening places. That, however, may seem impractical, unviable or, to those currently in their city-addiction phase, downright silly.

Modern tools can of course give you some reprieve: for instance, recall the ad of that specialist glass wall or window showing a woman sitting by its side and peacefully watching the traffic pass by on the other side of the pane, promising to keep the noise out of your home. Or think of those noise-canceling cutesy earplugs. Or some other contraption perhaps.

But what of the noise in your mind?

I think meditation is a time-tested tool that can bring your chattering mind to silence’s soothing shores—and with a bit of nudging, help it drink the nectarine waters of calm. As I have written in my book, Strings of the Soul: “Meditation takes you away from the torrent of oppressive thoughts into the inexplicable joy of stillness.”

The stillness, the silence, the here-and-now nothingness that permeates everything that is or can be.

The quiet that gives you reassurance each time you run into its arms from the ever-chasing loudness. The silence that envelops you in its embrace of joyous wisdom.

Just as there are different types of meditation or meditative techniques, there exist several forms of silence—and their varying levels or intensities. Most of us may instinctively know the different types we practice or encounter in our daily lives, but American novelist, poet and psychotherapist Paul Goodman very eloquently described the nine kinds of silence in his book, Speaking and Language:

“Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.”

(The above passage has been reproduced from a post by the curator extraordinaire of all things great, Maria Popova, from BrainPickings.org.)

I’m not sure if there is any sanctity to the number 9 but the idea is that there is a lot of breadth—and, in my experience, depth—to silence.

Meditation, in my humble opinion and experience, allows you to experience, evaluate and elevate all kinds of silence.

There is a constant interplay of speech and silence in the universe. Buddhist monks around the world, as well as mystics and yogis in ancient India, are known to have appreciated it and effectively used this seeming ‘duality’ to enhance their meditation practice.

Where does sound figure in meditation that is usually done with closed eyes in a noiseless environment?

Let us first look at sound from an ancient perspective. There are varying interpretations but, according to Vedic philosophy, there are four stages or levels of sound or speech. Ranging from gross to subtle, speech can be Vaikhari, Madhyama, Pashyanti and Para.

Vaikhari is represented by the spoken language or uttered words. Madhyama is the stage when the thought has formed in the mind and the object of the thought has been associated with it—but it is not yet uttered. Pashyanti represents thought-visualization in the mind’s intrinsic capacity; it is the level at which thinking “begins to happen” universally—regardless of whether the person is a speaker of Chinese, English, Sanskrit, Yoruba or any other language. And Para, which literally means “beyond”, is the highest, subtlest form of sound that is transcendental, bottomless, limitless, boundless…No, there is no contradiction there: highest in terms of its stature and subtlety; bottomless in terms of the depths from where it arises—pure consciousness or pure energy, take your pick.

It is at the Para level that even the best of scribes and the most accomplished of mystics fall short of words—for it is beyond words and can only be understood or experienced in the utmost meditative state. Acknowledging my own failure to describe it (more so perhaps because I’m still a novice meditator), let me dare say: It is silence incarnate.

In this backdrop of subtleties of sound, speech lies somewhere between the two ends of silence. Words, I believe, are conceived in silence and ultimately dissolve into silence: what remains in the interim is meaning—intended or perceived—in a given context and spacetime.

For the most part, we human beings hover between the most gross and the most subtle. Which is fine and has seen humanity through the ages. But this age—the iPhone-Android-Netflix-TrumpKim-Facebook-SUV-Airbnb-Alibaba age—is making mincemeat of our brains.

Take Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge, for instance, and his quest for silence amid the urban din. An NYTimes.com piece recounts how he went around New York City looking for quiet nooks and crannies—and, thankfully, he did find some. But that does not surprise me: as a (not-really-idle) flaneur, I have often discovered peaceful little oases ensconced within the chaotic sprawl of Delhi.

The silent sucker-punch for me in the story was the revelation that Erling, who became the first person to ski unassisted to the South Pole in 1993, disconnected the batteries from his emergency radio on the day he reached there—and he was there, alone, for FIFTY days.

How he narrated that quiet time to Steven Kurutz of NYT left on me an impression akin to Vikram Seth’s words. Here I’m reproducing the passage verbatim:

“When you start, you have all the noise in your head,” Mr. Kagge said, adding that by his journey’s end, “You feel your brain is wider than the sky. You’re a guy being part of this bigness, this greatness. To be alone and experience the silence feels very safe, very meaningful.”

In words like these, you see not only the letters of a learned man but you can actually feel the wisdom-soaked spell of silence.

It is my belief that if you try to listen to the sounds of silence, without straining yourself but just attuning to its inner rhythm, it talks back to you like a long lost friend.

Not everyone can bear silence for long, not always. In contrast with Erling, a correspondent of The Economist signed up for a seven-day silent retreat in a monastery in Mingaladon, Yangon, but lasted “a bit less than 70 hours.” Nevertheless, it was quite an experience for that correspondent, who came away wiser and produced a highly readable and insightful commentary on “the power and meaning of silence.”

Today’s connected age has, ironically, lost some of its connections to the essence of human existence and communication: silence.

Maybe it is time to speak up on behalf of silence. And the best way to do that is to be quiet more often.

So just sit down. Take a deep breath. Meditate if you will.

Quiet. Please.

How to Be Your Own Guru

Image: Pixabay.com

Can you recall a teacher you have studied under or met in your life whom you can call a true guru? One who not only taught a subject - but guided you through the ups and downs of life? Do you know someone who is up there among the highest mortals, imbuing you with their intelligence and helping you grow some of your own?

In the ancient Indian culture, the Sanskrit word 'guru' means one who shows you the light.

Some traditional pictures depict gurus sitting under the banyan or peepul tree, surrounded by ardent disciples listening intently to the often-bearded figures (the Buddha, the Jain Tirthankaras and a few others, however, are usually shown clean-shaven and radiating wisdom).

Such gurus could expound on the science of archery or the dilemmas of a king as easily as the ethical questions arising in the mind of a spiritual seeker.

Alas, in our current age of electricity, smartphones and artificial intelligence, trying to find a true guru sounds like a dumb idea. Why, haven't we already seen too many babas - bearded or otherwise - falling prey to the lure of lust and lucre? And while these 'fake gurus' are often glib-talkers who have mugged up tons of religious literature, listening to them involves more pain than pleasure - forget about spiritual delight.

Rather than radiate wisdom, they exude wealth.

Instead of simplicity, their appearance reveals affectedness.

No thatched huts and long walks for them - but a retinue of confidants officiously commanding the Mercs and the Audis to take them to their mansions often as palatial as their egos.

Enough madness.

Where does that leave you, a seeker in search of a spiritual guru? How on earth are you going to find a divine persona to show you the light and guide you on a path you can proudly call your dharma?

It doesn't look likely in this largely chaotic, greed-infested world where anyone you may repose your faith in today could turn out to be just another impostor tomorrow: there are too many of them in the swindlers list!

(Also read: My Experiments with Sudarshan Kriya, Pranayama and Meditation)

What, then?

Who, where, how, when?

Now, just do as I say. Stand in front of a mirror. Take a deep, penetrative look at the face staring at you. Frown, smile or make faces for a while if that helps. But come back to the gaze. You gazing at you - like never before.

Do it for a few seconds, minutes, hours...length of time does not matter, strength and sincerity of the gaze does. (But hey, don't do it for days or weeks, okay :)

What words come to your mind, what thoughts? How do you regard yourself when seen in the mirror like this perhaps for the first time?

Now do another thing. Sit down in a relaxed pose, close your eyes and think thoughts of yourself.

Both in front of the mirror and while sitting with closed eyes, try and sift through the major attributes of your personality. The defining moments of your life. Your decisions that mattered to you and to those around you who you loved and cared for.

I am reminded of a famous quote of leadership coach and author John Wooden: "The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching."

As you look deep inside yourself and no one but you is watching, you will find a rare clarity emerge. You will know, in hindsight in this 'exercise' - which can gradually turn into here-and-now-wisdom and maybe foresight over time - you will know why those decisions and choices turned out the way they did.

You will know the warts in your thoughts and not just on your face. You will know that perhaps the little things gave you more joy than the big rewards - and the problems that once seemed insurmountable are all but gone now (That there are new problems now is another matter).

More important, you may realize how foolish you were to blame others or fate for your own doing.

Spending more time like this in the honest reflection of your thoughts will help you see the power of your own inner light.

In fact, most of us know - through intuition and traditional wisdom passed down the generations irrespective of religious leanings - the ever-presence of such an inner light in the core of our being.

While our upbringing, the social and economic environment we live in, and the life imperatives we have bound ourselves to, may have some impact on the brilliance and the frequency of 'visibility' of this light, it is my belief that the light itself is integral and essential to us.

I tend to be in agreement with Mark Twain's words: "In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice."

This inner light imparts a keen sense of perception, of what is right and wrong at any given moment, what one should or should not do in certain circumstances. It can indeed prod us to higher, better versions of ourselves - much like the collective wisdom of open source programmers these days can shape a beautiful piece of code.

Guiding yourself by your own inner light is perhaps how you can be your own guru.

So, why not give it a try?

Happy Guru Purnima to You!

How to sit down in meditation

Not happy with how you meditate? Maybe a change in how you sit down could make a difference... 

Image: Pixabay

The thought of writing this post has crossed my mind a few times even as I sat meditating, in the middle of my own attempts to let go of all thought and distraction—but somehow I couldn’t bring myself round to jotting it down.

Today is Guru Purnima, and what better day than the ‘Teacher’s Full Moon’ to give shape to a noble thought! Guru is a Sanskrit word that means one who removes darkness or ignorance, thus allowing the light of knowledge to shine through the disciple’s intellect.

This post assumes that you are convinced of the value of meditation in your life, and perhaps have even had a go or two at it, but are unable to find the peace and tranquility that meditation entails (If you are curious about what meditation really is, maybe you can find some clues here).

So let’s get on with it, without further ado.

At a very basic level, when you sit down to meditate, all you need is comfortable clothing, a relaxed posture and a decent, quiet place. After all, what could be there to really learn about “sitting down to meditate”?

But, believe me, at a deeper level, there’s a lot to it. And I’m not saying it for the sake of it but drawing upon my close to three years of regular practice (which, by the way, doesn’t make me an expert—though it should lend a bit of credibility to what I’m going to say).

The first thing I would suggest is to review your approach to the whole process of meditation. Are you meditating just because of peer pressure or some vow you want to get over with? Or is it some deeply felt need that has been pulling you close to setting aside some time regularly for being at peace with yourself and your environment? Do you consider meditation more of a physical act or a fad? Or do you realize the involvement of your whole being in its ‘practice’?

As they say of an arduous journey, “Well begun is half done,” so it is with meditation. If you are able to start it on the right note—which essentially means being able to “sit down” in the right frame of mind—you are more likely to get up peaceful, rested or even feeling blessed at the end of your session rather than find yourself wondering what went wrong.

What to do? Let’s do a mock-up. Suppose it is time for you to meditate (while one can meditate any time of the day, I find setting aside a regular time-frame to be of help in developing the practice). Typically, what do you do? Do you sit down hurriedly, put on some music and close your eyes quickly? Start telling beads or chanting some mantra, while shaking your body with each repetition?

Instead, give some time to the process of sitting down. Make sure your surroundings are quiet and comfortable (to the extent possible), you have set your mental clock to the time available for the current session (I vary mine depending on the other tasks and schedule of the day). And last but not the least, sit down in peace, noticing your whereabouts and closing your eyes gradually. (Before you sit, you can play some soothing music if it works for you; it’s fine otherwise too.)

If you need to cough, regulate your unruly breathing or do any fidgety thing to enhance your comfort, do it now. Do not jump headlong into the process of chanting—nor should you worry too much about the flood of thoughts that continues to lap at the shores of your mind even after you shut your eyes.

On the contrary, after slowly closing your external eyes, turn your attention to your mind’s eye and to all the thoughts coming to your mind. Breathe deeply but simply a few times and gradually bring that same attention to the act of inhaling, holding and exhaling of breath. While you do that, pay attention to your spine and try to make it as straight as you can (but hey, straight doesn’t mean rigid or taut like a bowstring!)

Once your breathing has stabilized, the tide of your thoughts has turned to a slow ebb (or almost disappeared) and you are more or less reconciled to your posture, you are ready.

Now, bow mentally before someone or something you highly regard—anything you revere or respect or hold dear to your heart—and be grateful for a moment. Be forgiving, too—of your own self and of the actions right or wrong of others. Sit like this for a while, suspended in thought, space and time—mindful of your breath and thankful of the moment.

Keep still like this, breathe simply, with your back straight and attention relaxed on breathing.

Now you are ready: go on, meditate...

Six Effective Ways to Relax Your Mind

Are you finding it difficult to ease life's chaotic pressures on your mind? Take a deep breath and just follow these six steps to a soothing mental symphony

We live in a noisy, chaotic world. Many might argue that it's always been like this. Maybe. Perhaps we had the same basic notions of cacophony eons ago. But the prism of modern development has magnified the human noises to an unbearable extent.

The result: even when we shut ourselves indoors, far away from the madding crowd, we can still hear the echoes of that clamor in our mind. Echoes that refuse to go away. Echoes that cling to a mind desperately wanting to relax. Echoes that impede or interfere with the body’s natural tendency to remain in an easy, happy existence.

Tell me frankly, haven’t you been in situations when – even after you lie down – your mind continues to overflow with thoughts of care, worries of yesterdays, and noises from the daily rumble around you?

The dictum “A healthy mind in a healthy body” holds true in its inverse form as well. If you keep your mind in a poised, relaxed state, you are more likely to have a physically fit body. As modern research in psychosomatic medicine suggests, the condition of the mind directly or indirectly affects the body’s wellbeing.

So, how can you detox your mind? How can you drive out stress, commotion, conflicts and other detritus from the daily life and invite in a gentle sense of calmness and poise? Can you do it without retreating to a remote, secluded (and often, expensive) resort or spa? Hell, can you do it in your existing routine?

Don't try and raise hell. Try, instead, these simple tips for giving your mind the peace it's been asking for.

Finish what you start: The mind is like a non-stop factory in which our words and thoughts are either woven into new fabric to clothe our personas or taken apart to be deposited on a growing pile of rags and tatters. Often, there are many unfinished strands that just lie about frayed in our mind, without finding their perfect-knit. A growing list of incomplete things can make you feel miserable and wanting. So go back to your to-do lists and keep them to a manageable minimum. If you know you can only do ten things rather than twenty-three, leave the unwanted thirteen out.

Make only the commitments you can keep: A businessman once gave this advice when starting up his son: “My son, never break a promise; but then, never make a promise!” Well, you’ll have to make commitments in your daily life: just be sure to make only those that you can keep. If you are firm in accepting only what you can do now, it will save you from the gnawing feelings of failed commitments later.

Exercise focused concentration: According to mind-training experts, one must pursue what one wants to achieve with “focused concentration.” Through constant practice, one can indeed train one’s mind to think about one thing at a time. This is what most meditative techniques also suggest: focusing the mind on one shape, sound, color, or any other object. The idea is to constantly train the mind on the job at hand. After sufficient practice, this ‘training’ should cease to be an effort and become second nature to you.

Forsake your regrets: We often don’t realize it, but we routinely carry a scary load of regrets at the back of our minds. If only we could do this! If only we had seen that coming! Our laundry list of regrets keeps getting longer and longer – without ever getting ample washing. Unbuckle your past lamentations and let them rinse down your memory drain one by one – and you’ll feel the same lightness and crispness that you do when you put on a freshly washed and sunned piece of garment.

Practice doing nothing: It is usually said that “an empty mind is the Devil’s workshop.” However, there’s an art to emptying the mind that yogis, rishis and monks have been practicing and preaching over the ages. An art that, instead of making your mind a playground for Satan, can make it a blessed abode of the gods.

Think about it: we are infused with a lifestyle that requires us to be always doing something or the other. If we were really programmed that way, there would be no need for sleep, isn't it? By doing nothing, however, I don’t mean sitting idle or staring at the idiot box. What I mean is being free of your troubling, trivial and compulsive thoughts.

Choose a moment and place when you are just by yourself. Take a posture in which you are comfortable and let the whole world pass by you as if you were a spectator serenely yet effortlessly watching life’s little episodes. In such a state of nothingness, you can often feel the goddess of peace whispering gently in your mind.

Curb your craves: This one is not easy, especially because most people live to have more, get more or possess more. But if you can reduce the number of things you depend on or cut down your list of must-haves, you’ll also reduce the burden of relentlessly going after them. Pursue your ambitions or follow your dreams by all means, but don’t let them become your daily pester points. Set out to achieve big things that matter to you, but try and shun mere objects of desire that you constantly crave. Like I said, it’s a bit difficult to achieve this balance between worthy objectives and petty longings – but it’s far from impossible. And indeed very tranquilizing. Just ask your mind.