After having discussed the importance of taking a broader view of meditation and how it helps us solve our day-to-day problems, now we should understand what meditation is not.
Knowing what meditation is not is a prelude to knowing what it is and to appreciating it.
It saves us from wasting precious time and energy in pursuing wrong methods of meditation – the same energy can then be used for practising regularly and for achieving deeper levels of meditation.
Many years ago, as I was finishing my discourse on meditation, a man in his sixties came forward and asked me a question. ‘Dr Vinod, I have been regularly practising meditation for the past several years, but I have never experienced the kind of peace of mind you have been talking about. Do you think I have been doing something drastically wrong? Will you kindly guide me?’
He attracted the attention of the audience, mainly because he was a learned man, almost double my age and yet he was very keen on learning something from me. This was an unusual situation in India in those days – it was rare that a learned man would publicly share his failure and frustration with someone almost half his age.
First of all, it is hard to admit that one might have made a mistake. It is difficult enough to accept our mistake in private, but it is extremely difficult to accept it publicly. It requires a great deal of courage to declare our ignorance and admit our failure. This gentleman’s eagerness to correct the mistake and learn something new was highly praiseworthy.
The majority of people prefer to remain imprisoned within their own egos: they remain buried in graves of their creation. They do not even realize that living under the influence of an ego is like living in a world of illusion and imagination. By doing so, they do themselves more harm than good.
Those who happen to realize this truth are not always capable of bringing about any change in their life, nor can they change the lives of others around them. This is because their realization is often too superficial and is therefore quite ineffective in changing anything. Fortunately, this gentleman had no such problems. As the main obstacle of the ego was not present, it was very easy for me to relate and establish communication with him. He appeared to be very receptive to my advice.
It was evident from what he subsequently told me that he had been following a conventional method of meditation. During meditation he was trying in vain to focus his attention on the idol of Lord Ganesh.
Idol worship is a profound and powerful concept. It is in fact a precious gift from the Indian sages to the whole world. This method of worship is common in India. It is relatively easy to settle one’s mind on something concrete and comprehensible like an idol rather than the incomprehensible infinite vastness of abstract reality. Idol worship can be extremely useful, provided it is done with a great deal of clarity and understanding about what one is doing while performing the rituals related to such worship. Many people do not know what it is all about. They are not aware of the basics and their idol worship is reduced to mere mechanical repetition of few rites and rituals.
This man was learned but was not an enlightened person. For nearly 20 years, he had been trying ‘too hard’ to concentrate on the idol of Lord Ganesh but was still not able to get anywhere, despite his sincere efforts. The quality and depth of his meditation never showed any improvement.
It seemed to me that he was an example of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been mistaking mental concentration for meditation and are therefore not getting anywhere.
There is no need to put in so much effort to achieve mental concentration during meditation. In fact, meditation, as is commonly believed, is not a matter of achievement. It is truly a matter of happening. Focusing our mind on doing things that we really love to do is always easy. When we are deeply interested in doing something with all our heart and mind involved in it, and when we feel highly satisfied doing it, then finding time for it is never a big problem. We don’t have to exert too much energy while doing such activities.
Sawai Gandharva Music Festival is a mega event for those who love to listen to Indian classical music. It is held every year in Pune, near Mumbai (formerly Bombay). It is the Indian equivalent of the Boston Pops concerts held in Boston or the Three Tenors concerts in Paris. Many internationally well-known singers and instrumentalists like Pandit Jasraj, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Zakir Husain love to attend and give their live performances during this prestigious music show. Those who get an opportunity to come to the dais feel highly honoured to be there. They feel very fortunate to be selected to present their art during this festival.
Thousands of people from all over India and many Indian classical music lovers from abroad attend. I know quite a few music enthusiasts who commute every day from Mumbai to Pune (150 kilometres) to attend the show for the whole night and still manage to go to work in Mumbai the next morning, during the whole ten days of the festival.
The fans love to listen to the music so much that they do not mind all the hardships, the weather and the overcrowding they experience. While listening to music they don’t need to make special efforts to remain focused on listening. They are so completely absorbed in the ‘divine treat’ on those nights that their minds hardly wander. But when it comes to doing a bit of extra work in the office, they find it too boring or feel too tired to do it. They are unable to attend to their work properly and tend to make lots of mistakes. They make excuses to avoid such work, and their efficiency levels drop significantly.
What is true with music fans is also true with sports fans. Sport is a neo-religion for millions of people. They love watching it so much that they remain glued to their TV sets and miss their meals whenever their team is playing. While they are watching the game, nothing else distracts or disturbs them. Noisy traffic, people fighting and shouting and children playing and yelling do not make any difference.
But when it comes to studying, they are unable to focus their attention in the same way. Now, the slightest sound matters a lot. The same boys and girls, who can be totally absorbed in doing something they love to do, suddenly start feeling bored and tired.
The same principle applies to meditation. Until we have a genuine liking for meditation, we have to make a special effort to concentrate. But once we develop a true taste for meditation, no such effort is necessary. Concentration of mind comes automatically and effortlessly on its own. No exertion is needed. There is no need to apply any force to reach the higher states of awareness through meditation.
Many people think that meditation is only meant for a select few people. I was once attending a course on meditation by someone who was well known for his excellent oratory. As I watched him and listened to him, I could sense an air of arrogance in his words, persona, body language and the manner of his speech. The person who introduced him to the audience spoke with great admiration and adoration for the revered speaker. He mentioned that the speaker had been born into a pious family of a great spiritual heritage and learning. He also talked about the early childhood signs of greatness in the speaker, and gave vivid descriptions of his childhood mischief, his dislike for study, lack of interest in formal education, progress on the path of meditation, the first experience of samadhi and so on.
The focus of the introduction was not so much on essential information about the speaker to make the audience more receptive to him. It was more than that. He wanted to impress upon the audience that the speaker was not an ordinary person. He belonged to a special category of exceptional people who are ‘chosen’ to perform a special mission in this world. It was as if the world, filled with ignorant and downtrodden people, had been waiting patiently for his arrival. In short, it was a momentous occasion for the audience to be able to listen to the precious words of this great man.
I am amazed and, to a large extent, amused by such introductions. Once somebody becomes successful in the eyes of the people, everybody starts praising and appreciating such a person for whatever he/she did, regardless of whether it was right or wrong. In fact, this spiritual master must have been a very difficult child, who was severely punished and scolded by his teachers at school. But, now his punishable ‘naughtiness’ suddenly becomes a ‘praiseworthy mischievousness’. His poor performance in formal education becomes a distinct sign of creativity. The same teachers who were once disappointed with his academic performance now start saying that his lack of interest was in fact a sign of exceptional intelligence which is only found in extraordinary people.
As a child, Sachin Tendulkar, the great star of Indian cricket, probably practised some shots that broke the glass windows of the apartment house where he lived. At that time, the neighbours must have got angry with him and complained to his parents about his naughtiness. Some of them might have even made a few demeaning and nasty comments about his future prospects as a cricketer. But now that he has proven his talent as one of the best batsmen in the world who can be compared only with the all-time great Sir Don Bradman, the same neighbours would quickly change their stance and start proudly quoting those instances as early signs of his being a child prodigy and a genius of this century. Everything that he did as a child suddenly becomes a matter of appreciation. In the years to come, when he becomes the greatest batsman that the history of cricket has ever produced, they will start praising him more and more.
What pained me most in the speaker’s introduction was that it might have created the wrong impression in the minds of those who listened to him. It sounded as if the field of yoga was so exclusive that it was reserved only for special people.
The history of humanity has seen great people like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Leo Tolstoy and Bertrand Russell, who have left lasting marks of the work they have done for the welfare of humanity as a whole. Surprisingly, they were all very simple people, with no air of superiority about them.
Mahatma Gandhi was remarkable because he never posed as a great leader. He never expected any special treatment from others. He was always ready to relate to all kinds of people regardless of their class, creed, religion or nationality. He chose to lead his life like an ordinary person and refused to be deified. This particular attitude of his was a testimony to being a truly extraordinary person.
Many thoughts flooded my mind after listening to the exaggerated introduction by the compere. I wondered why meditation should be treated as a monopoly of a handful of chosen people? After all, if meditation is a state of ‘no-thought awareness’ or a complete silence of mind or being in tune with the core self, why should it be reserved for only a select few? If all human beings possess the same organ, called the mind, then why should freedom from thoughts be a prerogative of just a few?
We are all born with an ability to breathe air into our lungs. This ability stays with us as long as we are alive and we all breathe the same air. We all possess one pair of feet and other organs of the body. How we make use of those organs may vary from person to person, but the basic composition of organs remains the same in all.
Each one of us is bestowed with a wonderful organ called the mind. It is true that some of us possess a sharper mind than others do. Some are able to think more wisely and more deeply than others do. But it is clear that we all possess this precious gift from Mother Nature from the time we were born. How we use it is entirely up to us. Therefore, it is not necessarily the case that those who do not have a sharp mind at present will never be able to develop such sharpness in future. Maybe they will have to wait a little longer or they will be required to put in more sustained effort than those who are blessed with sharp minds.
Everybody has the potential to reach a state of no-thought awareness. Nobody is special in this respect. All of us have an equal opportunity to experience higher states of consciousness through meditation.
I am reminded of an interesting anecdote. A client goes to a lawyer and asks his advice: ‘What should I do to get a divorce?’
The lawyer enquires, ‘Are you married?’
The client replies, ‘Yes.’
‘Then you don’t have to do anything else. You will get the divorce,’ assures the lawyer.
The point of the story is that those who have a mind can surely be divorced from the mind. They can be free of its influence on their being through proper practice of meditation. Everybody can learn and practise meditation – there is nothing special about it.
I was once attending a weekly group meeting of sadhakas. Sadhakas are dedicated practitioners of meditation. They were having a satsang, a special kind of gathering for spiritual learning. It is supposed to be an informal and intimate meeting of like-minded people who are deeply interested in the exchange of ideas, thoughts and experiences about meditation and other spiritual practices. Satsang is a great opportunity for true learning by sharing experiential understanding with each other.
It should be conducted in a friendly, informal, ego-free, mutually respecting and caring atmosphere. The atmosphere should allow and encourage free expression from all the participants. Most importantly during satsang the dictum is – do not fight, but interact; do not debate, but discuss.
Unfortunately, it seldom happens that way. People usually tend to miss the essential and get caught up in the superfluous. This is precisely what was happening in that group. It was not a real satsang because it was a mixed group of sadhakas. Some of them had been regular practitioners of meditation for many years. Some were beginners and the rest were curious enthusiasts who were novices in the field. One of the senior sadhakas among them was their leader. He was in charge of the deliberations. I was present there only as a silent observer and a quiet listener.
The main topic of their discussion was whether meditation was easy or difficult to practise. Most of the senior members were of the opinion that meditation was very difficult and it required a great deal of hard work and many years of regular practice to get anywhere near success.
The novices and beginners had no real choice but to quietly listen to the discussion. After hearing the heated exchanges among their seniors, the novices got more confused and perplexed than ever. They were wondering whether it was a true satsang on meditation among spiritually enlightened people or just another debate among ordinary people over trivial matters. I also started wondering whether meditation was really all that difficult. If it was, why were they doing it for such a long time? Why didn’t they just give it up? Why waste time? What must be their motivation?
It appeared to me that those who were doing meditation for a long time were very proud people. They were proud because they had been practising it for such a long time. As a silent observer and quiet listener, I thought that pride was always bad, whether it was about meditation or anything else. It appeared to me that gratification of the ego through pride was their prime motive. Their discussion continued for a long time, but it led them nowhere.
I also felt that none of those who were discussing this issue so vehemently had the slightest idea of how much harm their pride was doing to them. Pride can never do us any good – it only protects and nurtures the ego and keeps us removed from reality.
Ego and pride are fundamental facets. They make us do different things in order to create and reinforce our individual identity, which separates us from others. Everybody seeks respect from others. It is one of the most vital needs of human life. We all want social recognition and social sanction for whatever we are doing. Everybody wants to attract the attention of other people and prove that they are different. Attracting attention is an attempt on our part to prove that we are able to do things that others can’t do.
When somebody does something that others cannot do, people begin to praise such a person. Naturally, he begins to feel proud of himself. If somebody is found to be practising meditation for a long time, everybody usually starts praising him. The person gets easily carried away by such praise and starts feeling proud about it.
One may think that having a small degree of pride is quite natural and is perfectly justified. However, we have to remember that although pride is very common, not everything that is common is necessarily desirable or appropriate – particularly when it is in the realm of spiritual practices.
Pride is eternally harmful for our spiritual progress. Even in small measures, it can contaminate the entire spectrum of our self-awareness and thus completely destroy our ability to reach higher spiritual experiences. Therefore, holding on to pride because it is considered natural is a self-defeating proposition.
Someone who has practised meditation for a long time may think that there is nothing wrong in feeling proud about something that they have been doing so persistently. They may also feel that it is quite natural. In spirituality, however, anything that restricts our perceptions and takes us away from reality is not worth striving for. Pride is harmful in this sense too.
It is true that meditation can sometimes seem difficult. It is bound to seem so because it is a special and unique kind of journey within us. This journey is completely different from the ones we are aware of. Therefore it is quite possible that initially one may get confused while walking on this path.
The real problem comes only when meditation is made to appear more difficult than it actually is – something that is often done to attract the attention of others and demand respect from them. Many people think that nobody is going to pay them any respect unless they do something extraordinary. They think they have to be different and so should be doing something very difficult – or at least it should appear so to others.
People who think like this may feel that if meditation appears easy to others and if anybody can do it, what differentiates them from other people? So they need to make it appear difficult. This is precisely what some spiritual leaders are doing and is the reason why meditation is made to look more difficult than it actually is.
Attention-seeking is not just a prerogative of spiritual leaders or practitioners of meditation. Many people do it for different reasons. Mischievous children, college flirts, expensively dressed people at parties, worshippers performing complicated rituals and pseudo yogis standing on one foot or getting buried underground are all doing the same thing: attracting the attention of others.
It is said that the wheel that creates more noise gets oiled first. By the same token, unless you make some noise nobody is going to pay any special attention to you and your needs. But, in the process, you get caught up in the gimmicks to project a false picture and exploit the situation. A mischievous child exploits its mother by throwing emotional tantrums. A pseudo yogi and his fake devotees exploit the gullible and vulnerable. But gimmicks never work on a long-term basis. They get exposed sooner or later, so it is better to stay away from them and learn to differentiate between true and false. We need some time and patience to do that.
Meditation is often made to look more difficult than it actually is because it provides an acceptable excuse in the event of possible failure. Such an excuse comes in handy for those who haven’t achieved anything after years of practice. In this way they can safeguard their inflated self-images and explain their failure. It is very easy to conveniently blame the arduousness of the technique of meditation in order to defend their individual or collective failures.
It is quite understandable that some disciples are likely to find meditation more difficult than others, depending on their level of sincerity, regularity of practice and inherent ability.
So-called experts in all walks of life exploit people’s ignorance and make themselves seem more important. For example, unprincipled garage mechanics might charge for work on your car that hasn’t been done or doesn’t need doing; corrupt officials might exploit those who are not aware of the formal government procedures; lawyers might exploit their clients by making legal procedures appear more complicated than they actually are.
When it comes to meditation, exploitation is relatively easy. Whatever is said, done or experienced in relation to meditation is extremely subjective in nature, which makes it very difficult to be challenged by other people. It would be very difficult or almost impossible to disprove the claims made by someone who says that they had been practising meditation for many years.
There aren’t any established or recognized parameters that can be used to prove or disprove such claims. Reduction in blood pressure, fall in pulse rate, increase in skin resistance, fall in blood lactate level and the presence of alpha waves on an electro-encephalogram are some of the indicators that could be used to assess these claims, but it is not practical to conduct such tests in everyday life. Unscrupulous people can very easily exploit such situations and bring disrepute to the field.
Everybody knows that getting the blood group and genetic constitution of a couple checked before they decide to get married can substantially reduce the chances of them having children with congenital and hereditary disorders. However, it is difficult to imagine people sharing their health files before falling in love with each other. In practice, it seems like an impossible proposition.
In India, there are people who privately are in favour and publicly are against the tradition of dowry. Dowry means a gift from the bride’s parents to the bridegroom. Giving such gifts was understandable in the past, because in those days child marriages were quite prevalent in India.
In those days dowry was given out of natural love and affection for the bridegroom and his family. But later the tradition became a nuisance and a cause of serious anxiety to the bridal parents. It became obligatory and binding on them to give as much money as demanded by the in-laws.
Now, this particular practice has lost all its traditional beauty, meaning and relevance. In recent times, there have been several reported instances of lethal attacks being inflicted on young girls because they were unable to bring the outrageous amounts of money demanded by their in-laws. Of late, due to such atrocities, public awareness against dowry is growing. However, the tradition has not been completely eradicated as yet. In actual practice, money still changes hands during marriages. The parents of the bride keep giving money to the bridegroom’s parents who keep receiving it happily. In most cases, both choose to keep quiet about such transactions. Naturally, nobody knows what happens behind the scenes and the tradition continues unabated from one generation to another.
Something similar happens in the case of those who are teaching meditation and those who are being taught. Being truly successful in meditation is a long-term proposition. One has to spend many years to develop real mastery in meditation. It is quite difficult for most teachers and pupils to muster such long-term commitment to the cause of teaching or learning meditation. Consequently, they either resort to taking shortcuts or start projecting themselves as more superior than they actually are. In both situations, failure is almost certain in the end.
For any teacher, it is very embarrassing to concede failure in imparting proper knowledge to their pupils. It is equally embarrassing for a pupil to admit that he could not achieve anything substantial in meditation, even after years of regular practice.
If they both decide to keep quiet about their individual failures, nobody will ever come to know the truth. That is what most teachers and pupils appear to be doing. A sense of secrecy is constantly nurtured around the traditional relationship between a guru and his disciples. Everything that is spiritual is traditionally kept shrouded in mystery. Both teacher and pupil keep their ignorance and failure securely covered under the colourful garb of tradition. Ultimately they end up fooling themselves and others who come to learn meditation from them.
Under the leadership of such gurus and their disciples, different traditions of meditation manage to survive for some time and also grow to some extent. But sooner or later they tend to wither away because they usually lack substance.
In my experience it is much easier to teach meditation to those who know nothing about it, than the ones who think that they know everything. Those who want to learn it afresh carry a clean ‘slate of mind’ with them. Clean minds are far more receptive to learning than the ones that are full of information.
In contrast, those who are learned and have been practising meditation for a long time, or those who know a lot about it, are usually very rigid in their attitude towards learning. They are hardly receptive to anything new or different from what they already know or believe. This is particularly true of the long-term practitioners of meditation who have not taken the totality of yoga into account. Totality of yoga means its all-embracing, holistic perspective that encompasses individual and collective health and wellbeing. Mostly, they are not aware of all this and therefore carry a lot of misconceptions; they nurture wrong ideas and may have some idiosyncrasies about particular forms of meditation. They may be prejudiced in favour of one or against other forms of meditation.
Unless they are free of this burden, they cannot learn meditation properly. Teaching meditation to such people is a painstaking, time-consuming and mammoth task. It is like getting directly involved in a decoding process for which they are neither ready nor receptive. In effect, all the wrong impressions about the form of meditation they have been practising do not get properly resolved because they are not willing to be open to learn something completely new. It can therefore be a total waste of time. If it is not done properly, the burden of misconceptions continues. Ultimately, the pressure mounts so much that true learning and true teaching become impossible.
Some practitioners of meditation are dry, lifeless and closed. It is extremely difficult for them to accept that what they have been doing for all those years was wrong. Their inflated egos get in the way. In contrast, people who are leading ordinary lives make far better students. They know that they do not know anything about meditation and therefore they are keen to learn. It is said that you can wake up a person who is fast asleep if he is willing to wake up. But you cannot wake up somebody who is not willing to wake up. Similarly, one who wants to be a student and learn can be taught. But nobody can help a person who is happy in the deep slumber of ignorance and is reluctant to wake up.