A good swimmer necessarily know how to swim. An aspiring archer needs lessons in archery. A cricketer, a tennis player, a soccer fad name anyone their art requires rigorous learning. So their wanting to learn the technique is natural and rational. If it is a student aspiring to get into one of those coveted courses, the assumption that one learns to achieve all these goals is all the more real.
When we come to the field of meditation, this illusion should be the first casualty. We may argue that illusions have no reality. That is a laugh. As our glossy ads-visual and verbal tell us, out of illusion comes the desperate, crippling desire to acquire the things advertised. We do not think whether we need them really. They become correlatives for excellence, for the illusion of being on par with the johns and janes.
The meditative mind is not the achiever’s mind. It does not consciously seek to acquire or achieve something through learning. Yes. If you can call it a desire, it describes more awareness, more here and now feeling. The awareness that, that which seeks to achieve has no understanding of the fact that there is virtually nothing to be sought. Sought inside. That is!
An instinctive and intuitional capacity to focus on that which we like is inherent in all of us. The implicit liking or desire results in actualization. Meditation is actualization. Meditation is thus, in this sense, actualization of something which we spontaneously like to do or experience. At the lowest level, this is stimulus – response. The inherent process is not apparent precisely because it is inherent. We respond without knowing that the tip of a huge iceberg called consciousness is activated.
Does this sound abstract? All that we have to do then, is to watch our watching the images on the tv screen. Even apparently mindless ads. We see with interest and what is more, with the least effort. Avidity and addiction effortlessly fuse with the inner instrument. An instrument programmed to tune with what it tastes and relishes. Hence, the nearly incredible quantum of concentrated energy focused on the screen. No compulsion is needed to take in the more than life size people, the dances, the songs, the mere extravaganza of colors and costumes.
A more telling example is making love. Here desire is the most strident, insistent context in which consciousness in all its contours taste, touch, smell, form. Sight reaches the limits of its intense experience. Exceptionally effortless, the energy simply flows through without any impulsion. Nature seems to programme without our awareness the nature of the programming. We surrender and experience, we are fused, tuned and “lost”!
Contexts of meditation becoming intense concentration, thus, abound even in the so called secular life. In such contexts there is hardly any learning behind responding. This is the amazing fact. Concentration comes as leaves to a tree in some fields. There is no effort directed towards the acquisition of the powers of concentration. Here we face the real paradox of nature’s programming and our inability to extend this programming into those areas which we do not consciously like to recollect.
Consider a child watching a movie. We need not encourage him to watch it. But if we feel that it is time for studies and ask him to get back to them the spontaneity, the ease and grace simply be disappeared. Paradoxically, our exhorting him “concentrate on your studies now”. This is a distraction from the very process in which he is involved, in short, change of contexts to concentrate upon involves conscious shifting of attention. The reason is obvious. Nature makes some things desired and desirable in which case consciousness with its emotion, volition, execution complex is integrated.
Meditation, thus, gets, for the unaware mind, polarized into the mindful and the unmindful. Effortless focusing need not necessarily be mindful focusing. One may concentrate mechanically and not mindfully. The mechanics need not be learnt but the implications of the mindful focusing need learning. Rather, we have to unlearn what the conscious mind does. Its feelings, responses and addictions are in the world of impulse and instinct. These are notoriously unreliable. Take the concrete example of eating and watch how many activities can go on simultaneously. We can talk over the phone, watch the latest news, even glance at the business pages of the newspaper. Among all these activities the mind may prioritize one particular thing. Thus, righter things get subordinated lying in queue to surface again whenever they acquire urgency. In this backdrop, if meditation, is the large pool of consciousness, “concentration is the shadow cast by that which interests us.” It is a vessel which we dip into the pool.
Here we get an important clue. The amazing capacity of the mind to wrench order out of what looks like chaos. Therefore, those who nurse the illusion that one achieves permanent moments of total concentration are doing just that – nursing an illusion. The nature of the mind is to be disturbed, restive, and rebellious. It does not take orders seriously or easily. We have pampered it with pretensions and addictions which are compounded by possessions. Part of the process of being clear about meditation is to be aware of these eminently dispensable distractions.
This raises a problem further. Relativists find this difficult to categorize something as a distraction. This is because what is distraction for somebody or in some contexts ceases to be that if the context is shifted. For one who is taking an examination listening to pop music is certainly a distraction, a positive harmness which affects the desired result. Both, per se, are the activities but evaluated in different ways in varied contexts.
The distinction here is an important one. This explains the complaint most people voice that there is hardly any time for meditation. We are hardly aware that whatever the locale we are always meditating and concentrating. Some contexts induce involuntary concentration. Some contexts require cultivation. Voluntary, in this sense, because, even our technology depends on horse power (note that the etymology of the word management is rooted in horse training). To utilize this power to its maximum extent is the main objective and the process of meditation. As some great yogi rightly said, “we want to store up the energy of our senses and mind. We want to direct this energy along the spiritual path. We want to direct our senses inwardly so that there comes a time in the life of the spiritual seeker when he comes to unfold new eyes for seeing the invisible, new ears for hearing the divine voice, or ‘the music of the spheres’ – the fun of all that is going on eternity.”
When we come to the field of meditation, this illusion should be the first casualty. We may argue that illusions have no reality. That is a laugh. As our glossy ads-visual and verbal tell us, out of illusion comes the desperate, crippling desire to acquire the things advertised. We do not think whether we need them really. They become correlatives for excellence, for the illusion of being on par with the johns and janes.
The meditative mind is not the achiever’s mind. It does not consciously seek to acquire or achieve something through learning. Yes. If you can call it a desire, it describes more awareness, more here and now feeling. The awareness that, that which seeks to achieve has no understanding of the fact that there is virtually nothing to be sought. Sought inside. That is!
An instinctive and intuitional capacity to focus on that which we like is inherent in all of us. The implicit liking or desire results in actualization. Meditation is actualization. Meditation is thus, in this sense, actualization of something which we spontaneously like to do or experience. At the lowest level, this is stimulus – response. The inherent process is not apparent precisely because it is inherent. We respond without knowing that the tip of a huge iceberg called consciousness is activated.
Does this sound abstract? All that we have to do then, is to watch our watching the images on the tv screen. Even apparently mindless ads. We see with interest and what is more, with the least effort. Avidity and addiction effortlessly fuse with the inner instrument. An instrument programmed to tune with what it tastes and relishes. Hence, the nearly incredible quantum of concentrated energy focused on the screen. No compulsion is needed to take in the more than life size people, the dances, the songs, the mere extravaganza of colors and costumes.
A more telling example is making love. Here desire is the most strident, insistent context in which consciousness in all its contours taste, touch, smell, form. Sight reaches the limits of its intense experience. Exceptionally effortless, the energy simply flows through without any impulsion. Nature seems to programme without our awareness the nature of the programming. We surrender and experience, we are fused, tuned and “lost”!
Contexts of meditation becoming intense concentration, thus, abound even in the so called secular life. In such contexts there is hardly any learning behind responding. This is the amazing fact. Concentration comes as leaves to a tree in some fields. There is no effort directed towards the acquisition of the powers of concentration. Here we face the real paradox of nature’s programming and our inability to extend this programming into those areas which we do not consciously like to recollect.
Consider a child watching a movie. We need not encourage him to watch it. But if we feel that it is time for studies and ask him to get back to them the spontaneity, the ease and grace simply be disappeared. Paradoxically, our exhorting him “concentrate on your studies now”. This is a distraction from the very process in which he is involved, in short, change of contexts to concentrate upon involves conscious shifting of attention. The reason is obvious. Nature makes some things desired and desirable in which case consciousness with its emotion, volition, execution complex is integrated.
Meditation, thus, gets, for the unaware mind, polarized into the mindful and the unmindful. Effortless focusing need not necessarily be mindful focusing. One may concentrate mechanically and not mindfully. The mechanics need not be learnt but the implications of the mindful focusing need learning. Rather, we have to unlearn what the conscious mind does. Its feelings, responses and addictions are in the world of impulse and instinct. These are notoriously unreliable. Take the concrete example of eating and watch how many activities can go on simultaneously. We can talk over the phone, watch the latest news, even glance at the business pages of the newspaper. Among all these activities the mind may prioritize one particular thing. Thus, righter things get subordinated lying in queue to surface again whenever they acquire urgency. In this backdrop, if meditation, is the large pool of consciousness, “concentration is the shadow cast by that which interests us.” It is a vessel which we dip into the pool.
Here we get an important clue. The amazing capacity of the mind to wrench order out of what looks like chaos. Therefore, those who nurse the illusion that one achieves permanent moments of total concentration are doing just that – nursing an illusion. The nature of the mind is to be disturbed, restive, and rebellious. It does not take orders seriously or easily. We have pampered it with pretensions and addictions which are compounded by possessions. Part of the process of being clear about meditation is to be aware of these eminently dispensable distractions.
This raises a problem further. Relativists find this difficult to categorize something as a distraction. This is because what is distraction for somebody or in some contexts ceases to be that if the context is shifted. For one who is taking an examination listening to pop music is certainly a distraction, a positive harmness which affects the desired result. Both, per se, are the activities but evaluated in different ways in varied contexts.
The distinction here is an important one. This explains the complaint most people voice that there is hardly any time for meditation. We are hardly aware that whatever the locale we are always meditating and concentrating. Some contexts induce involuntary concentration. Some contexts require cultivation. Voluntary, in this sense, because, even our technology depends on horse power (note that the etymology of the word management is rooted in horse training). To utilize this power to its maximum extent is the main objective and the process of meditation. As some great yogi rightly said, “we want to store up the energy of our senses and mind. We want to direct this energy along the spiritual path. We want to direct our senses inwardly so that there comes a time in the life of the spiritual seeker when he comes to unfold new eyes for seeing the invisible, new ears for hearing the divine voice, or ‘the music of the spheres’ – the fun of all that is going on eternity.”
