I would like to begin with a personal melancholic musing about two of the grave ironies of our times. First is that anything positive that one tries to speak or discuss our indigenous Indian practice or contribution, it attracts the nanoscopic (thousand times magnified compared to microscopic!)
investigations through political, communal and pseudo-scientific lens consequently it runs into the problem of getting branded as regressive, fundamentalist and something to be abhorred from the public discussion or dissemination.
Second, quite contrarily, when one talks or writes about those aspects of the country which may resemble a “gutter inspector’s report” it gets almost instantly disseminated faster than perhaps satellite communication, gets placed on high pedestals in the public domain, projected as defining or belonging to the mainstream thoughts of the respective field whichever the “report” covers, even win state or private body sponsored accolades and eventually enjoys being placed in lofty positions with all possible immunities. So let us be aware of this inherent bipartisan outlook and read further what I have to write about meditation.
If we are living in a globalized world apparently governed by industry and commerce widely visible through trade and commodities, yoga and its variants is also a not-so apparent binding as well as contributing factor for the global connectivity. Meditation is one of its aspects. This is truly and proudly a great gift to the world from the Indian soil. Although there are many articles in the public domain about this topic, most of them, I find it heuristic and at the most belonging to the “carrot and stick” model, meaning, highlighting the presumed benefits of doing meditation.
I would not like to tread that path. Rather, I would like to introduce meditation from its concept, context, philosophy and techniques point of view. In this first part, I will lay down the context and philosophy of meditation and in the next, I will enumerate on the techniques.
What scholars and intellectuals are to the contemporary, Rishis (sages) were to the past. As there are various specialized intellectuals pertaining to different fields so did we have different rishis in the past who were authorities on their respective fields. It was Rishi Patanjali who was the authority on
Yoga and by the way, the system of yoga is not just consisting of twisting our limbs and balancing our body. It is a school of philosophy where similar to
other Indian philosophies, the ultimate goal is to answer the profound question, Who am I. Contemporary scholarly analysis has put the date of rishi
Patanjali to be around 400 CE. Readers should also note that there was another rishi by the same name who was a grammarian and existed approximately 600 years before the yoga Patanjali. The path adopted by this Yoga school is systematic and hierarchical in nature comprising of 8 sequential as well as cumulative steps (hence referred to as Ashtaanga Yoga; Ashta(8)+Anga(limbs/parts)=Ashtaanga) which are:
- Yama
2) Niyama
3) Asana
4) Pranayama
5) Pratyahara
6) Dharana
7) Dhyana
8) Samadhi
It must be noted that these are sequential steps in the sense that the one has to follow them in a definite order. Besides, when one proceeds from the step “n” to “n+1”, it is not that he/she abandons the practice acquired in the step “n”. This is what I mean by cumulative. The first five deal with an individual interacting with the external world and the last three pertain to the individual alone. Let us see very briefly what each one of them means.
Yama literally means curb or the act of suppression. Technically, under I, practitioners (those following the path of Yoga school) are required to vow on
five practices which were identical to the vows that the Jains have in vogue namely, ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truth), asteya (not stealing), brahmacharya (using sexual energy progressively, in other words towards forming relations that will aid in attaining the final goal) and aparigraha (not hoarding the material wealth).
The literal meaning of Niyama is also restriction or obligation and technically it refers to certain observances for the practitioners that are mandatory.
These observances are shoucha (cleanliness), santosha (satisfaction (with what one has)), tapas (austerity which means developing persistence in one’s
activity), svadhyaya (self-study (here this particularly refers to the study of vedic scriptures after graduating from a gurukula where one has got the
training of how to conduct vedic studies)) and eshwarapranidhana (developing the sense of surrender to God).
Readers having a reductionist approach may now tend to think why can’t the above two parts be combined as one after all they are about strict vows that one has to undertake. Well, upon careful understanding, we can notice that whereas yama dictates one’s conduct in the external context, niyama is more directed towards the individual albeit attributes that are still external.
Next comes the most widely known state that is called Asana which means posture. Having practiced yama and niyama, one then physically intervenes with the physical body by stretching to various extremities. On the face of it, yes this is identical to physical exercises like gymnastics or aerobics but one should continuously bear in mind that here the benefits of stretching the muscle are only a by-product. These asanas are prescribed, no doubt, for developing a sound body that houses the mind. So in the natural process of reaching towards the mind, one proceeds through the body and hence all these conditionings in the form of asanas. Put in a different form, if one does not have a good, healthy body to begin with, even if the person excels in yama and niyama, he/she is forced to spend some efforts in attending to the physical maladies which would be detrimental in realizing the final goal. Here the reader should not confuse and harbor a thought that if attaining the final goal is the sole propriety of people with a sound body, what about those who are disabled. Well, this is not the case. The fundamental idea is to maintain our health in the best possible way which also applies to a disabled person so that the mind which resides in such a body also remains healthy. Here one also has to agree that what is prescribed, be it yoga or some other exercise regimen, is from the majoritarian perspective only.
Next comes pranayama which has to do with the way we breathe, breathing intensity, rate and holding the breath. Not that we require a reminder to do what we have been doing even from our fetal days (32 weeks after conception or in the third trimester of pregnancy), there is a lot linked to the quality of breathing and in pranayama, this is perfected. Interestingly, there I came across this curious survey in the net (http://www.asthmacare.us/ac_blog/?p=1594)
In table 1 the same data from the cited link is reproduced. It is very interesting to note how the life span and breathing rates are inversely proportional.
Needless to say, reducing the breathing rate would have its effect on our general health and rightly pranayama deals with this faculty.
Pratyahara literally means withdrawal. Technically in this context, it means withdrawal of our senses. Going deeper, it means not indulging in activities which are mainly confined and designed for sense gratifications. There is no particular sense that is talked about, rather all the senses in totality which include visual, auditory, taste, touch and olfactory. It does not mean that one mutilates the sensory organs and thereby brings about the suggested withdrawal. It is the willful commitment not from indulging in merely sensory pleasures.
Now what comes next three are those pertaining to the inner being namely dharana, dhyana and samadhi. Dharana is the preparatory stage of dhyana. it means to hold. Hold what? It is training for our mind (which already resides in a well-trained body, having controlled the senses, etc.) to be fixed. This is accomplished by fixating the gaze on a particular physical external object for hours together. The external physical object could be anything for that matter. Here one must note and appreciate the flexibility that the system provides. Any external physical object could also include, say, the portrait of one’s beloved or it verily could be one’s favorite food item. One may then question, how can we unswervingly continue to hold our gaze on the external physical object when it is highly provocative? This is the reason why the sequential order is followed in this system. Now one can understand that having mastered the sense control, in pratyahara stage, one is prepared in such a way that the senses remain under thorough control so that in the dharana stage, the individual does not yield or succumb to the provocations of the external physical object, whatever it may be.
Dhyana or the meditation comes after one has crossed the stage of dharana. Dhyana is a giant leap forward to the innermost self where one becomes a silent observer to the random flow of thoughts in one’s mind, completely invariant and indifferent to the surrounding or the external physical reality. The state of dhyana is not a one-stop-shop because, over the course of time and practice, one progresses to the stage of channelizing the flow of thought, transforming the random flow of thought to a streamlined one. Once the thoughts get streamlined, that is the final stage of dhyana and prepares the individual for the ultimate stage of samadhi which is getting in unison with the thought. Not much can be really written about samadhi because it can only be experienced. We can at the best hypothesize, imagine and propose what it would be in the samadhi state, but no linguistic constructions, no matter how prolific or sophisticated, will be able to contain the description of the samadhi stage. At this point, I boldly take the liberty to compare this to the fact of our known physics hitting singularity while describing the origin of the universe.
You may wonder why I titled this article as meditation but wrote just 1 paragraph about it and kind of laid a very long introduction to it. If you are intrigued by that thought, then I am indeed glad. I intended this longish introduction because I wanted to place meditation in its right perspective for people to know and appreciate the fact that meditation is not just sitting quietly in one place with their eyes closed. Meditation is indeed a grand phenomenon which requires a battery of pre-requisites if it is approached in a very genuine way. There can in fact be no bypasses. Although if the intermediate steps are bypassed, the intended results are not guaranteed. At this point, I must also mention the span or duration of each of these intermediate stages. It indeed varies from individual to individual like in any cognitive or physical process. Some master a stage relatively quickly compared to others whereas others take a long time.
Another very plausible question at this stage would be what is the proof that one has mastered a particular stage? What is the yardstick with which one measures the degree of perfection of oneself in a stage? Here is where the role of a guru comes into picture although in a few cases, through self-assessments also, some individuals tread the forward path. In most of the cases, it is the guru who will guide through and assess the attainment at every stage. The term guru can not be completely translated into English. Through the path towards samadhi, one may encounter a single guru who will be guiding throughout or one may encounter multiple gurus through the course.
Anyway, what I intended was to give a broad perspective and context in which the concept of meditation is placed. Similar to the “spinoffs” industry, be it from research or business, today in our contemporary times, yoga and meditation, in the way they are practiced, are actually spinoffs from this rigorous path of moksha through yoga school of philosophy. This spinoff is in a way good for us for there are obvious benefits, however minuscule that maybe (owing to the forbidden bypasses that we make) it still has a lasting impact on our well-being. In the next part, I will dwell on the different techniques of meditation.
