A Million Thoughts

by Om Swami

  When you naturally develop an all pervading mindfulness because alertness is doing its job, the effort in meditation disappears. This is the stage when meditation stops being an act. It becomes your second nature. And after a while, it becomes your state of mind.

  During my time in the Himalayas, I started experiencing intense sensations in my entire body. Within moments, they would travel and establish firmly in my forehead. For the next few minutes, they would continue to build up and cover my entire head, the palate of my mouth and my cheeks. Sometimes they were distracting but most of the times they would help me slip into very deep meditation. This was so for the primary reason that these sensations would force me to focus automatically.

  Imagine you are trying to write something but someone comes and tickles you. If you are someone who is tickled easily, your attention would automatically be drawn to the tickling.

  This was the case with me too. The sensations would become so intense as if someone was kneading my brain inside (gently) and I couldn’t think of anything but be automatically focused on my object of concentration. I used to meditate on a mantra I was initiated into.

  This phenomenon of intense (sometimes unbearable) sensations began when I realized that mindfulness and alertness were working in tandem, in perfect coordination. Initially, for the first one thousand hours of meditation, these sensations would subside when I stopped meditating. Admittedly, the period when I didn’t meditate was no more than 2 or 3 hours on most days. Yet, I could feel that those sensations were not there.

  After a while though, it changed. The sensations would not stop even if I wasn’t meditating. No matter whether I tried to read, walk, eat, bathe or sleep, these sensations would not cease. Sometimes I didn’t want to be alert or be mindful. I just wanted to be restful but I’d hit a point of no return. The only time I get a respite from these constant sensations is when I go to sleep. Even then, it takes me one hour of careful meditation and a series of movements (where I change my body posture exactly three times in a certain way) to take these sensations to the peak and then bring them down in three stages before I can fall asleep.

  The moment you learn (and it happens only with practice) to have your mindfulness, alertness and concentration flow together, you become a living Buddha. Positive and loving emotions continue to rise to the brim like bubbles do in carbonated water. Yogic texts, notably Buddhist sutras, give a wonderful name to alertness. They call it saṃprajñā. It means a state of even awareness. Saṃyutta Nikāya defines alertness as knowing both events in the mind and activities of the body as they are happening:

  And how is a monk alert? There is the case where feelings are known to the monk as they arise, known as become established, known as they subside. Thoughts are known to him as they arise, known as they become established, known as they subside. Perceptions are known to him as they arise, known as they become established, known as they subside. This is how a monk is alert.

  And how is a monk alert? When going forward & returning, he makes himself alert; when looking toward & looking away… when bending & extending his limbs… when carrying his outer cloak, his upper robe, and his bowl… when eating, drinking, chewing, and savouring… when urinating and defecating… when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and remaining silent, he makes himself alert. This is how a monk is alert.23

  It is pertinent to add here that alertness not only allows you to detect and check the flow of thoughts, but also all other flaws including, but not limited to, emotions, dullness, restlessness, loss of clarity, random images and sleepiness.

  Now that you know the role of attention, posture, mindfulness and alertness in meditation, you are ready to understand the various types of meditations available to you followed by how to actually practice them.

  Before You Begin

  Before you begin the practice of meditation, I wanted to briefly elaborate on the various systems of meditation. When you perfect one form of meditation, mastering all other forms becomes relatively easier. A good warrior, who knows the art of war, is generally an adept in using more than just one type of weapon. He may have to use a sword at times and mace at other times. Sometimes, he may have to put his skills of archery to use and wrestle in another situation.

  Different strategies are required to deal with different situations in life. You can’t always be firm, you can’t always be soft. Similarly, different systems of meditation are needed to handle various aspects of our lives. Before I spell out the various systems and how to adopt them, I would like to share a famous story from the life of Buddha.

  During his nationwide travels, when Buddha was spreading the message of peace and compassion in India, he once stopped in a village with his disciples in tow. The villagers were religious and some of them despised Buddha for he had proclaimed there was no God. They were unhappy at his arrival and believed he would pollute the minds of others. They got together and confronted him. Calling him an atheist, they unleashed a slur of swear words and asked him to leave.

  Buddha showed no reaction, did not respond at all and continued to smile elusively as usual. His impenetrable mask of peace and serenity showed not the slightest crack.

  After the long tirade, the villagers got tired and stormed off. Buddha assumed his yogic posture and sat under the tree as if nothing had happened. His disciples, however, were distressed and rattled at the disparaging, dishonorable and unfitting reception of their master.

  “O Venerable One!” Shariputra, his close disciple, said to Buddha, “how come your holiness said nothing? Did it not bother you?”

  “If someone offers you a gift and you refuse to take it, to whom does it belong, Shariputra?”

  “It will remain with the one who offered it, Master,” Shariputra replied after some thought.

  “In much the same manner, my spiritual son, I refused verbal gifts of the villagers,” Buddha added. “How could I react to something that caused no provocation, something I did not even accept?”

  In the above mentioned story, Buddha demonstrated perfect fusion of the various types of meditation. In the middle of provocation, he continued to concentrate on what he was doing. His years of practicing concentrative meditation gave him the stillness of mind so they could not provoke him. With contemplation, he knew that these people had no role to play in the big scheme of things, that they were simply yelling some words that were inherently empty. With perfect mindfulness, he did not take any action that he might regret later on. He was mindful of what he was doing and thinking. Finally, he just played a passive witness.

  He carried himself independent of the misdemeanor shown to him. He chose to be an observer.

  On the path of meditation, if you intensify your practice one day, the best way of giving yourself a break is to alternate between various systems of meditation. For example, let’s suppose that you are mastering concentrative meditation – a type of meditation that requires building intense concentration. When you are tired of an hour of concentrative meditation, you could switch to walking or spirited meditation for a little while and then go back to your primary practice (concentrative meditation in the current example).

  Alternating between various methods strengthens and trains your mind in the most effective way. It’s like the ultimate boot camp of meditation. If you persist diligently, mindfully, attentively, patiently and enthusiastically, success is certain. Let me get to the actual practice of various forms of meditation.

  Concentrative Meditation

  Committed to the practice of meditation but not getting anywhere, a disciple approached his master and said, “I’m feeling really bored and restless. I’m unable to meditate.”

  “Don’t worry, don’t react. It’ll pass. Don’t lose your resolve.

  Stay course,” the guru said.

  Another few weeks later he sounded really excited and said, “Oh, I’m having the greatest time of my life. Meditation ha
s never been so good.”

  “Don’t be so pleased, don’t react. It’ll pass too. Don’t lose sight of your path,” warned the guru.

  Yet, another week later a dejected disciple stood in front of his guru lamenting he was experiencing none of the meditational equipoise and bliss he had been enjoying until last week.

  “Please tell me master what should I do?’

  “Nothing at all, this too shall pass. Stay course,” said the guru calmly.

  This is how your sessions of meditation are going to be like for the first few thousand hours. There’ll be good days and there’ll be bad days. There will be days when you’ll have had perfect sessions of meditation and there will be days when you’ll want to give up altogether. The key is to persist. As you gain perfection though, the act of meditation begins to disappear. It metamorphoses into a state, it is no longer an act but a state – the meditative state. You remain in a meditative state regardless of what you may be doing. In that state, you experience the same stillness, quietude and alertness that you do at the peak of your meditation practice. Of the six types of meditation, concentrative meditation is the hardest of all. It specifically works on breaking the hardened tendencies of mind, and our mind loathes nothing more than being tamed. It wants to be free and dictatorial. Concentrative meditation turns the mind of a meditator into a genie – available

  to serve you at your command, however you please.

  One of the greatest rewards of concentrative meditation is the irreversible transformation it brings in you. Your habits, thoughts, emotions no longer provoke you like the earlier times. Internal or external triggers don’t throw you off balance.

  Imagine someone is attacking you verbally, they are saying things that are untrue and they are trying to hurt your sentiments. If they succeed in such provocation, you may yell back at them or get angry yourself. If you get angry, you have lost the battle. What if you just didn’t feel angry at all? There is a subtle difference in not feeling angry versus not expressing it. If you get angry but don’t express it, such suppression causes emotional damage.

  What if you just didn’t feel angry, what if no undesirable reaction sprouted in you? Essentially, this is what concentrative meditation does. Your mindfulness and alertness rises to a degree that you are able to choose your response at all times without falling prey to negative emotions. It comes naturally from the stillness of body and mind. The noise of thoughts become feeble and they lose their steam.

  In concentrative meditation, you settle your mind on your chosen object of meditation which could be an image, breath, a mantra or plain void. While the other five methods of meditation are a lot more lenient about your body posture, concentrative meditation requires complete mastery of your posture. This is mostly because success in this form of meditation demands complete stillness of the body.

  Until you are able to achieve perfect stillness, you will not be able to lose body consciousness, that is, you will continue to have distracting awareness of your body during your sessions of meditation. And till the time you are able to completely rise above your body, you are not going to experience any cosmic oneness. Until you are able to achieve perfect stillness, all your experiences are going to be mere intellectual fabrication, they will have no intrinsic value and will remain mostly meaningless. Such experiences are not replicable. They do not purify, cleanse, guide or strengthen you; this is the harsh truth. An intense practice of concentration stills the ten vital energies in your body helping you gain complete control in sitting still like a rock with ease.

  How to Do It Right

  Stillness of the body and mind comes with great practice. Here’s how to perform concentrative meditation:

  Sit in a comfortable posture, preferably crossed-legged.

  Keep your back and head straight. Neck, slightly bent, just only.

  Abandon all body movements.

  Yoke your focus on any object.

  Maintain great mindfulness.

  Please review and follow the eight elements of a yogic posture and the six principles of meditation. They are entirely applicable to the practice of concentrative meditation. Once seated comfortably but correctly, start building your focus on your chosen object of meditation with complete alertness and mindfulness. Your mind will go north and south, but you must bring it back to your point of concentration. You’ll be hit by thoughts, just gently bring it back. Images will flash, emotions will rise – let them. You just gently bring your attention back to your point of focus.

  Madhyamaka Hridya states, “If one is overcome with distraction, one should retreat and regard it as being a harmful sign of perceptive diversion.”26 Thus, whenever you discover that your mind is getting bombarded with other thoughts and emotions (which it will), simply understand that they are distractions. Ignore them and carry on with your concentration. Remember that thoughts are merely thoughts, devoid of any essence. Don’t analyze, pursue, accept, process or examine any thought whatsoever. Our goal is to build non-discriminatory, unblemished, sharp and lucid concentration. If you are meditating correctly, the craving for sensory pleasures will disappear on its own.

  Each time your mind wanders off, bring it back to the point of focus. Over time you will develop razor-sharp awareness; so that, you will become aware of each emerging thought before it turns into a distraction.

  If you find yourself slouching or leaning in any of the four directions, just gently correct your posture. Don’t forget to maintain a gentle smile and steadily retain focus on your chosen object.

  I must reiterate that it is absolutely critical to note that during concentrative meditation, you must stay away from all intellectual examination, contemplation and cogitation. For example, let us say, that you are meditating on a form, of Krishna’s idol in front of you. Do not start examining the characteristics of the idol or start thinking about Krishna, his pastimes, his life and so forth. Just keep your attention focused at his form. In the initial stages, if you start contemplating before attaining one-pointed concentration, your mind will wander off and you may not even realize.

  Do not accept, reject, examine, follow, engage in or pursue your thoughts. Simply do not act or react. Just gently maintain your concentration. Maintain short but crisp and lucid sessions of meditation. An untamed mind cannot stay on a thought for any longer than a few seconds. I would recommend that rather than doing one session of 45 minutes, do three lucid and crisp sessions of fifteen minutes. They will bring much greater benefit. Over time, as you get better, you can gradually increase the duration. I would also like to tell you that there is no joy in concentrative meditation, in the actual practice. But once you start to experience a quiescent mind, you will be addicted to meditation.

  Four Types of Objects to Meditate On

  Repeatedly, I’ve used the term ‘object of meditation’. What do I mean by that? This brings me to the four types of objects to choose from when it comes to concentrative meditation. You can pick any of the four and you should also feel free to switch from one to the other, either to find out what suits you better or to give your mind a break. For example, if you are meditating on a form and are tired after 60 minutes but you wish to continue your session for another half an hour, you could meditate on your breath or anything else. Change refreshes the mind and brings the lucidity back in meditation.

  Meditation on Form

  It is one of the most common and most misunderstood forms of meditation. I say ‘misunderstood’ because meditation on a form doesn’t mean that you keep a pebble, picture or an idol in front of you and stare at it. That is neither meditation nor concentration. Your mind will continue to hop about while you gaze at an external form. In reality, meditating on a form is one of the most difficult and tiring form of meditation but it does result in superior concentration. Regardless of whether the form you are meditating on is external or internal, it is always an internal visualization.

 
; For example, you may have a pebble in front of you. It’s a simple form and you decide to meditate on the pebble to build your mindfulness and concentration. Here’s how to do it right, step-by-step:

  Sit in the yogic posture correctly and comfortably.

  Observe the pebble for a couple of minutes. Be mindful to not analyze the pebble for why it’s shaped a certain way or has a certain color and so on. Simply observe it with the intention to hold the image in your mind.

  Close your eyes and begin visualizing the image of the pebble.

  After a while, a few seconds, the image of pebble will fade. At that time, gently bring it back to your focus and you will be able to visualize it lucidly again.

  When you hit a point that you simply can’t bring the image of the pebble in front of your mind, gently open your eyes, stay in the posture and look at the pebble again for a minute or two and then follow the same process of visualization as above.

  Initially, the image will fade every few seconds but with practice, you’ll be able to hold the image for much longer in front of your inner eye. After a while, your mind will get tired and you may feel exhausted.

  You are free to open your eyes and gaze at the pebble again to regain the lucidity of your object of meditation. It is important to visualize internally because remember you are meditating on a form and not simply concentrating on it. Let me explain the subtle difference between the two. When you are meditating, your mind is flowing like a continuous stream and you become more mindful of the boulders of thoughts that may come your way. Meditation is the art of being aware, super-aware in fact. Concentration is simply a way of maintaining your focus. Good concentration leads to great meditation.