WHAT IS MEDITATION?

M. Bhimasen Rao?

Meditation is not a job to be done, a work to be performed as one does one’s professional duties.

All activities of life are in the nature of a function of the personality or individuality. To a large extent they are extraneous to one’s own nature. That is the reason why most people complain of fatigue after work and at times they get fed up with work altogether.

Meditation is not such a function. Nor is it an activity in the usual sense of the term. It completely differs from activities whether secular or scared with which man is familiar. Yet, we often hear some people saying that they are tired of meditation as though it is a work done. In such a case we have only to conclude that one has actually never entered the sphere of meditation. One must have lost oneself in inattention and unconsciously indulged in another kind of mental activity wandering in the world of imagination and fantasy dissipating one’s precious energy. It is exactly that dissipation which is responsible for the feeling of either boredom or tiredness.

One must carefully see the distinction between one’s being and the flickers of action that arise from the equipmental function of the personality. What gives the sense of fatigue is the restless activity of the material vehicle. Unfortunately this is superimposed upon the being due to the lack of clarity in the perception and understanding..

Being is the essential nature of oneself. We cannot be tired of ourselves. We are not a burden unto ourselves. Where is the question of any tiresomeness in the infinite Being or self that we are in Essence?

Work or activity presupposes want and seeking to fulfil. In that there can be boredom, fatigue, etc. But all work is extraneous to our true nature. Work is not intrinsic to our being which is ever perfect. Meditation is just the silent art of abiding in one’s own being. In this sense it is not an action that can be repeatedly practised as a routine affair.

So, if meditation is not an action, the question that looms large is: Is it possible to bring oneself to a state of complete ‘inaction’? For, meditation connotes the ending of all seeking to become something different from one’s own being. It is just ‘To Be’– pointing to a state of absolute stillness, silence and poise. If one likes, one may call it a state of UNACTIVITY.

Surely, such an “unactive” state of stillness and quiescence can come upon one most naturally and spontaneously, when the whole psychological mechanism assiduously built up and prodded on every moment by the ego goes in to abeyance; that is, when the movement of the accumulated dross of VASANAS or the psychological junk existing as past experience - knowledge - memory – desire – thought – will –emotion – and – action completely ceases to operate. What is needed to accomplish this state is nothing but intelligent observation and understanding of the whole movement of the psychological process.

If, on the other hand, meditation is reduced to another form of activity of the mind or an exercise of routine practice, one must remember that it would fall again outside the nature of one’s being. And so, one shall not only be tired of it but also be sick of it since it would impose itself as a foreign element upon one’s being or true nature. It is the character of the essential being to cast out every foreign body by various means.

Meditation, therefore, is a simple but subtle art of being with one’s own self in silent quietude, alertness and awareness. One must be utterly vulnerable and innocent to be drawn into the depths of the deeper layers of consciousness to contact the very roots of ALL-LIFE. Then comes the wondrous touch of spiritual healing, the fundamental remedy for all the human maladies.

To be in meditation implies the dissolution of the ego and its machinations and to come upon a unique state of enjoying the beauty of Aloneness and Independence. In view of this, one must be very clear that meditation can never be a state to be sought after with one’s Will and Wish. It comes upon one in an egoless state when the entire personality – dynamism is unified and set in the inward direction of the splendrous effulgence of Being, which is of the nature of Pure Wisdom and Perfection, Bliss and Beatitude. To arrive at, and to abide in our true nature is the summum bonum of human existence.

OM TAT SAT

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