After you have emptied your mind of all thoughts all that remains is awareness, when you can build on your understanding of awareness many things become clear. This is the mind set needed for shaolin gung fu practice, not only because of the intertwined philosophy of Chan Buddhism but the self introspection and awareness of the environment, the bodies physiological processes and the task at hand are a basic requirement for advancement in the said art.
In the end, the buddhist focus on becoming void, understanding this state and how it relates to the manifestation of the reality we are presently living in. The japa method involves slow repetitive chanting of a short mantra vocally or mentally using a rosary of beads. The simplest of mantras is AUM. AUM is the seed mantra that forms the first part of most other mantras. Pranayama is slow rhythmic diaphragmatic breathing which is a very important technique, and is given a lot of emphasis in Hindu meditation.
Focus on the in-breath and out-breath helps cessation of transient thoughts and gives the mind the concentration necessary for deeper meditation. The in-breath and out-breath itself is considered a mantra, more specifically an unchanted ajapa mantra. Hindu texts speak highly of this unchanted mantra that we are unknowing reciting times a day.
So, it is taught that with every breath we take, we silently recite the ham-sa or so-ham mantra asking, then acknowledging that we indeed are That which we seek. In pranayama, therefore, one may mentally concentrate on the inspiration and expiration using the sounds so-ham or ham-sa as a guide. Much of the time, however, was spent in a series of meditation sessions which became progressively longer.
The two who were most engrossed in Maharishi's teachings were John and George. They would meditate for hours, and George was very focused. I loved meditating, but I can't sustain that sort of intensity for long. Sometimes I would leave George meditating and make a foray to Mussoorie and Dheradun, Tibetan trading posts. At that time China was slowly taking over Tibet, whose people were being pushed out of their country as their culture was destroyed.
One day Maharishi needed to get to New Delhi and back for something, so someone suggested a helicopter. When it arrived we all trooped down, a bouncing line of devotees, coming down a narrow dusty track to the Ganges, singing, being delightful. Very like the Hare Krishnas, marvellous, chatting away. We got down ot the Ganges, the helicopter landed and then they asked, 'Does anyone want a quick go before Maharishi takes off?
So later I asked John, 'Why were you so keen? You really wanted to get in that helicopter. I suppose everyone is always looking for the Holy Grail. I think John thought he might find it. I think it shows an innocence really, a naivety. It's quite touching really. These were mostly held in the open air, sometimes on the roof of Maharishi's own bungalow, or inside if the weather was cooler. The meditation sessions were increasingly long, they were as long as you could handle.
It was a very sensible thing. He basically said, 'Your mind is confused with day-to-day stress so I want you to try and do twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening.
Twenty minutes in the morning is not going to hurt anyone. You sit still, I suppose you regulate your breathing and, if nothing else, you rest your muscles for twenty minutes. It's like a lie-in. That's pretty good. The meditation helps your productivity that day. And then twenty minutes in the evening; I used to liken it to sitting in front of a nice coal fire that's just sort of glowing.
That sort of feeling, that very relaxed feeling, a twilight feeling which I quite like. Are you dreaming or are you awake? There's a nice little state that they recognise halfway between it It was a pleasant afternoon, in the shade of these big tropical trees on the flat roof of this bungalow. It appeared to me that I was like a feather over a hot-air pipe, a warm-air pipe. I was just suspended by this hot air, which was something to do with the meditation.
And it was a very very blissful feeling. It took you back to childhood when you were a baby, some of the secure moments when you've just been fed or you were having your nap. It reminded me of those nice, secure feelings. And I thought, Well, hell, that's great, I couldn't buy that anywhere.
That was the most pleasant, the most relaxed I ever got, for a few minutes I really felt so light, so floating, so complete. India, home to all the world's major religions and a world center of spiritualism, draws tens of thousands each year hoping to nourish their souls in ashrams and other retreats dotted around the country.
Hundreds gathered earlier this month in the small town of Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganges for an international yoga festival set against the backdrop of the Himalayas. The town, made famous by The Beatles who visited for meditation classes in , teemed with Westerners along with long-haired yogis and gurus who led classes and gave advice on the importance of self-reflection.
Now in its 12th edition, more than made their way to Rishikesh for a week of intensive classes from daybreak to sundown. Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, who runs one of the biggest meditation centres in India, the Parmath Niketan ashram in Rishikesh, believes he knows why so many Westerners come to the country in search of the esoteric. Here you learn how to become noiseless.
Having waited four and a half years for his cocaine possession case to be heard, Hyginus, who is Nigerian, has been kept at Tihar Jail Complex in New Delhi. It's one of Asia's largest prisons, with almost 13, inmates, more than twice its capacity. The overcrowded conditions, inadequate sanitation, and a staff that sometimes resorts to oppressing and dehumanizing prisoners make it a living, incarcerated hell.
They go about their tasks feeling very virtuous and showing each other great respect. Then towards evening, it starts to get dark, and one of the monks, who is busy preparing food, says "Somebody should light the lamp". The second monk turns to him and says, "You spoke!
Maintaining even an outer silence - keeping our mouths shut - is more difficult than we might imagine.
Much more difficult is maintaining an inner silence - the absence of thought. Just try not thinking about anything for a minute! Yet, as my teacher Sri Chinmoy says, there are deeper levels again.
He talks about the outer silence and the inner silence, then about the inmost silence. Recently I went to a performance by American artist Laurie Anderson.
In the middle of the show she made a point about silence. She stood quite still, centre-stage, held total silence for a couple of minutes. The silence was fairly comfortable - this was a sophisticated audience, we knew our minimalism, our John Cage - this was one of those silences, right? Then she made the point that when that happened on radio, or even worse, on TV, it was cause for panic.
Dead air! The void had to be filled! Socially too - round a dinner table say - if a silence falls there's a nervousness, a clearing of throats, before someone kicks in with "Say I, uh And it's true, I think, at a deeper level, that silence is something we fear. Dead air. Fill the space. Switch on the TV. Plug in the headphones. Shout down the mobile phone. Anything rather than face the emptiness, for that would mean facing ourselves.
When we meditate, what we actually do is enter into a vacant, calm, still, silent mind. We go deep within and approach our true existence, which is our soul. At the start, I quoted from my teacher Sri Chinmoy, talking about meditation as a diving deep within. Here is another passage where he expands on that idea:. And the ideal is to carry this poise into everyday life. The spiritual life is one of balance - silence at the heart of action, but also dynamism at the heart of silent meditation.
Sri Chinmoy once described the difference between prayer and meditation as follows: "When I pray, I talk and God listens. When I meditate, God talks and I listen". Treating mental health has never been simple. Even after the s, when the introduction of psychiatric medication more or less eliminated volatile practices like insulin coma therapy and lobotomies, it became increasingly clear that there would probably never be a universal and clear-cut solution for mental health.
The surge of interest in meditation in recent years can be largely attributed to Jon Kabat-Zinn and colleagues. Kabat-Zinn, as a molecular biologist in the s, created a therapeutic technique called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction , which he developed from the Buddhist concept of sati. According to Hindu texts, everyone is a spiritual being originating from a supreme spiritual source referred to as the Brahman. Within this broad definition, meditation is practices in different techniques with different objectives of the practitioners.
It is practiced by some as a way to relax mind, some do it to generate positive thoughts of mind, and yet some take it as a method to enhance mind-power.
Meditation is also believed to have the power to heal certain diseases of the practitioner, and in the spiritual context some practice it to regulate mind towards some divine power. References of meditation are also found in Torah of Judaism Verman, In Christianity meditation is used to mean a form of prayer where the believers concentrate upon the revelations of God. Today meditation is practiced all over the world without any reference to religious context, but the techniques remain as they were thousands of years earlier.
In the present context the focus will be made on the differences between Hindu meditation and Buddhist meditation. In Hinduism originally Sanatana Dharma , meditation has a place of significance. But at the same time Hindu monks and later Buddhist monks also are said to have achieved miraculous power by practicing meditation. The Hindu scriptures prescribe certain postures to attain the state where the mind is in meditation. These postures are called yoga. Clear references of yoga and meditation are found in ancient Indian scriptures like Vedas, Upanishads, and Mahabharata that includes Gita.
In the Hindu method of meditation there are a set of rules to be followed in the process of yoga to successfully practice meditation. These are ethical discipline Yamas , rules niyamas , physical postures asanas , breath control pranayam , one-pointed concentration of mind dharana , meditation dhyana , and finally salvation samadhi.
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