by Om Swami
Many put their headphones on and start reading a book. If you ask them five hours later, chances are they are unable to recall the reading in detail or the songs they played. If you train your mind to live with diluted concentration, meditation, and subsequently tranquility, becomes increasingly harder.
In the older days, when there were no headphones or portable music systems, people would put on music and the only act they would do was to listen to that music. While reading, they would only read. Multitasking, the mantra of today’s world, plays havoc on your concentration. Once you learn to do a single task properly, doing many things at once will become easier and effective. And, if you think you can multitask, try juggling with three oranges.
Concentration without meditation is pointless and meditation without concentration is useless. Both are not possible without mastering the art of listening. Whether that’s listening to external sound or inner noise, outer world or inner thoughts, it’s all the same.
Sankalpa – Resolve
I once heard this story about a man who brought the same sandwich for lunch to work, every day. In the staff cafeteria, he would open his lunch box, unwrap the two sandwiches of cheese and tomato. He would heat them up in the microwave and eat them with a cup of coffee. Day in day out, for more than four years, his colleagues observed that he brought the same lunch every day. Some even offered him theirs but he would always politely decline.
Four years later, a note was sent to the entire staff that this man had resigned and that in the evening there would be a farewell party for him. That day, he didn’t bring his usual tiffin but a full meal with two chapatis, rice, two curries, pickle and a laddoo. His colleagues were intrigued. They asked him at the farewell about why he had the same lunch for four years and a different one today. Was he celebrating leaving the company?
“Four years ago,” the man said, “I’d decided that I wanted to be a full-time writer. I began working on my novel. I vowed to eat the same boring lunch every day to remind myself that if I wanted a better tiffin, I needed to get published. Four years, diligently, I worked on my book. Yesterday, a publisher offered me a publishing contract with a handsome author’s advance.”
The singular most important, by far the most significant quality that a meditator must have is willpower, the resolve to not give up in the face of challenges. Irrespective of what path you are on, your determination to persist and persevere, your resolve to tread the path, determines the outcome.
The Sanskrit term for a vow, for a resolution is saṅkalpa. When you take a decision, a stand, you have taken a sankalpa. The practice of sankalpa strengthens your willpower like no other.
A critical point to note is that you need not give up or take vows that extend your whole lifetime.. Those vows are often unnecessary and unnatural. While practising sankalpa, like all other yogic practices, vow to do something (or not do it) for an initial period of 40 days. Thereafter, you can decide if you want to repeat or carry on with them forever.
Think of passing an entrance examination, say for securing a place in a prestigious institution, in a much sought-after course. You ought to prepare keenly. You may take things a little lightly once you are in, but initially you have to work hard. The quality, discipline, intensity of your preparation directly affects the outcome. It is the difference between failure and success.
The same applies to the yogic practice of sankalpa. Once you have kept your resolve for the set period, you can go a little easy thereafter. During the period of your practice, however, it is paramount that you don’t waiver. When you keep your resolutions, something amazing happens: your mind starts to listen to you a lot more, almost as if it understands that it’s in the hands of a determined individual. If you vow to do something but let it go without a determined and monumental effort, you will really struggle to keep any resolution you make the next time.
How to Do It Right
The only mantra for successfully keeping the practice of sankalpa is to not give up, no matter what.
Let us assume you vow to sit still for 30 minutes every day for the next 40 days. You decide to sit still like a rock in the same posture for those 30 minutes no matter what. For that half hour, with great will power and determination, you are going to build your concentration with great mindfulness. You are going to make every attempt to remember that during the hour of your practice, each time your mind wanders off, you will gently bring it back to your object of focus.
A certain degree of determination is required to do the aforesaid. As you progress with resolve, you will find your conditioned mind becoming feeble. You will experience an inexplicable inner strength. Such new found strength will enable you to reach sahaja, an emergent natural state of bliss ultimately. During your period of sankalpa, if you miss your practice even once, it is a hundred percent breach of practice and requires restarting. As part of the practice, you can resolve to do anything at all. Sitting still is merely one example.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Unless of course, you are taking the chartered flight. Remember though, in the dense forest of desires, in the deep ocean of proclivities of the conditioned soul, in the endless and baseless sky of expectations, no plane can land. The discipline to keep your resolve gives you the wings of confidence and wisdom to soar high.
Mauna - Silence
The most beautiful music in your life will come from sublime silence. It is the melody of the soul. During my days of intense practice, I was in complete solitude and silence for 100 days. Those 100 days were the most beautiful days of my monk’s life. There was only the sound of silence. In that silence, meditation happens almost effortlessly, wisdom dawns naturally, harmony arises automatically.
The practice of observing silence is called mauna in Sanskrit.
Silence of the speech leads to silence of the mind.
Human mind is always talking. It is not possible to listen to your mind if you are talking as well. It is, furthermore, impossible to quiet your mind if you are not paying attention to what it is saying. And, in order to listen to your mind, you must be quiet. Quietude of the speech is paramount to experience complete silence of the mind.
As part of the practice of silence, you need to start with small periods first. The shortest being at least one straight stretch of 24 hours. If you are merely observing silence of the speech by refraining from speaking, you are only 50 percent there.
How to Do It Right
The practice involves observing complete silence. That means, not holding any type of conversation. Please see the chart below:
For instance, you undertake the practice of observing silence for two days or 48 hours. Any face-to-face verbal interaction, watching TV, playing video games or engaging in other interactive activities are red impact items. They signify instant failure. If you do that, it means reset the clock and begin your practice from the beginning.
If you end up reading newspaper etc. during those two days, the quality of your practice comes down by five percent (see the weightage column) but you can still continue because it is a ‘green’ mistake.
During your period of silence, you can at the most take one book at the beginning. But ideally, you should just be in a room in your own company. If you end up sleeping for 18 out of 24 hours just because you can or because you have nothing else to do, you need not bother with observing silence business. It is wasting your time. After all, we are not observing sleep but silence.
The more mindful and alert you are, the better your practice. When in complete silence, you start to become aware of the talkative nature of your mind. You begin to see how your mind is restless like the baboon that cannot stay on any branch longer than a few seconds.
Initially, your ability to meditate is going to retard while observing silence. You are likely to experience a certain restlessness as well. It is only natural. With persistence and patience, a quietude begins to dawn. And that is go
ing to get you ready for good meditation. Observing silence is comparable to preparing a fertile ground to sow the seeds of meditation.
The practice of observing silence is absolutely critical for the seeker desiring to reach the ultimate state. When you are enjoying yourself listening to your iPod, the external noise seems to subside automatically. The music in your ears makes the outside sound almost immaterial. Similarly, when you are able to channelize internal noise, it transforms into music. And when you start to hear your inner music, everything offered to you in the external world almost ceases to matter.
A good practice of silence does not have any dialogues, conversations – written or oral, gestures, interactions or engagements. Mauna is not merely restraint of speech, it is quieting your actions, speech and thoughts.
Ekanta – Solitude
A woman said to another, “My husband is so touchy. No matter how much I try to avoid, the slightest thing sets him off.”
“Still not bad, I tell you,” the other said, “mine is a self-starter.”
The mind too is a self-starter. It knows how to ruin perfect moments by going off on its own.
If you truly wish to discover yourself, you must learn to live in solitude. I can promise you that your truth will dawn on you only in silence and solitude.
The Sanskrit term for solitude is ekānta. It is the hallmark of a person who has turned inward – their love for solitude. An unmistakable sign of a restless mind is its inability to embrace solitude. For the quiet mind nothing is as profound as solitude and for the restless, nothing is more terrifying.
There are only two types of people who are comfortable in solitude: the lazy and the yogi. The former lacks awareness while the latter radiates with it.
By solitude, I do not mean that you live in a remote place but have access to TV, books, internet and the rest of it. By solitude, I mean that you are just by yourself. You in your own company.
The only person you have to talk to you is you, the only person you have to listen to is you, the only person around is you. The only object of engagement for your mind is you. When you are bored, you go back to yourself and when you are happy, you share it with yourself. During the practice of solitude, you do not even see others, let alone meet them or talk to them. The only person you get to see is you.
Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita,
Ātmanayēvātmanātuṣṭaḥstithprajñastaducaytē 64
The one who dwells within and is contented within is indeed a yogi. The seeker who has turned inward finds greatest bliss in solitude. In such a state, he can uninterruptedly enjoy the bliss within.
If you are in solitude and have engaged your mind in reading, writing or other similar activities, that is still solitude. It is not the finest type though, it is more like pseudo solitude. The ultimate solitude is when you are aware of each passing moment, you are not dull and you are not sleepy, you are awake and alert, and, at that, you do not feel restless; you do not feel the urge to always do “something”. You are at peace within. When you are face-to- face with your own mind, sharply looking at it directly, you are in solitude. A yogi who has mastered the art of living in solitude, without fail, will always be in solitude even amidst the greatest crowd. His quietude remains unaffected by the noise outside. His inner world stays insulated from the outer one.
In solitude, after initial periods of restlessness and stupor, bliss starts to flow through your very being. Everything becomes still. Your mind, senses, body, surroundings, flowing river, waterfalls – absolutely everything becomes still. Anahatnada, unstruck sound and beautiful other sounds start to manifest themselves. However, they can cause a deviation. A good meditator continues to stay disciplined and focused. Living in solitude requires great discipline. With self-discipline, you can achieve just about anything you can imagine. Disciplined living in solitude is tapas, an austerity, in its own right. It is the quickest way of self-cleansing.
Patanjali states in his aphorisms,
Kāyēndriyasid’dhiḥaśud’dhikṣyātatapasaḥ,65
Self-discipline burns away all afflictions and impurities.
This has been my personal experience as well. Solitude teaches you without preaching.
Yogic and tantric texts lay great emphasis on acquiring the ability and stillness to live in solitude. The great Tibetan Yogi Jetsun Milarepa devoted his whole life carrying out the instructions of his guru by meditating in terrifying solitude on forbidden peaks. He was once invited by his female disciples to their village for preaching. Their argument predominantly being that Milarepa’s presence and grace, with his vast store of tapas, would help the humanity, especially if he could be among and around them in cities and villages. Milarepa, however, committed to the practice of meditation, replied, “Practicing meditation in solitude is, in itself, a service to the people. Although my mind no longer changes, it is still a good tradition for a great yogi to remain in solitude.”66
How to Do It Right
The practice of solitude, naturally, incorporates the practice of observing silence as well. You can start your stint of solitude, by opting for short periods first with a minimum stretch of 24 hours. For towners, it is extremely hard to find solitude. To begin with, you can find yourself a quiet room and lock yourself in it for a day or so. Take frugal provisions with you. Your room should ideally have an attached washroom. Please be aware that this is beginner’s level. Gradually and steadily, the intensity of solitude is increased by practising it in truly isolated places and secluded spots. My own experience says that as you progress, Nature arranges everything for you, including the spots for such meditation.
Please see the chart below.
During your practice of solitude, having any company or coming face-to-face with anyone is an instant failure. That nullifies your practice of solitude. You need to start again. The same goes for interactions, watching TV and web surfing. The practice of solitude is even stricter than the practice of observing silence.
The only discount you have is the allowance to read something. Although that too affects your solitude but it is still acceptable.
The goal is to learn to have your mind free of all engagements. A free mind is the only true freedom anyone can ever have.
Tyaga – Letting Go
In a monastery once, a master was preaching forgiveness. A few disciples argued that while letting go was the finest act, it was hard. They wondered what the harm in holding onto certain feelings was, especially if it did not hinder their meditation. The master listened patiently. He asked them to take a handful of potatoes, engrave the initials of the person they could not or did not want to forgive; one potato per person. He further instructed them to put their potatoes in a bag, bring them to the class and take them back to their quarters every day.
The disciples followed the instructions and everyone carried a bag the next day. Some were carrying bags bigger than others. A week went by, the monks felt ludicrous carrying their sacks around. The potatoes started to rot and stink. They asked their master for how long were they supposed to do the exercise. They complained that it was becoming unbearable to put up with the stench and unnecessary weight.
“So, what have you learned?” the master asked.
“Potatoes are our negative emotions. Holding onto them is carrying burden and stench,” they replied.
“Exactly. But, can you carry potatoes without the bag?” the sage spoke. “If potatoes are your negative feelings, what is the bag?”
Pin drop silence ensued. It happens at the dawning of wisdom. They understood the bag was their mind.
It’s incredible how much garbage we keep within us as if we are attached to the stench of our rotten potatoes. No one I know wants to be unhappy. They want to let go and move on but find it extremely difficult to do so. This is where the practice of letting go comes handy. If you consciously train your mind to let go, you can use this skill to drop any emotion.
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br /> We all have our attachments and they are the root cause of most of our disappointments. We may like to believe that we remain unaffected or that our love is pure, devoid of attachments to people or things. The truth is, your degree of detachment can only be ascertained once you are removed from the object of your attachment.
There is a specific yogic practice to help you in cultivating the art of letting go.
The word is tyāga in Sanskrit. It means to let go, to give up, to renounce, to detach, to set (yourself) free from the attachment to the object. The practice of tyaga is a powerful one and the effect is profound. It is capable of igniting a radical transformation in you.
Detachment or letting go is not an automatic act. A fair bit of groundwork is required before one can acquire such state of dispassion and abandon where it comes naturally to them. A fitting question here is, “What is that groundwork?” The practice of tyaga is the groundwork.
Like everything else, detachment can be learned. For the purpose of better understanding and to make this a tangible practice, I am going to segregate the practice in to two parts. First is letting go of physical objects; this strengthens one’s mind. The second is letting go of thoughts or emotions. I’m only elaborating on the first one (letting go of physical objects) because if you meditate correctly, you’ll develop your own wisdom and method to let go of undesirable thoughts and emotions.
How to Do It Right
Start giving up whatever you like. Essentially, that is the practice; start giving up. So, should you give up your car, house, belongings and so forth? Not at all. The attachment is generally not with the object, it is with the pleasure you get from such object, with the value you place on it. You are not attached to tea but the pleasure you get from drinking tea. So, if you are willing to part with the joy you get from drinking tea, the habit of drinking tea will leave you effortlessly.