“If from moment to moment
your mind dwells on what is and drops it effortlessly at once, the mind becomes
no-mind, full of peace.” (Vasistha, Yoga Vasistha)
The above quotation simply describes meditation. The means to
meditation being absolute non-attachment to any thought or feeling, pure
subjective observation of anything which arises through the sense organs.
However, meditation for Iyenga is “the
knower, the knowledge and the known becoming one”. (Iyenga, 1979: 22) For
Swami Sivananda, “The senses, the mind
and the intellect cease functioning. There is neither time nor causation here”.
(HYP: 598)
Meditation is often thought of as one-pointed focus. However, the
more I think about meditation and the more people I talk to about it,
meditation in this day and age is absolute absorption in anything, where time
and space cease to exist; painting a canvas, playing a violin, carving a piece
of wood, even doing crochet! Hartranft calls meditation “interiorisation”, the
shifting of perspective away from externality toward an interiorised point of
view. From the outer world or people, things, relationships, to the inner world
of the attentional processes with which the external is seen. Or more
specifically, interiorisation is the growing sense that awareness is not seeing
an object per se, but instead observing a consciousness representing an object.
(Hartranft, 2012: 13)
“We live in an attention
deficit society. Our attention is trapped by advertising, the internet, traffic
or shopping” (Stone, 2011), even sitting still and thinking too much, sometimes
even thinking about thinking too much. Patanjali says that we can train our
minds in stages so that we concentrate on one thing, we can hold that object in
view for longer and longer without distraction, slowly training and slowing our
minds down. This is called dharana. The mind eventually settles and this is
called dhyana. Then language falls away, with it all subjectivity and there is
a deep stillness where we feel and become part of a greater whole or samadhi.
The Buddhist, psychologist and
writer Michael Stone translates samadhi as ‘intimacy’. (Stone, 2011: 32) The
realisation then complete acceptance and meshing with the matrix of the
external world, which I feel is a more inclusive and comprehensible concept of
this state, for the western mind. Once one feels intimate
with their external environment and realises their connection to every other
sentient being on the planet, compassion arises and with compassion comes
unconditional love. Samadhi is a fleeting state. With everyday living amongst
other sentient beings challenges inevitably arise, which can knock us out of
alignment and we can temporarily lose our samadhi,
our compassion, our intimacy and love. But this is the challenge of living on
this planet, these are the challenges of ‘household yogis’, these times are
when we must look back within, act and not re-act and re-condition ourselves to
step back out into the world.
xx
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