What is Meditation?
What’s meditation, really?
It’s a question that often comes to mind, but rarely does one find a satisfactory answer. Let’s try to explore it further in this space.
We know that the mind can be divided into sense consciousness—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — and mental consciousness. Mental consciousness ranges from our grossest experiences of anger or desire, for example, to the subtlest level of complete stillness and clarity. It includes our intellectual processes, our feelings and emotions, our memory, and our dreams.
Meditation is an activity of the mental consciousness.
It involves one part of the mind observing, analysing, and dealing with the rest of the mind.
Meditation can take many forms: concentrating single-pointedly on an (internal) object, trying to understand some personal problem, generating a joyful love for all humanity, praying to an object of devotion, or communicating with our own inner wisdom. Its ultimate aim is to awaken a very subtle level of consciousness and to use it to discover reality, directly and intuitively.
This direct, intuitive awareness of how things are, combined with love and compassion for all beings, is known as enlightenment and is the end result of Buddhist practices. Some people, who do not identify as Buddhist and practise their own religion, often have confusions regarding these practices. But that does not hold ground. According to Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘Buddhism is not a religion, it’s a practice, similar to yoga, which you can do irrespective of religious beliefs.’
Therefore, you can practise Buddhist meditations while maintaining your own religious beliefs. In fact, it will help you become a better person, and hence, a better follower of your own religion.
The Tibetan term for meditation, gom, means, literally, ‘to become familiar.’ What arises in our mind is what we are most familiar with. If, when someone treats us unkindly, we immediately feel hurt or angry, it is because these are the reactions that we are most familiar with, or habituated to. Buddhist meditation involves making our mind familiar with positive states such as love, compassion, patience, serenity, and wisdom, so that these become more natural and spontaneous. Then, when we encounter an unkind or hostile person, we’ll be more likely to remain calm and patient, and even feel compassion for them.
There are many different techniques of meditation; each technique has specific functions and benefits, and each is a part of the framework for bringing our mind to a more realistic view of the world. According to the Tibetan tradition, all these techniques can be classified into two categories:
- Calm Meditation
- Insight Meditation
The idea is that first we calm our mind so that we can see it clearly. Once calm and stable, we use insights to heal and nurture the mind. These two are complementary and can be used together in one session.
The final goal of meditation, enlightenment, is a long-term one. But meditations done with this goal in mind can (and do) have enormous short-term benefits. As our concrete picture of reality softens, we develop a more positive and realistic self-image and are thus more relaxed and less anxious. We learn to have fewer unrealistic expectations of the people and things around us, and therefore meet with less disappointment; relationships improve and life becomes more stable and satisfying.
But remember, lifelong habits die hard. It is difficult enough simply to recognise our anger and jealousy, much less make an effort to hold back the familiar tide of feeling or analyse its causes and results. Transforming the mind is a slow and gradual process. It is a matter of riding ourselves, bit by bit, of instinctive, harmful habit patterns and ‘becoming familiar’ with habits that necessarily bring positive results — to ourselves and others.
Note: This piece was first published here.
