A case for meditation

The practice of meditation is a very popular one these days and is attributed with huge importance in the world of psychology as an efficient stress buster. I tried meditating a couple of times and failed to keep my mind from still for more than a minute or two. Since then I concluded that, meditation is overrated and does not work for every one. I was wrong and my wrong conclusion had to do more with my ignorance of what to meditate on. I heard many different suggestions like listen to a mantra or to play some Celtic music in the background and so on. None of these suggestions made any sense to me until I read this chapter on meditation in the book “ The teaching of Bhagavad Gita “ by Swami Dayananda. This is the best book I ever came across on the Gita. It is written in simple English and more importantly it doesn't get you lost, in the plethora of Sanskrit slokas like many other books on this subject do.

This book puts forward the philosophy behind meditation in a simple and a effective way. It starts with explaining the source of misery being we dependent on the results of our actions, to buy us happiness, while the actual happiness is, with in ourselves. The author then goes on to explain that once you understand that you have a choice of action, but not the choice to results, you start enjoying every action of yours and you start enjoying the liberation of mind. This is called Karma Yoga and this is the only means to achieve total freedom (sreyas). But human nature is one filled with habit and the habit of focusing on ends rather than means is deeply ingrained in us and hence, even after the knowledge of Karma Yoga has dawned upon us, we may very likely slip into our old habit of inviting sorrow into our lives. The author uses a beautiful example to illustrate this point. He says, when a beggar wins a lottery and becomes rich overnight, he does not loose his instincts of being a beggar immediately. If he sees someone giving alms, he gets tempted to join other beggars and grab his share. The beggar has to convince his mind of this newfound riches and for this he has to contemplate in silence on his riches to get rid of his older instincts.

Using this analogy of the beggar and his newfound riches, Swami Dayananda says, once the knowledge of Karma Yoga dawns upon us, we need to contemplate on this knowledge and the way to do this is to meditate on this. Now you know what to think about when you sit down next time to meditate.