A Million Thoughts: Learn All About Meditation from a Himalayan Mystic

If you have a difficult boss or an abusive partner, your meditation will not change their nature, not directly anyway. It won’t bring discipline or compassion in them. If your divinity could change others directly then Jesus of Nazreth, the messiah, would not have been crucified. If meditation was transformational then a hatemonger would not have poured melting glass in the ears of Mahavira.

Meditation is your personal journey, an intimate one. It is only about you. It does not change anything directly in others. Meditation remodels you so that you become a catalyst of positive change, not in your own life but in the lives of most of those who are connected with you. This is the only way meditation affects the lives of those around you. Gradually, the light in you starts to transform you. The way you think, act or react changes and that change, often (not always) brings a change in those around you.

These worthy rewards from meditation come from doing correct meditation and correct meditation alone. Not all that looks white is salt and if it is not salt, it will not add taste to your meal no matter how salt-like it may appear. Similarly, not all those who meditate are actually meditating – just sitting still is not meditation. Even chameleons and crocodiles can sit still for hours but they are not in meditation. Feeling relaxed after your meditation does not mean you meditated well and sleeping through your meditation is definitely not meditation. If you wish to benefit from meditation, it has to be done correctly, accurately, just like Arjuna’s arrow pierced right through the eye of the fish.

What is Meditation

Many years ago there was a widely reported incident in the news that a guard at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba allegedly flushed a detainee’s holy book down the toilet. This had become a raging news item and numerous talk shows with pseudo-experts were hosted by various TV channels worldwide.

Amidst all that, a reporter in Australia phoned Ajahn Brahm, who was the abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine, Western Australia. The reporter was doing a feature taking statements from various religious heads.

“What will you do, Ajahn Brahm,” the reporter asked, “if someone took a Buddhist book and flushed it down your toilet?”

The abbot answered, “Sir, if someone took a Buddhist holy book and flushed it down my toilet, the first thing I would do is call a plumber!”

They shared a brief laugh before the venerable Ajahn Brahm went on to say most beautifully, “Someone may blow up many statues of the Buddha, burn down Buddhist temples, or kill Buddhist monks and nuns. They may destroy all this, but I’ll never allow them to destroy Buddhism. You may flush a holy book down the toilet, but I’ll never let you flush forgiveness, peace and compassion down the toilet.”15

This is meditation if you ask me. It is your ability to retain your virtues in the face of all adversities. This grace and presence of mind comes with correct practice of meditation. The journey of meditation has three important milestones. In the first stage, meditation is an act. You sit down and you train your mind to behave and be a certain way. It requires discipline and determination. Once you champion the art of meditation, you get to the second stage where it becomes your second nature. A sort of effortlessness arises in your meditation and the virtues, which you had to work hard to imbibe earlier, increasingly become a part of you. In the third stage, meditation becomes a state of your mind. You no longer do meditation, you are in meditation. A state of bliss that remains unperturbed under most circumstances. An altruistic sense arises naturally for the welfare of others, severing your attachments and bonds with all things meaningless.

The final stage of meditation is liberation. Liberation from false beliefs, negativity, undesirable thoughts. It is freedom from guilt, resentment, jealousy, hatred and pride. Meditation is the music of soul that plays on effortlessly once you tread this path. In this book, I’ll show you how to arrive at the final stage. However, if you wish to use meditation as a system to be calmer and more relaxed in your daily lives, it’ll serve you just as well. My job is to give you the highest ideal and you are free to set your own goal and pick what interests you. There is the ordinary path and the extraordinary path to reach various stages in meditation. I’ll walk you through both.

Ultimately, meditation is silence and presence of the mind. When your mind is at once silent and present, you are deep in meditation.

Two ladies met after a long time. They exchanged pleasantries and the following conversation ensued:

“How’s your son?” one asked. “He’s good.”

“Has he found a job yet?”

“Nah, he’s still unemployed but he does meditation these days.”

“Meditation? What’s that?”

“I don’t know but I guess it’s better than sitting around and doing nothing.”