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

Consider the example of watching TV, a two-year-old can rejoice in watching TV as much as a forty-year-old. On the surface it may seem that watching television is a harmless activity but it is not so for your mind. Your brain has to constantly process visual data coming from millions of pixels and frames that are changing at an incredible speed, it has to process auditory signals coming from the television. In addition, it has to filter out all the other noises and visual stimulation that may be in the room where you are watching the television. It is one of the reasons why even really boring programs can be interesting – your mind is engaged. Such fast processing leaves no time for any creativity, analysis or contemplation. By the time the program finishes, you may have more information than you did before but you will not end up more intelligent. It will dull you instead.

Even while playing most video games, where it might seem that the player is concentrating hard, the concentration is no more than elementary concentration. The player is expected to react quickly, the brain has to process information and act more instinctually than creatively. It is for this reason that playing video games or watching TV does little to enhance your creativity. Your brain gets tired of the constant processing and it results in tiredness of the eyes. You could sit in the mountains, in a natural setting and look around all day without feeling the slightest mental fatigue or physical tiredness. But you do the same in front of a TV and you will be ready to sleep after a couple of hours.

The next time your 14-year-old tells you to get away because he’s concentrating on completing the mission of his videogame, he’s not lying, he is concentrating. However, feel free to remind him that this concentration would not help him in getting better grades. (No style of meditation is available to make a teenager listen to you though. You are at God’s mercy or their mood, both of which are beyond analysis and predictability.)

Another example of elementary concentration is driving. Your brain is constantly processing information. Your mind is aware of the dangerous consequences in case of any lapse in the concentration, therefore it keeps itself mostly engaged. If you drive through the rush hour traffic, even though you are going much slower, it is more tiring because your brain has processed information for longer duration.

Passive Concentration

Everyone’s mind is always maintaining this form of concentration – the passive concentration. Evolution over the past tens of thousands of years has taught our brains to be on the watch. You are climbing stairs and it knows you have to lift your foot by so many inches. It is constantly processing information, it is watching out for threats, hurdles and challenges. It is the reason why even if you don’t do anything for a whole day, you may still feel tired and still require sleep in the night. Concentration is mind at work.

There are other examples where passive concentration is explicitly at work. Think of someone fishing. He may be talking, reading, lying down while fishing, but a part of his mind is concentrated on the fishing rod. The moment there’s even a slight movement, the passivity of the concentration takes an active stage and the reflexes spring into action.

In all forms of concentration, a degree of alertness and focus is required because that’s what concentration is about – forging ahead with focus and alertness.

One pointed concentration for meditation requires both alertness and focus in equal degrees. Lose alertness and you will experience laziness. Lose focus and you experience restlessness.

The two greatest demons in meditation – restlessness and laziness. The former robs you off your patience and the other costs you your lucidity.

Thankfully though, the sages in India have been practicing meditation for thousands of years. If scriptures are to be believed, it’s more than 20,000 years and if you were to solely rely on archaeological evidence, it would be around 8,500 years. Either ways, it’s been around long enough to have specific practices and methods that help you detect and correct flaws in your meditation.

The next critical element of meditation which is not only the fundamental building block of meditation but also helps you to improve the quality of your concentration is… mindfulness.

Mindfulness

Once Buddha and Ananda were walking by the riverside. Ananda had posed a question a few minutes ago and Buddha was deeply engrossed in answering that. In the course of that stroll, a fly came and sat on Buddha’s forehead. As anyone would do, he raised his hand to shoo away the fly. All this while, he did not stop talking or walking. He continued to deliver the sermon and Ananda listened raptly as ever.