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

This is a clever verse. I have personally known many seekers who link fitness of the body or asanas, postures, with direct realization. This is a grave mistake. How long you can hold your breath, how well you can bend your body, how clear is your nose – these may add to your physical fitness but have no direct relation to the insight that dawns from meditation. During my own journey, I never bothered with any of these. There was a short period of time when I practised postures to get rid of the pain but nothing beyond that. I simply meditated. Day and night, that’s all I did, meditation. Everything else, many yogic feats, simply followed on their own. It is important to be free of concepts and conceptualization. As a meditator you must rise above all definitions and beliefs passed down to you. Simply let the truth dawn on you in its purest form.

If you are committed to practice, everything becomes very simple. Sit down and build concentration on the object of your focus or contemplate with mindfulness. When you do that, you will run into obstacles, distractions, hindrances, hurdles. Gently bring your focus back to your object of meditation. This is the whole science of meditation, the rest is commentary.

Ekagrata – Concentration

If Arjuna, the great archer and warrior, from the times of Krishna, was one of the five Pandava brothers. His immediate younger brother, Bhima, was a ravenous eater, almost a gobbler. Once it was a new moon night, it was dead dark, and Bhima felt really hungry in the middle of the night. He sneaked into the kitchen, managed to find food and condiments and started eating. He had been doing this ever since he was a kid. On this particular night, however, Arjuna was awake and he followed Bhima to the kitchen. When he saw his brother eating in such pitch darkness with perfect ease, it startled him.

He had an insight, “If Bhima can find his way to the kitchen and food, and eat in this dark as if it were broad daylight,” he thought, “why can’t I do the same with archery?”

Arjuna started practicing at night with great focus and perseverance. Later, it was this skill, of being able to shoot in the dark that allowed him to win an important battle against a formidable opponent called Jayratha.

The term is ēkāgratā, single-mindedness, for concentration. If I split this word for better understanding, it is comprised of ēk, one, and agra, proceed. It means to proceed with oneness, with focus, with synchronicity, in a channelized fashion. Imagine a rope-walker, he is doing the act with utmost one-pointed concentration. A momentary lapse in his concentration can cost him dearly. Just before you enter into the meditative state, a certain uninterrupted stillness is required for a reasonable period. If you can learn to concentrate, meditation happens effortlessly. Yogic texts are replete with exercises on the art of concentration and in many, if not most, terms concentration and meditation have been interchanged freely. In simple words, as you must know by now, concentration is the practice of fixating your mind on one single object. You can do so on a form, on your

breath, on a sound or anything else that appeals to you.

Even if you practice mindful or any other form of contemplative meditation, you will still benefit immensely from the practice of concentration. It improves your memory and contributes to the overall wellbeing of the brain. Our brain, which is a muscle, gets a good workout from practicing concentration.

The most important point to remember here is that you must not engage in any intellectual examination while doing this exercise. Do not examine, appreciate, analyze or condemn your object of visualization. Just focus on the object and try your best to maintain your focus. Your mind is going to wander off every few seconds, bring it back. Do not hold long sessions of concentration initially. Instead, hold sharp, short, crisp and lucid sessions of no more than ten minutes each. You can gradually increase the duration. Sitting still for an hour while your mind is wandering off all the time will not bring results as quickly as you holding your posture and lucidity for ten minutes but practising rigorous concentration with utmost alertness.

How to Do It Right

It’s best to sit in the standard yogic posture, with your legs crossed preferably.

The practice of concentration is almost identical to the practice of concentrative meditation with only one fundamental difference. When you practice concentrative meditation, you allow yourself to slip into a state of ascending consciousness. While doing the yogic practice of concentration, however, the sole focus is to improve the duration and quality of your concentration (which you can then use to enjoy better meditation).