Thursday, September 30, 2010

Meditation

We may be having a number of myths about meditation. Yes, they must by myths, not the facts –The reason is that, it may not be easy to express meditation in words. Whatever way it is expressed, the possibility is that it goes into our minds and stay there as a myth, unless we attempt to feel it with originality. When we happen to come across another version of meditation, we may enter into another myth. The possibility is that those who are regularly sitting for meditation also may be doing under the influence of such myths, which completely takes away the possibility of meditation to happen. It does not mean, whatever expressed here will be the correct expression of meditation. It may be just a version of expressing it. Probably, the whole content of this blog itself is an approach to express meditation in certain way.

Meditation is a process which has to happen by itself. We may not be able to do meditation. Possibly we can try to set the conditions required for meditation to happen. Meditation is a state of mind. We can not force our mind to get into that state. The mind by itself has to enter into such a state. Possibly we can set the conditions conductive for the mind to enter into such a state.

A mind at the meditative state must be a very active mind, at the same time it is actionless (not inactive) mind. It is not a contradictory statement. The mind is extremely active at one plane, while it is extremely still at another plane. This actionlessness is not due to dullness, but due to activeness of mind in another plane.

We understand meditation in so many perspectives depend on to whom we are listening. There is a perspective that concentration of mind is meditation. Concentration can not be meditation. Concentration is an activity, it is not a process. Concentration is focusing on just one activity of mind and suppressing all other activities. In meditation, there is no suppression. Concentration kill our sensitiveness towards every thing else other than the one we are focusing. Heightened sensitivity towards every thing is meditation. On one side, when we kill our sensitiveness, we can not expect meditation to happen, which need sensitivity. In other words concentration is an action, which kills the possibility of meditation. But concentration may be used as a starting point for meditation, provided we understand the trap within the action of concentration and its limitations.

We sit for meditation to be free from stress. When we sit for removing some thing, meditation cannot happen as the mind is already occupied with the stress which we want to remove as well as the thought of removing some unwanted thing from our mind. Sitting for removing stress is not meditation; it is just an action which diverts mind from stress for the time being. May be continuous practicing of such action may enable the mind to be free itself from the stress at will. But it is not meditation – In meditation, there is no will.

Meditation looks like an abstract thing, when it is not happening. Once it happens, it may be a way of living. The thought of “abstract thing’ may be diverting us away from turning towards meditation. Then we may have the question, why should we turn towards meditation? It is a valid question, when we think meditation is just for a selected few and tough to reach. When we are content with our life, when we are content with our way of living, of course, there is no need for turning towards meditation. But when we are discontent with our life, instead of filling the life with some worthless beliefs, turning towards meditation may be a better possibility. The filling of discontentment with any belief is a trap, which traps us from turning towards the direction of meditation. The philosophical enquiry may be the only key to free ourselves from the trap of beliefs. Now the philosophical enquiry itself may become a trap. Any philosophical enquiry must have got the answer from within us, even if the words are expressed by others. If the answer given by somebody did not match the answer within ourselves, we simply reject that person providing the answer. But if that person’s expression matches with that of ours, we consider that person as our Guru and start following that person - we are already in another trap. This statement is not against having a guru, but to understand the trap there!

So, turning inwards has lot of traps to drag away from such inward journey, but keep us in an illusion that we are progressing in inward journey. It is very simple to understand; only thing is we have to look around within ourselves instead of focusing at just one point within. Only such an understanding can make as be alert about the traps in our inward journey – the traps set by our own mind.

Being alert of all these traps it self may be meditation. Being alert of these traps means that we are alert of our ego. When we are alert of ego, the ego disappears. When meditation happens, there can not be ego. We may be the worst egoist but when meditation happens, there cannot be any ego or ‘I’ centeredness. As soon as the ego enters in our mind, the meditation disappears.

When meditation happens, as there is no ego, we are not behind any thoughts but thoughts may surface within the mind and go. When thoughts are dominant or when we are behind any thoughts, the ‘I’ or ‘me’ centeredness must be the reason. When a thought surface within mind and the ‘I’ or ‘me’ starts tracking that thought, the thought intensifies and we are carried over by that thought. The state of mind in which we are alert and when we are not carried over by any thoughts surfacing in our mind, such a state of mind is meditation. Hence, meditation can happen 24 x 7!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Leadership

This is not to discuss the qualities of leader with respect to management, but about the impact of the word leader, within our mind and our urge to follow certain leader or to become a leader. With in the context of this blog, a leader is one who can integrate certain component of the minds of a group of individuals and focus the integrated ‘social mind’ towards a fixed goal and be part of that ‘social mind’. The ‘social mind’ is common for all individuals in that group and hence the group is one entity with respect to that goal towards which the ‘social mind’ is focused. The success of that leader is the success of this group and hence how well the ‘social mind’ is integrated.

We have seen great leaders in history, who were capable of integrating the mind of a whole nation and achieve certain results, some of them are positive and some of them are destructive. On day-to-day basis we see leaders everywhere and we ourselves play the role of leaders at certain situations of our life.

Leadership is a quality rather than practicing a method. This statement may be much against all the ‘self help’ groups. This does not mean without inborn quality of leadership one can never assume the position of a leader. But how far happily and peacefully one can perform this integration of minds into a ‘social mind’ and focus that ‘social mind’ towards desired goal depends on one’s natural instinct of leadership.

Wealth and status are most sought commodities by every one of us. We consider education as a tool for making or achieving these commodities. There is no limit for these two commodities one need at any point of time. But we need a little more from what we have ‘now’ and this ‘now’ keep on shifting and hence the limit of wealth and status required are also keeps on shifting with ‘now’. In this race on moving with ‘now’ for capturing wealth and status, we seldom have any sensitivity towards our nature or the way our brain is composed of. On keeping pace with the race, we simply ignore our sensitivity (if at all we have) and hence simply ignore our own life itself.

The natural tendency or instinct expresses itself as our interests and we can easily identify them and align our life accordingly, if we have sensitivity towards our nature. If we follow our interests, we will be living our life naturally and in that living, possibly we can integrate a social mind with out any effort and hence become natural leaders. Unfortunately, seldom were we allowed to follow our interests and seldom are we allowing our children to follow their interests. We brainwash our children to become earning machines, with least attention to their real interests. On this race, we kill their sensitivity also and hence it appears that becoming an earning machine as their interest, for them too. When such children become earning machines and play the role of leader, they need enormous effort to play that role. Because they may not have any natural inclination towards the field in which they are in. In this effort, they lose their life or lose complete sensitivity towards life.

Our mind is bonded with culture, religion, status, beliefs, the knowledge acquired and many other things. With all these bondage, it is not easy for us to understand the truth of any subject. We create our own images of the subject based on all these bondages. Such images are seldom close to truth or reality. They are just images of us, but appear as truth for us due to the bondages we have. In other words, for any subject, we have very limited view as all the paths are blocked by our beliefs, our memory about the previous appearance of subject, and so on. With that limited view, we can see just a small portion of the subject and from that limited viewing build our own images about that subject.
When we have such limited view, any body who understand this limitation of us and capable of handling nice arguments around our view can easily hijack our minds and integrate them into a common ‘social mind’ and direct it towards their own goal. Alas! They are our leaders now! We have political leaders, we have religious leaders, we have cast leader, we have leader for our language, we have many other leaders for us…. Our own leaders!

Another person who can place counter-arguments for first one and if it appeals to us, we got our new leader…… Endless trap! What has been achieved by such leaders except achieving their own goals and making a section of our mind boiling? Of course there may be very few exceptions, who can integrate a worthy ‘social mind’ with respect to a society. But the majority of such leaders of yesterday, today and tomorrow are in this general category that uses the weakness of society for their own cause – may be the cause is noble for them.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Life Within

If we can observe our own mind little bit, it is possible to recognise a very secret and isolated life we are living within our mind. This is supposed to be our real life. The life we call it as our life – the outward life is much against the life we are living within our mind in most of the cases. But very often we fail to recognise this inner life due to our inattention to our own mind. In most of the cases, we may not be able to share the content of our inner life even to the closest of our relations. If do so, the relation may collapse, irrespective of our entire claim about the intensity of love with that relationship – such is the contradiction between our inner and outward life. Same is the case, if any of our relation revel their inner life to us. To understand this we need not enter into the secret regime of anybody else. What we have to do is just observe our own mind to understand our inner life, the way we actually live our outward life and the contradiction between the two. We can find unlimited contradictions. To understand these contradictions, our consciousness must have sufficient depth.

The same is the case with every one, probably except those who have transcended their consciousness or those eliminated the barrier between their consciousness, sub consciousness and unconsciousness. This is because the mind of every human being works exactly in the same way, if the wandering at outer layer of mind is left alone.

When the outward life is synchronised with inner life that is the time we are actually living our life in the real sense of living. If this is the definition of life, seldom we live our life. The reason is that our consciousness is so thin, seldom are we able to recognise such inner life. Where ever we recognise within that thin consciousness, very often it contradict with outward life. And if we synchronise the outward life with out understanding the structure and contradiction of inner life with all its instability, we can not live in society – we will be labelled as ‘mad’ by the society.

When we are unable to recognise our inner life, our life is a very dull and insensitive life irrespective of the intensity of our outward activity. This dullness and insensitivity of our mind is the prime reason for all the ills of society. The problems like corruption, violence, killing in the society and every thing else are due to the abundance of such dull and insensitive minds in society. An active and sensitive mind can not contradict with the outward life. If it does, it is actually living in hell and not many can live such a life in hell. Only way to live in such hell is to make our mind dull and insensitive so that the contradictions are no more recognised. Hence to have a healthy society, we the constituent of the society must have an active and sensitive mind. If we really want to contribute some thing for the society, we must be active and sensitive which is capable of recognising inner life. This active and sensitive mind of ours will bring in prosperity for the society.

The inner life may become stable when the wandering of mind is limited or the depth of consciousness is increased. When this starts happening, possibly we start recognise our inner life. The recognition of inner life itself may change the way we live our outward life, provided we have sufficient freedom from bondages like fear, lack of security etc. Our life will be real hell, when we recognise our inner life, but we live a contradictory outward life due to any bondage. In the same way, our life must be a heaven when we live the same life within and out!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Searching Unknown

‘Searching of unknown’ is a basic instinct of human species. It may be an instinct unique to the human species. This searching is due to the ‘I’ consciousness of human being. Other animals may not be having this ‘I’ consciousness and hence ‘searching of unknown’ is not needed or supported for them. What the animals care about is their basic survival instincts which are built into their brain. They have the survival instincts. We, human being have the ego built into our brain in addition to the survival instincts when we born. Hence, we have the instinct of ‘Searching of unknown’ with in our brain. Every one of us has this instinct. The only difference between each one of us is that the ‘unknown’ varies from person to person and it may be varying from moment to moment for each one of us.

This instinct must be the reason for all the developments in our societies; positive as well as negative developments – be it development in technological field or medical field or philosophical field or religious field or crime or destruction of cultures ………. For each of these developments – positive or negative, there must be a mind or a group of minds with common ‘unknown’.

At lowest level, gossiping is one of the outcomes of ‘Searching of unknown’, almost every one of us are indulged into it. Basically gossiping is not our nature, but ‘Searching of unknown’ is our nature. For this we declare the activities of another person as ‘unknown’ and gossiping is the result of this search. The gossip is always the images in the mind of those involved in this activity about the subject of gossip.

At material level, the ‘searching of unknown’ results in technological development. Here also the technological development is based on the images in the mind of those involved in this activity about the subject. Unlike the psychological and philosophical ‘unknown’, here we have definite measurement techniques and hence results in to a product for which the usefulness can be measured, and hence pursue or discard that ‘unknown’.

For some body, the unknown may be ‘God’. For their search on ‘Unknown’, if they are serious definitely they will find the ‘God’ – the ‘God’ they find is also based on the images they have about ‘God’ within their mind (it is not the real God!!??). Unfortunately many of us are unable to focus our searching of unknown towards such abstract ‘unknowns’ and keep our ‘unknown’ as very simple so that we spent all our life in gossiping and similar activities. Whenever our instinct set our ‘Unknown’ towards more abstract things like ‘God’, we enter into some belief systems and declare the ‘unknown’ at abstract level is known or understood, and revert back to our simple and easy ‘unknowns’.

Every one of us is searching for the ‘unknown’ – only the ‘unknown’ is different for each one of us. If we go further, each and every one of our actions are towards this searching of ‘unknown’ or the basic reason behind all our activities are this searching of ‘unknown’. For every one of us, wealth is one ‘Unknown’, in the sense that we do not know how much wealth we need – mainly because we do not know where to use our wealth and hence always have a feeling of financial insecurity, irrespective of the amount of wealth we have. Status is another ‘unknown’ for us. We do not know, why do we need social status and why do we need to maintain our social status. The major part of our activities in life is towards earning wealth and status. When we understand and know the utility of wealth, probably we may stop our activities towards earning more wealth than its real requirement and may start living our life in its real sense. If we understand and know status is an imaginary attribute, which does not affect our life in any way by itself, we will never spend all our energy to earn and maintain status – instead we may spend all that energy towards living, in its real sense.

The searching of ‘unknown’ may go into abstract level when the depth of our consciousness increases. As long as our consciousness is thin, our ‘unknown’ is on the surface of our mind which is the likes of information about neighbours, celebrities, other persons, etc. As the depth of consciousness increases, the ‘unknown’ will become more abstract. If we happen to have such abstract ‘unknowns’ and not allowing our consciousness to expand, we may enter into belief systems or cults or followers of certain Guru and so on. Unfortunately many with little bit enhanced consciousness stops allowing their consciousness to expand due to many reasons. Psychological bondage must be the root of all such reasons, like bonded with knowledge and due to that bondage the consciousness stops from expanding. In such cases, even though the ‘unknown’ is an abstract one, it remains as unknown for ever or it is covered up by some belief.

What is the purpose of such expanded consciousness? This question is exactly same as asking what is the purpose of knowledge. The knowledge, in the sense we use the term generally, is required to understand outside world and hence adjust our life moving smooth outwardly. Even though our life is comfortable and expanding outwardly, we are suffering inwardly for simple matters to serious matters with out exception. The expanding consciousness free us from inner suffering and provide inner comfort for us, exactly the same way as the outwardly knowledge provide outwardly comfort in our life.

When will be the ending of “searching of Unknown”? Probably at the point where our consciousness integrates itself into the sub consciousness and unconsciousness OR when our ego is completely dissolved where “I” centeredness is no more, to declare the ‘unknown’ OR at the point where we are with ‘truth’ OR at the point where we are with ‘God’. May be all these statements represent the same!