What is Meditation

The practice of meditation may date back to thousands of years, even before the time of Buddha, when Hindu religious leaders practiced some form of meditation. It was Buddha, nearly 2600 years ago, who introduced a systematic form of meditation, which became known as mindful meditation and insightful (vipassana) meditation. These forms are very popular even today among buddhists.

It is mindful meditation that became very popular in the West, after many Indian gurus settled down in the West and started preaching. Mindfulness means being aware. However, popular meditation techniques are supposed to be a twenty-minute intense concentration, preferably once in the morning and once in the evening. You are expected to sit still and start concentrating your in and out breath, which will calm down your muscles, nerves and the entire body. This twenty-minutes of relaxation will then enable you to spend the rest of the day in a calm relaxed manner. So they say.

But can the mind stay calm during the day just because you were calm for twenty minutes? Try it! It is impossible. The mind is like a wild river, dragging you all over the place. You will remember what happened in the past and feel anxious and think about the things you have to do in the future and become worried.

The problem of the human mind cannot be solved with a short-period concentration. This meditation has to be an on-going, ever present movement. Meditation should be from the time you wake up till you drop off to sleep in the night. Meditation is awareness. Awarness is living in the present moment. There is only the present moment. The past and future are illusions, and the mind tends to live only in the past and future, and never in the present, which is the only thing that is real. Can anything happen outside the present moment? Whatever happened in the past are only memories and whatever you think of the future are only imaginations. But the present moment is real.

Living Meditation is living every moment with total awareness. When you live in the Now, the mind stops. Mind and Now cannot live together. When you are aware of the present moment, the noises, the smell, the wind, the sensations, when you are intensely aware of all these sensations, there is no thought. The mind has stopped completely. This is what is called Meditation. Meditation is a living thing. It is a movement. Meditation is the ever present awareness. Please do not restrict meditation for short periods and resume mind activities thereafter.

The secret of joy and happiness is in the cessation of thinking. Thinking can be stopped only when you are present. Thinking is needed only for practical purposes of life, like making a plan or something similar. But if you then start thinking of the end result of your planning, your mind has taken over and you are living in the future. Living in the now is the only way to total liberation.