Many people sit down to meditate and immediately start fighting their thoughts. They try to hold the mind still, and grow frustrated when it refuses. The difficulty lies in a common misunderstanding: we confuse meditation with concentration.
The monkey mind
The Indian tradition compares the restless mind to a monkey that is drunk on the wine of desire, stung by the scorpion of jealousy, and possessed by the spirit of pride. Lust, greed, anger, ego, grudges, tension and depression feel like the problem, but they are only symptoms. The deeper disease is that we have handed all our power to the mind and made it our master.
Two different things
Concentration is a mental exercise between the mind and an object. Attention is held on one point, so the natural flow of thought is interrupted. It takes effort, and it can be trained with techniques.
Meditation is something else entirely. When awareness flows without interruption, fixed on nothing, it is meditation. You do not analyse, judge, imagine, suppress or condemn. You simply watch the mind’s activity as neutral energy, as a witness (साक्षी).
Concentration or meditation?
Meditation is not concentration; it is the mother of concentration.
Watching is our true nature
No effort is needed to watch. It is our natural, non-doing state, and every one of us has the capacity to look within. As thoughts are observed without involvement, they dissolve on their own. Concentration, memory, will-power and clear thinking then grow naturally, without force.
Meditation is mind management
Mind management does not mean forcing the mind to be quiet. It means finding the quiet that is already there. The mind is a useful instrument in the outer world, but in the inner world it must be gone beyond.
We are happy when the mind is cheerful and depressed when it is gloomy, at the mercy of something that waxes and wanes like the moon. Meditation ends that dependence. It returns us to our own source.
Meditation is mind management. Meditation is homecoming.
Ready to begin? Try the guided Om practice on the Pranvakshar Dhyan page.