Meditation: What, How, and Why

A crisp and precise account of the process and its benefits.

"Meditation is not the means to an end. It is both the means and the end." - J Krishnamurti

Traditionally, there exist several types of meditation, each with different methods, techniques, and a set of benefits. In this article, I've tried to collect what I believe are the most basic, universal aspects of it that can be understood and practiced by anybody, anywhere and anytime.

Meditation is often advertised as the means to achieve the following:

• Low stress levels/anxiety

• A heightened state of awareness/sensation

• Increased focus and clarity

• A high state of "being"

• Calmness and peace of mind

• Spiritual experiences

A lot of advice is given to people who want to incorporate it into their lifestyle, to the likes of "Set a timer, do it for ten minutes every day to reap all benefits."

These are not really accurate because, if you think of them as the goals of meditation, the process is no longer going to be the same and you might not recognize or even taste the benefits, which are merely consequences of the process. Meditation itself is the end as well as the means to these benefits, and I will explain what that means in two parts.

Part 1: The means

Imagine a sticky bubble between all of your thoughts and you. Your 'thoughts' include everything you hear directly or indirectly from others. (As and when you hear them, they become thoughts in your mind.)

Step 1: Observe / watch all thoughts in the mind

The bubble works like a filter. When a thought enters your mind, before directly getting to you, imagine that it gets stuck and suspended in this bubble.

Step 2: Decide how to engage: keep it or let it go?

Now you can look at this thought, and then decide how to engage with it.

• Is it unnecessarily hurtful or harmful or taking up your mental space? Then just let it go / die away.

• Do you find it important to engage with it? Then let it come through. Keep it / Use it.

Here's an illustration of how this is useful.

Consider how to deal with insults, which are clearly unnecessary and hurtful thoughts that enter the mind from outside. There are two steps involved in it.

Step 1: Someone throws an insult at you.

Step 2: You take that insult and allow it to affect you.

The end result is that you feel insulted. Now the key idea here is that there are two steps in this process.

• You have no control over the first step,

• but you can actually have complete control over the second step.

The 'filter bubble' exists in between the two steps, so you can hear the insult, look at it, and simply let it pass off without being affected by it.

'Look' at the insult and let it go out without affecting you

Meditation is this state of awareness, of watching your own thoughts.

It is not just what you do when you sit and close your eyes for some time. It can be done anywhere, while you do anything. The 'bubble' is symbolic of 'awareness' / 'watching' - it exists whenever you are meditating.

It is in this state of awareness, of watching your thoughts, that you are able to do two things - and these are the broad types of meditation:

• Detachment from all thoughts

• Focused attachment to one thought

But to reach this state of awareness, to acquire this filtering bubble, requires training. The training is an exercise to separate yourself from your thoughts and watch them as objects that enter and go out of your mind naturally.

This training method is what is commonly called meditation - because it is done in ideal conditions: sitting in a quiet place, closing your eyes, and trying to clear the mind of everything.

The training method is actually simple:

• Close your eyes and clear your mind.

• Very soon, unaware of yourself, you start thinking about things naturally.

• Later you suddenly realize that you're thinking and you don't know when that started.

• But once you realize that there is a thought in your mind, you naturally stop thinking about it. Let it die away.

• Keep repeating steps 1 - 4.

The basic idea is to just ‘be’ while thoughts come and go. That's how you start and get a hold of the process. But in effect, meditation is a 'way of being' anywhere, anytime.

"Meditation is not something that should be done in a particular position at a particular time. It is an awareness and an attitude that must persist throughout the day." - Annamalai Swami

It is not at all about 'not thinking' or letting nothing affect you - that is a possibility or consequence when you get the ability to watch your thoughts and choose what gets to affect you.

Part 2: The end

Remember once again - meditation is the state of awareness, of watching your own thoughts.

Low stress levels, calmness, critical thinking, and spiritual experiences are consequences of this process, not goals. If you aim for them, you might not attain them because your mind must be free of goals and thoughts, not looking forward to something. The process releases the reward only when there is no expectation of it in the mind.

So how exactly does meditation lead to:

Consequence 1: peace of mind?

Peace is often equated with the absence of any or all suffering. This is not entirely true.

Meditation is an integral part of Buddhism, and its main tenet is that all life is suffering. So are Buddhist monks never at peace?

Try this idea: Peace is the absence of ‘conflict’ in the mind and the suffering that comes out of this conflict.

Example 1: Why is it peaceful to be completely authentic?

Because there is no conflict in the mind between 'how you should be' and 'how you are'.

'How you should be' is only an idea. A concept that is sometimes directly fed to you by society, or sometimes born out of your own experience of aspiring to be like something or someone else. But it is a bunch of thoughts.

The minute you are aware that these are simply thoughts that come into your mind, and you let them go, you are yourself completely, whoever you are in this moment. Isn't that the most peaceful thing?

Example 2: Why is the absence of regrets peaceful?

Regrets are basically ideas of how something in the past could have been different. Nobody can do anything about the past, everybody learns lessons. But regret is a conflict in the present. An unnecessary conflict that cannot be resolved, that only leads to self-induced pain, in looking for an escape when there is actually none.

You cannot live a life of no regrets, or cannot stop these thoughts from coming, but you can stop them from staying. That is exactly what you do in meditation, you let them go.

Example 3: Why is ‘freedom from desire’ peaceful?

Desires are thoughts in the mind, in essence, a conflict between 'what you have' and 'what you want/need'. Desires are not harmful as long as you can fulfill them. Then moving towards them is the best thing you can really do at present.

But if there's no way of fulfilling a desire, you have a conflict that cannot be resolved.

If these desires (thoughts) come and you let them go, you have peace of mind.

The fundamental way meditation helps you achieve peace of mind is to avoid conflicts that are unnecessary. And this is done by simply... meditating: staying in awareness, and letting thoughts and conflicts come and go.

Most conflicts boil down to the clash between 'what should be' and 'what is'.

• 'What should be' - a set of ideas, therefore thoughts.

• 'What is' - what already exists, the present.

Nobody has the ability to 'not think about something'. That is a paradox - you immediately think about the same thing right then. Calmness is a consequence of letting go of these harmful thoughts.

Consequence #2 - Critical thinking?

Critical thinking is simply the ability to think about your own thought and to critique it.

One thought comes to your mind, or somebody else says something. Now you detach yourself from it and look at it as a separate object. Then you can proceed to analyze and evaluate that thought. This helps sharpen reasoning.

This also includes letting go of useless thoughts that don't make sense. It's pretty clear how an 'awareness of thoughts' (read, meditation) is fundamental for this.

Consequence #3 - Gateway to spirituality

When you meditate, one thought comes into your mind, you watch it and just let it die away. Now before the next thought comes in, there is a brief interval of silence.

This is absolute silence where there is no noise in the mind. It is truly empty, free of all thoughts, ideas, and knowledge. This silence by itself is very peaceful. It is what you get when you sit and meditate in ideal conditions.

But don't stop here! It is in this interval, that you can feel who you are. What is it that exists, in the absence of everything you can think and know, about yourself and the whole world?

You are not the thoughts in your mind. You are not your identity, knowledge, ideas or whatever you can think of. You are the one who thinks, who 'experiences' things. You ARE the state of awareness or consciousness. In common words, you are the 'spirit' or 'soul'.

And this is exactly why meditation is such a huge part of spirituality. It is when you meditate, that you are in a state of awareness, that you remain in the moment, in the reality of 'what is', instead of being carried away by your own thoughts and living only in the world of your ideas. And this is the beginning of all spiritual experiences.

Check out my previous article detailing the personal experience of discovering meditation and how it works practically. Stay tuned for more ideas :)