Meditation for a peaceful mind

Bu Sundeep Kumar©As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities of the attributes of delusion, at-tachment and purity through meditation and attains Reality.– Adi ShankaraMeditation was not something that I grew up with. I was born in seventies and during my grow-ing years I had not seen a single person in my fami-ly or otherwise doing meditations. This was the realm of Sadhus and Yogis who lived in Himalayas. Meditations for ordinary household people were yet to become popular. The complexities of the modern age brought problems that were hitherto unheard of. The greatest among it was- stress. Stress became the greatest killer. It became the father of all mala-dies. It deprived people of the most cherished thing- a peaceful mind. Yoga and meditation of-fered solutions. Better solutions than what psychia-trist were prescribing -anti-depressant drugs. These drugs made matter worse. They were not the right prescription in many of these cases. It took me long to realize the power of meditation. Here is my sto-ry.I was happy to be posted at Gangtok, the capital of Himalayan state Sikkim in north east India. The Himalayas were beautiful beyond words. The greenery of the pines and snow clad Kanchendzon-ga range captivated me. I would see them from the windows of my cottage. Living amidst such pictur-esque setting was a blissful experience. Life was laidback and peaceful. At first look, my life seemed to be carefree. There appeared no major worries in my life. Yet some inexpressible agony had been gnawing at my innards. It kept spasmodically both-ering me. I felt a kind of restlessness that I found hard to explain. In fact, I have been feeling this ag-ony since my teens. I have been living with it for quite a long time.Once during a chanced visit to a monastery in Sikkim, I met a lama. He was also the abbot of the monastery. He told me that my eyes look as if I am in conflict with some imaginary spirits. He said that it appears from my face that an incessant inner chat is going on inside me. This is the bane of modern living he said. He told me that the cause of my suf-fering might be my ‘pain body’. Now, this was a new term for me. But in spiritual world it has been explained as “old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.” It thrives on the pain of self and others. More or less, it lives inside all of us. Later, I learnt more about it in Eckhart Tolle’s book ‘The Power of Now’.I tried to unravel my past. I remember that as a kid I had seen death of my loving grandfather and my maternal uncle. Both of them loved me greatly. At the time of their death I didn’t know how to re-act with the loss of these people who showered great affection upon me. This was my first experi-ence of losing someone dear to me. With the pass-ing time, the unexpressed pain got sedimented in the mind. Many more unpleasant experiences fol-lowed. It appeared that there was no end to my suf-fering.Well into my adulthood, I got married and was happy to become father of a loveable son. Every-thing was going great. But the agony, though ap-parently dimmed with passing time, remained dormant in me. Suddenly, one day my father went into ICU with some liver infection and within 2 days he died. He was only 64.Though64. Though I was no longer a kid but a matured person, it came as a great blow to me. I felt helpless. The kid in me sprang back to life. How much I wanted to spend some more time with him! How so many things that I wanted to do with him! I felt like a little branch of a tree was chopped off with a sudden blow by the axe of destiny. I also felt a sudden commotion in those sedimented emotions lying in-side me. It aggravated my condition. I was becom-ing irritable at my work place. I would get easily get offended even by innocuous remarks. I started hating my job, my life and everything around me.My quest for salvation took me again to a mon-astery in Sikkim. While looking at the imposing golden statue of Buddha, I was awestruck. He looked so serene and peaceful. “Is it possible to be-come like him, to have a serene gaze like him?” I felt happy when a lama told me ‘yes’. He added that all the meditational methods and the rituals in Buddhism are ways that leads to the path of Bud-dhahood. He is the ideal that we all strive to emu-late. I too started longing for the mind of Buddha.He recommended that I should try meditation. Meditation helps in unfolding the layers of the mind. I went into a monastery in West Sikkim for a meditational retreat. They had a method called Dzogchen (Tibetan) which in Sanskrit is called Mahamudra. It is a complete system of mediation aimed at self-realization. It involves chanting cer-tain mantras and watching the inner nature of mind. The continuous chanting of mantras did help me in warding off painful thoughts. Sitting cross legged with erect spine I focused on the inflow and out-flow of my breath and tried looking at the inner na-ture of mind. Sitting still I have to witness any emerging thoughts without identifying with any of them. Like a cat that looks intensely at the mouth of a hole if any mouse emerges from there. Initial-ly, it was very disturbing. It felt as if there was no end to my thoughts. They emerged like an army of bats from a dark cave. Siting still was not an easy task. Looking at the inner nature of mind was not easy. But with practice and guidance it gradually became easier. This was a wonderful experience which helped in quieting my mind to great extent.In the monastery, I came to know that the aim of meditation is to realize the mind’s original sky like nature, a clear blue sky without any clouds. The clear sky is our mind and the clouds our thoughts and conditioning. I begin to see that much of my suffering emanated from my unruly thoughts. Un-tamed thoughts created the mental ripples in the serene pond of my mind. I begin to realize that they were the result of accumulated past experiences, and were apparently the root cause of my suffering. Witnessing them was accepting them. What you accept no longer bothers you. The conflict ceases. With the practice, I was becoming better. But after completion of the retreat when due to my laziness I became slack in doing the practice, I was back to square one. The fault didn’t lie in the technique but in me.In my quest for a peaceful mind for the last fif-teen years I have tried various methods of medita-tions. After my years of trying different school of meditation I realized that Meditation no matter of what tradition it belongs to whether Hindu or Bud-dhist, aims for the purification of the mind. I be-lieve that all meditational methods are fundamen-tally one. They may have different techniques. Their goal is same. They help in detoxification of the toxic mind. All methods of meditation are ef-fective if you chose any one and practice it dili-gently. Instead of dabbling, it is better if we stick to one method.If you are new to the world of meditation, before telling you about a very simple practice let’s first consider this. The main function of the mind is to think. All thoughts are not bad. Some thoughts es-pecially those of happy memories fill us with hap-piness. But that is conditional happiness. Memory of a certain condition makes you happy. A certain undesirable condition makes you sad. Thoughts are the result of perception of a conditioned mind. Meditation leads you to a state beyond worldly conditions. You remain blissful for a deeper reason. A baby born a few days ago cackles with bliss. He doesn’t have any good or bad thoughts. A baby’s cackle or crying doesn’t originate from its thoughts. The baby doesn’t have a conditioned mind. As the enlightened masters have said that the bliss is the original nature of the mind. You were born with a blissful mind. Meditation makes you a baby again. Without becoming naïve or gullible you become innocent.The negative unruly thoughts consume the bat-tery of your life. Meditation is basically non-action, the art of not doing anything. Among the many practices the one that I found particularly effective was agya chakra meditation. Here I would like to explain it briefly. As a preliminary practice just sit still and be a witness. Sit with straight back. It doesn’t matter whether you sit crossed legged on the floor or on a chair. The spine should be erect. Take a deep breath, fill your lungs with fresh air (breathe in from nostrils) and breathe out with the long sound of ‘om’. The breath will come out of your mouth with the sound ‘oooooooom’. Do this at least for seven minutes. The vibration of ‘om’ sound has a very positive effect. Then relax for a few minutes and sitting in the same position lift your chin at 45 degree45-degree angle. Close your eyes (or keep them half open or half closed) and focus at the middle of your both eyebrows. Medi-tate in this position for at least two to five minutes. Keep your breath normal. If any thoughts come let them come. Don’t try to stop them. Just become aware and watch them without identifying with them. This need practice. Lifting the chin at 45 de-gree45-degree angle automatically brings your fo-cus at the center of your eyebrows. That is the ex-act place where the Hindus apply tika or tilak. It is the sixth primary chakra in the yoga tradition called agya (English-command) chakra. Meditation in this way will strengthen your brain power. It ac-tivates your medulla oblongata, the soft spot in the back of your neck. It is located at the base of the brain and top of the spinal cord. This cord. This is very simple practice with extraordinary results. Practice this; I need not tell you how it will change your life for better. Now open your eyes and start your day. Gradually as your practice gets better you can extend the duration of the meditation. To sum up the technique- sit with a straight back and breathing in from your nose fill your lungs with ox-ygen and breathe out from your mouth with long ‘om’ sound (repeat for 7 minutes), then lifting your chin a bit up focus between your eyebrows for a while (2-5 minutes). That’s all. For better results, be mindful of what you eat, books you read, movies you see, company you keep. Your intuition will tell what is right for you.Doing meditation has really made things better for me. A mind without the burden of past condi-tioning feels lighter. I have a quieter mind now. Official works, family and social responsibilities no longer bog me down easily. Since shifting to Delhi I have found that like all big cities, life here is more stressful that it was in the Himalayas. Here, our progress in meditation undergoes real test. There have been occasional digressions on my part but the frequency of such digressions has become less.I know nothing about enlightenment or the su-preme reality. I am no spiritual master. I would on-ly say that these are practical techniques that help in our day to day life. You may not have a pain body that I had. You may simply want to get rid of the clutter in your mind that gets accumulated due to the mad rush of the modern life. Or you may want to acquire a more peaceful mind. Whatever your hopes; practice agya chakra meditation for a few minutes daily. With continuous practice, you might find that there are far greater things in store for you than you had imagined!*****