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Book-Summary - Meditation & Life

The book starts with explaining the basic Hindu concepts of mind and how things affect the mind. Once all these concepts are explained, Swamiji provides certain steps to help improve the meditation.

Our goal in life is to realise the Brahman or to become one with Brahman. If this can be vaguely translated, it is nothing but moving from human to super human condition.

We are composed of 5 parts/layers/sheaths.

  1. Food Sheath - This constitutes our physical body. Anything we eat is getting transformed into our body.
  2. Vital Air Sheath - This constitutes the air and liquid present in our body. When we inhale the air, it goes to lungs and from there it is transferred through out our body via blood.
  3. Mental - This constitutes the emotions, feelings and queries which runs in our mind.
  4. Intellectual - The questions which arise in mental sheath usually gets settled or answered in the Intellectual field. All those planning, reasoning and analysis is done here.
  5. Bliss - This is the core part of our existence - Atman.

These layers are not separated physically rather it moves from rigid to subtle - Food has structure and shape, vital air has structure but takes shape of the body, mind does not even have structure - as you think it becomes where/what you want to be, Atman is Brahman which is everything and everywhere.

Most of the people identify with body. Their thoughts and actions will be restricted to physical layer. They fail to understand we are beyond the physical layer. Few among them transcends and move to next stage that is Mental/ Emotions and Feelings stage - whose thoughts starts and ends in those emotions.  Few among them reach the intellectual level where they analyse each of these thoughts using logic and reasoning. Among them only few will reach the final Bliss stage thus becoming one with Brahman.

What is that disturbs us or What is that got disturbed in our life?

  • It is Mind.

What is the mind made of?

  • Thoughts

How are these thoughts getting generated?

  • Via experiences in this life as well as previous lives.  So experience is basic unit of life.

Any experience can be divided into 3 parts

  • subject (who is experiencing it),
  • object (experienced - experiencer is experiencing this thing)
  • finally relationship of subject and object.

If anyone one is missing, we will not have the experience. Experience as such is bland, our mind paints it into pain or misery or happiness if we do not have a matured intellect. As this is already painted, this results in other thoughts or desires. Our desires leads to other desires and anxieties. What differentiates humans from animals are thoughts, so we humans should aim to control that thought production and thought flow. Meditation helps towards that goal.

At the end, everyone has same goal - to achieve absolute peace and joy. Perfection is when we are in that state of absolute peace , joy and it lasts forever.  The way we try to achieve this perfection is via continuous self analysis and introspection, better ourselves from moment to moment in our bodily strength, hearts, emotions and finally intellectual capacities. The way of life for doing this is spiritual life. This is the true religion as well. The blind faith is usually born out of fear and also being ignorant , where as true religion or spiritual life is via knowledge, self analysis and introspection.  Every experience is nothing but an opportunity for moving towards Brahman or it teaches the path towards perfection.

There are different ways to achieve this -

  • jnana yoga
  • bhakthi yoga
  • karma yoga
  • raja yoga.

Our mind is ravaged by 3 types of thoughts

  • thoughts based on our past experiences,
  • thoughts on future anxieties
  • thoughts on current excitements.

We can change the quality of thought by following bhakthi yoga. Here quality of thought might be related to thoughts that arise due to an experience or past memory. We can reduce the quantity of thought by following Karma Yoga. With Karma Yoga we are following self less service, as it is selfless we are cutting off the desire and hence no future thoughts from it.  Then with Gyana Yoga, we can direct the thoughts towards the right direction.  Usually gyana is another type of addiction which once we start we cannot stop it until we reach the ultimate knowledge which is self. As we are constantly trying to gain further gyana, we are always directed towards that.

A practice towards a goal which is done regularly and sincerely forms the Saadhana and the self effort towards that Saadhana forms the Purushartha. Saadhana should be arranged intelligently such that, you get small rewards on the way which should keep us on track.  Everyone and everything is Brahman, that means everyone of our actions is continuously forming the Brahman. Our present is formed by our past Purusharthas. This  purusharthas may be of this life or past lives. So the future depends on the present Purusharthas.

To critically examine something, we need to stand outside of it or apart of it. The moment we associate it to something, we cannot analyse it, as bias will creep in or false beauty appears to it and hide the ugly things. This bias is because we cherish the possession, we are proud of possession, it has become one with us. Detachment cannot exist when we have sense of intense ownership or possessiveness.  So, divine life can be obtained when we examine ourselves - our thoughts, mind, reasoning. This can only be possible when we come out of our attachment of our body, our thought, our intellect - “I” ness. Then only detachment is possible which helps to self analyse and introspect ourselves without any bias. As this detachment with our own thoughts is very difficult, our ego, possessiveness of our thoughts will hide all the mistakes or makes the mistake appear very small. So same irregularities or mistakes in others, appear as grave but in our own mind harbouring such thoughts either does not surface to our conscious mind or appear to be very small thoughts.

If we want to be happy, just thinking to be happy will not help. We need to take necessary actions/steps to create the condition that is necessary to bring that happiness.  As the external world is nothing but a projection of our mind, all our enemies reside in our mind and that enemy is creation of mind. This thought helps to move towards the freedom by starting to neutralise the dreadful thoughts which arise in our mind due to that enemy. Character of a person is made by the thoughts and thus to change or update the character we need to correct the thoughts. Books, life of great rishis, and saadhakas helps us to generate good thoughts and thus help to update the character. Reverence to anything forms when both there is a devotion & love (heart) as well as appreciation & respect (head). Usually either there will be devotion & love or there will be appreciation & respect.

If we just deny or restrict the desires of the mind that is suppression. Suppressing anything will have consequences - it is going to hit back.  On the other hand, we need to analyze the desire, this will reveal the underlying motives of that desire. On discovery, these desires will go away. This is sublimation which is always better than suppressing it. As we involve ourselves in the mental and intellectual fields we will inherently stop the sensual desires (or sublimation from physical body).

For the meditation, Swami Chinmayananda gives following steps-

  1. In mind submit everything of yours to your Ishta Devatha.
  2. Then make sure you are sitting erect spine.
  3. Next relax your muscles through out your body by keeping the erect spine.
  4. Then repeat a mantra within your mind repeatedly.
  5. Finally stop the mantra repeating abruptly. This should bring a silence and also the mind would have been occupied by that mantra. Try to elongate this silence.
  6. At the end try to open your eyes slowly.

Also every day we should allocate some time, where we will just sit and replay our thoughts and try to see the links in thoughts -  which one generated which other one. Also try to find the intentions behind those thoughts.  Introspection, detection, negation and substitution - This involves meditation. we introspect the thoughts. This detects the anomalies or bad thoughts. On detection, these bad thoughts gets negated. Once negated, we replace it with good thought which forms the substitution.