Any Activity can be Meditation
Man is the only species in the whole world who always tries to change the world. Some people may argue with the fact that man is the only intelligent species but still after centuries of change, man is not satisfied with its effort. Overall Man and the earth both have suffered because of this change. With time a few people understand that it’s futile to change world. Only person whom we can change and we have the power to change is ourselves. The moment we change ourselves the world also changes with us. In reality we are the center of our world and the only way to change the world is to change ourselves.
Meditation does not intend to change anything with the outside world or day to day activities in our life. Meditation aims at changing the way we do things. Meditation is an inner journey and it changes the inner quality with which we do things. We do the same things as we are doing before but meditation only changes the way we do those things. Meditation is not an Act but it does add grace to our actions. No wonder meditative people carry certain grace and aura of tranquility around them.
Before going further I wanted to share one beautiful story from the life of Guru Nanak Dev. Guru Nanak Dev was once roaming in an Arabic country. Guru Nanak Dev Ji wanted to visit a city which had many saints. But when he was entering inside the city, Guards stopped Guru Nanak dev and handed him a Glass full of Milk. Symbolically Saints of that city had passed the message to Guru Nanak dev that this city is already full of good people and there is no space for him.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji gently placed some Rose petals on top of milk with out spilling the Milk yet at same time adding some thing beautiful to it. Saints of the city understood the symbolic message of Guru Nanak Dev Ji and came to the gate of City to welcome Guru Nanak Dev Ji.
Similarly many of us may feel that our life is so much hectic that we don’t have time for meditation. But if we use wisdom to give little space to meditation then it will change the whole quality of our life.
When we say anything can become meditation then it does not means meditation is an activity but it means any activity of life can become meditation. Many people believe that meditation is related with sitting cross-legged with eyes closed or chanting some mantras or moving to jungles. This is not true. Meditation means doing every act with awareness. Awareness means staying in present moment. Most of us feel that we are awake but in reality our mind is either in past or future. Meditation means to enjoy the present moment and to enjoy the present moment we have to be in present moment.
E.g. we have a desire to eat Pizza so we are walking to nearest pizza corner. On the way we are constantly imagining about the look of pizza, taste of pizza in our mouth and so on. But when we actually sit to eat pizza then rarely we pay attention to the pizza. While eating pizza our attention moves to some other thing. Again a new desire catches us and we start imagining about it yet eating the pizza mechanically. Meditation means while eating the pizza our attention should be on eating only. We taste every bite, we know we are raising our hand, cutting a bite from pizza and then now we are putting it in our mouth and then we taste the pizza with all our attention on the taste. This is meditation.
What ever we do in life does not matter, what matters is how we do it. If our attention is in the act while doing it, then we are meditating. A Sage meditates twenty-four hours a day because a Sage always lives in present moment. Time does not exist for them. Time is related with Mind. Mind lives either in Past or future. Living in present moment means to have no thought about any thing. Because moment any thought arises in us we move to future or past. One can try; it’s very difficult to have a single second in which we have no thought in our mind. Every moment many thoughts are seeking our attention but one amongst them wins and takes our attention towards it. Meditation means just watching that thought and no need to analyze it or get involve with it.
Most of time we do the things mechanically as our attention is not in the present moment but has moved into past or future. This shift of attention to past/future happens with some thought. In fact it’s a Myth to believe that we think. Actually No thought is ours. Thoughts come from outside. We cannot even stop these thoughts from coming to us but we can stop giving attention to them. This process of stop giving attention to thoughts is called as witnessing of thoughts. When we witness the thoughts then they can not affect/distract us. So if we are witnessing the thoughts then we will be in present moment doing every day activities yet at the same time meditation is happening.
Slowly as we become mature in witnessing thoughts then one day they stop bothering us or with time thought may be there but we don’t have any interest in them as we have become skilled in witnessing them. As we become more skillful in detaching ourselves from thoughts, in same proportion misery start running away from us. To develop this skill of witnessing thoughts one can start with sitting meditation with closed eyes for half an hour initially or 15 minutes as per one convenience. Once we become good in witnessing thoughts while sitting then we can slowly witness thoughts while doing day to day activity also. Slowly as we understand the Mind and its games then things become clearer to us. We come to know how we are trapped by Mind again and again.
Any activity of life can become meditation. But initially we can start with the activity which we like. E.g. when ever we listen any thing we focus our attention to one sound which we are listening and we ignore all other sounds. This is so much mechanical in us that we are not even aware of this fact. This focusing on one sound is done by Mind. Another direction through which we enter into meditation is UNFOCUSING our attention.
Try to listen all sound with out blocking any sound. Similarly we while seeing we focus our attention on one thing. Our vision becomes narrow. If we sincerely pay attention to vision then we will realize that our vision is in much bigger circle as compare to what we actually look. Unfocussed vision and hearing is the key.
Moment we see any thing we verbalize it. This is a computer, this is a book, this is a website. What is the need to verbalize, why we give names to things? This is again done by Mind. Just look at things with out verbalizing. With out giving them any name like a small child who is looking at things for the first time. If we can look at things with out giving any name then again we are doing meditation. In fact We regain our innocence back.
Every child is curious to know things because child does not know any thing. But we adult feel we have known every thing. We have become expert in verbalizing things, coming to the conclusions quickly. E.g. we are going for a morning walk and its very beautiful day. Immediately we will start talking about the beautiful day. What is the need to talk? This talking or verbalizing is again done by Mind.
Meditation is not against talking. In fact talking can also be used as meditation. One should listen to its own words as some one else is speaking. But initially it’s not easy. But if one tried then it happens spontaneously. Slowly petal after petal flowers of meditation blooms in our life and fill our life with fragrance.
To start with one can start witnessing the incoming breath and Outgoing breath and then witnessing of thoughts and then witnessing of Desires, Desires are just a cluster of Thoughts. As this Witnessing deepens we become more conscious and thumb rule of Meditation is to be more aware in every thing we do. It does not matter what we do what matter is – Are we are Aware in that Activity
