Meditation: Why the way it is?

Image source: Flickr

Finally! Here is what I think, why meditation is the way it is.

The other day, I was watching a video by some professor, lecturing on absent-mindedness. The solution he pointed out was to stay conscious and mindful always. The professor was right and gave some simple tricks to stay mindful or conscious of the actions that you perform.  However, he did not talk about how to actually stay in the present. Now, how do you do that? Just stay in the present moment. Just be in now.

If you notice, being in now or the present moment is not that easy. For most people when they try being in the present moment, they will always find themselves thinking about the past. Now, past here does not mean the past of the person. Past means the time that has gone away. Time is a continuum. Thinking takes time. You thinking, means that some thought is going in your mind. This thought cannot be the present or now, as it is going on in your mind and hence has already gone past. You need to move your thinking along with the time as it progresses and hence you need to clear your mind. And, that is not easy!

Well, then how do you stay in the present. Meditation teaches us that. For those who are not aware, meditation is the practice of concentration by focusing the mind on to some object of concentration. The final objective is to clear the mind of all the thoughts. Because unless thoughts leave your mind, you cannot be in the present; you will always be in the past.

Meditation techniques often stress upon focusing the attention on your breath. Now, why breath? As I said, time is a continuum. What is breath? It is the only  continuous process which takes place in your body consciously as well as subconsciously. You don't need to focus your mind in order to breathe. hence, if you focus your attention on your breath, and let the breathing go on subconsciously, you can be in the present moment. The moment time changes, the present has changed, and so has the breath. But now, your mind is with it! The moment you create something to think about, you leave it at that and move to the next event. This leaves the mind clean of all the thoughts.

I am no expert in this subject. I just try to reason about the way these things are, since they are overly complex and beyond the understanding of our present day science which is still at a very premature stage as far as God and divinity is concerned.