Are you meditating or just giving a fake Demonstration?

Ah, when writing yesterday’s diary I was not aware that I would start such a question-answer game about the topic of meditation! It is nice, most people agreed with me that playing with Apra is a very useful way of spending my time but they asked me many questions about the fact that I called that meditation. How could I be in presence when I had to worry about her falling and getting hurt or while being so obviously engaged in something active, running behind my little one instead of sitting and giving my body rest so that my mind can get peace? I thought it is about time to explain you my idea of meditation in detail again.

Let’s start with the classical imagination of a meditating person. Someone sits with the legs crossed, preferably in the lotus pose, the back straight and the hands on the knees with the fingers in the Gyan Mudra, the tip of the thumb joining the tip of the index finger. If you ask any child who has ever heard of meditation to show you how to meditate, they will do a nice display of this, on top of it probably saying a loud ‘Oooommm’. That is the standard idea that normal people have of meditation.

What you should do while meditating is a similarly stereotype idea. Let all your thoughts go, clear your mind, don’t think anything. That is the basics and the reason why most people think it is impossible for them to meditate. ‘Don’t think anything’ is what scares some off and offers a challenge for others.

I actually believe that anybody who has seriously tried to meditate any time in his life has already noticed that this is not the magic formula to meditation. Your legs and back start hurting after short time if you don’t have much practice sitting in this pose and your mind anyway does what it wants instead of following the order to empty itself. You shift around, if you are in company you are trying to be as silent as possible while doing this and you may even get into an awkward situation when you finally think you relaxed and with the tension some gas left your body – clearly audible to those around you.

I think we can agree that this is not the ultimate best way to meditate. I actually believe that while this image has become the ideal advertising image of meditation and inner peace, it is in most cases just a fake demonstration of the same. There are people who have the physical and mental ability to actually meditate in this way also over longer periods of time but most people, if they are really interested to reach this state of inner peace, would choose another method, if they knew about it.

As to the other methods, there are many. One example is sound meditation, which our friend Thomas so nicely practices and offers, a relaxation with music that guides your mind and gives it a focus that helps you let go of unnecessary thoughts. Another option is walking in nature, something that I am sure the participants of our Himalaya Journey will tell us tonight when they are back at the Ashram after their trip. A walk under the stars or in a forest can be a wonderful meditation as long as you concentrate on being in the present moment. Exercise can be meditation, too, as well as art, a painting in which you get lost while creating it. Cooking a dish and feeling the spices intuitively while adding them into your pot. Planting a tree, reading a book or even doing your work, yes, also in front of a computer, while being aware of what you are doing.

As I said, as long as you are fully aware of what you are doing in the moment, I call it meditation. And when I am playing with our little one, when she is running somewhere and I am behind her or whatever she is doing, I am completely in that moment. You have to be with a little child like Apra – the moment you are distracted, she can do any nonsense! So you have to be aware – and it is the best meditation I ever had!