Nothing or Everything?

Photo: Prabir Das

Wanting to know what the fuss about meditation is all about, I took a meditation course at one of the country's most renowned meditation centres. Sit for ten minutes a day in a quiet room. Concentrate. Fix your mind on an image. During those ten minutes I tried to control my mind. For years I have been battling with that control. But my mind wanted to wander.  And I tried to pull it in. The game was everlasting. And that's what meditation is, I was told.  
With mounting scientific evidence that meditation can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardised intelligence tests, meditation is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving the mind. Meditation programmes like the one developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and the “method” designed by the centre I went to, teach participants how to augment performance, leadership skills and productivity.
That's all well and good, but there is a bit of a disconnect between the pursuit of these benefits and meditation's originally intended purpose. Gaining competitive advantage on exam and business were hardly of the utmost concern to early meditation teachers.
The heightened awareness of the mind reached through meditation was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from categorizations—us/them, self/other—that divide people from one another.
Does it work as promised? Is its originally intended effect—the reduction of suffering—empirically demonstrable?
According to a joint study by US psychologist Paul Condon, neuroscientist Gaelle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller, the answer is yes. Similar research by the neuroscientists Helen Weng and Richard Davidson confirm that even brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathy.  
So far so good. But soon enough, I am faced with the big questions:  What exactly is meditation? What actually goes on in my mind when I meditate?
To find answers I contact psychologist Paul Condon who says on email, “There are many different forms of meditation, all with different purposes and intentions, and meditation forms differ quite a lot across religious and secular contexts. Many modern forms of meditation have a similar element, though. As we pay attention to our own experience, we learn more about the way our mind behaves.”
Attention and experience are the key words here. There is no formula or method. Just pay attention. Any formula, any method, any system becomes repetitive and mechanical soon enough. If you practice it, you become what the method offers. Whatever it is that you are searching is outside of any method.
So don't join anything that promises nirvana for a fee. Your mind has to understand what is actually going on in its own psychological field. It must be aware of what is going on—aware without any distortion, without any resentfulness, bitterness, explanation or justification. Sounds vague? Wait a minute. We will get there.

We can meditate in everyday life during ordinary daily activities. Photo: Prabir Das

How does the mind reach that kind of awareness? How can a mind, worried, fearful, and occupied with the Facebook and the smart phone experience anything other than its own projection and activity?
Yet you have to ask the impossible or you will fall into the trap of what is possible, what is easy, convenient and comfortable: the method.  
“Your mind just needs to observe,” said US psychologist Jiddu Krishnamurti.   “And this is to be done happily, with great joy—not compulsively, but with ease, with felicity, without any hope of reaching anything.”
By this account, you don't necessarily have to sit in the lotus position, and close your eyes—you can meditate while going about your daily lives.  Psychologist Condon says, “We can meditate in everyday life during ordinary daily activities, such as brushing our teeth or washing the dishes or at work.”
The real challenge then isn't what we're able to do with your eyes closed. It's to be more self-aware in the crucible of our everyday lives with your eyes open.
To observe, to see clearly, the mind that chatters, projects ideas, has contradictions, conflicts and lives in constant comparison—must be attentive and quiet. The mind that observes does not analyze, is not seeking experience.  It merely observes and is free from all noise.
When your mind is inattentive and wanders, let it. The very awareness that your mind is inattentive is attention. Don't battle with inattention. Don't try to concentrate; even a third grader can concentrate. Know that you are inattentive. Be aware that you are inattentive.
The silence of the mind is a beauty in itself.
Then you see much more, you hear much more.
Now that silence is not possible if your body with all its nervous responses, all the fidgeting, the ceaseless movement of the fingers, the eyes is not still. Have you ever tried sitting completely still without any movement not even of your eyes?
Try it.
Don't worry if you can't do it more than two minutes. That's enough.
Don't sit sloppy—sit straight and still. Do not eat more than the body needs. You need a body that is highly sensitive. If you have pain somewhere in your body, treat it so it does not distort the mind. The body and the mind must be in total harmony.
And while you are at it, be aware of what meditation is not. Mediation is not a substitute for prayer.  In meditation you draw strength from your inner self. When you pray, you go to a source of strength greater than your own.
Now what is the point of this kind of life? What is the point of everyone suffering and you having this aesthetic life?
“It has none whatsoever. But if you have this extraordinary thing going on in your life, then it is everything,” said Krisnamurti. “Then you become the student of a great learning. Then the whole of the mind is totally awake.”
There is no formula. “All one can do is point to the door,” said Krishnamurti who claimed allegiance to no nationality or religion. “And if you are willing to go, take a journey through. It's for you to walk. Beyond that, no one can describe the thing that is not nameable. Whether that's nothing or everything is for you to decide.”