What is life? Is it the breath we are taking? Yes, to some extent our breathing is life, and when we finally breathe out, it is death. But animals also breathe in and out. So, is life all about simply existing? We all are seeking a happy life and not just an ordinary existence. We want success, comfort, pleasures, good relationships and friends, knowledge and academic excellence. Everything boils down to this happiness alone.
The Upanishads describe life as a series of perceptions. There is an object perceived by the sense organs. It can be a visual or auditory object. The perception creates a form or sound in the mind that gives us a meaning too. Then, after some time, there is another thought that occurs with another form or sound. In real time, it does not happen in this sequence and so slowly.
We are given absolutely no time to think. The whole world is a series of continuous unbroken flow of experiences caused by images, sounds, smells, textures and tastes that are imprinted almost simultaneously in our senses and through that in the mind.
When a series of perceptions are imprinted on the mind, it does not stop there too. We are always reacting to the perceptions. So our life is a continuous flow of perception and reaction.
However, in between this perception and reaction, there is a small, thin and secret layer of our own past experiences, which have formed a layer of thought impressions. These impressions are like our ready reckoner on how to receive an experience and respond to it. These impressions have been formed over lifetimes through the different experiences we faced and our responses to it.
For some, it can be a layer of wisdom, but for most of us, it is only our own wrong ideas and immediate conclusions that form this invisible yet imposing layer of thoughts. In technical terms, it is called our vasanas. Each time we sit in meditation with absolutely no agenda, layers of these impressions simply dissolve into existence.
Each time we sit for meditation and get up, we transform into a new person. After meditation, the perceptions we have will cease to go through many torture chambers of thoughts. Hence, there will be a smooth transition of thought from perception to expression. It will be natural and spontaneous. Regular practice of meditation has this for its important benefit. It dissolves our most adamant ideas that will never allow us to experience the life as it really is.
When these memory interpretations are gone, when I hear a bird singing, the mind will be in that moment with the song and will not go on a thought trim, comparing that bird with the voice of my girlfriend or find out a market for selling bird voices on the mobile phone. When perception and expression are a natural flow, a mind becomes meditative even while actively participating in daily life.
The author is Acharya, Chinmaya Mission, Tiruchi
(www.sharanyachaitanya. blogspot.in)