When you first take up yoga, you might find it very painful to start with the traditional exercises and asanas. Just sitting straight for long periods of time is difficult, and you want to fidget and move around, and that it’s unbearable to sit still. It’s the same with the mind. It can feel very uncomfortable at first to let our minds settle; we would almost rather they keep whizzing and whirring, filled with distractions, from the main questions of our lives. We have to make a big effort to sit quietly and bring ourselves back to our centre.
It is fascinating to me how the old practices offer a sequence of mental exercises for meditation that are just as relevant to life today as they ever were. For example, at the beginning we simply generate our motivation: we remind ourselves of our purpose in life, which is basically to help as many people and living beings as we are able to. This is all well and good for us monks and nuns, but what is its relevance to people living in the real world, you might ask. When you think about it, can’t the purpose of every single person be to do their best to make the world a better place in whatever way they can? To bring happiness and security to their loved ones? To spread tolerance and compassion? To be calm and happy, and feel fulfilled?
We use meditation to visualise the wisdom within us all, our true nature. Other meditations simply contemplate how precious life and our mental freedom is. This might help release us from our usually limiting mental bonds such as expectation or falling into the trap of often complaining about what we don’t have or what went wrong today, rather than all the amazing things we already have in our lives and the things that went well today.
We also use meditation to contemplate the nature of change and its inevitability. It is amazing how much mental unhappiness seems to be related to people—either due to fear of change, or while trying to make or keep things just so. It is really a very good way to help us find our motivation, set our intention and take just the smallest steps towards developing our awareness of our inner wisdom, which is to say our inner happiness. It also begins creating an awareness of how we use our thoughts, words and actions throughout the day.
Often, we don’t even realise that our bodies, speech and minds are connected, and that the quality of our thoughts leads to the quality of our words and actions. And so simply by setting our intention at the start of each day, we will begin to change the usual unconscious patterns—or, if we don’t change them to start with, we will at least begin to notice them. This is a very good step and takes quite a bit of practice. We will only be able to let go of the obstacles between us and our happiness if we are willing to recognise them first.
Meditation is a way to calm things down so that you are able to reflect more effectively on what has happened in your day, and how you are developing as a person. It also gives you the time and space to contemplate; you may use meditation to reflect on a teaching or question that you have. For example, if you have been impatient during the day, you may wish to meditate and reflect on how developing patience may be of benefit to you and how it might remove some of your own obstacles to happiness.
By contemplating patience during meditation, you will be more ready to practise it in your everyday life. If you start meditating today, for the first time, you may not find it very easy or even very helpful to begin with. However, as you would try to reflect on patience, your mind would run around all over the place. But be patient with your meditation and gradually, if you keep doing it, a week or two later, you will eventually be able to do it very easily with no difficulties. Just when your body becomes accustomed to a position, yoga becomes effortless.
Our minds need to be relaxed and peaceful for meditation to happen; which is why we chant mantras and then meditate—the rhythm of singing the mantras creates a relaxation. For me, it is like swimming in the deep ocean. In this relaxed state, we can gradually develop a feeling of space in our minds so that there is room for understanding and inspiration rather than the usual mass of nonsense thoughts clamouring for our attention. That is when you enter the meditative state.
The author is the spiritual head of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa Order based in the Himalayas