Mind matters - Different theories,same origin

I recently brushed through a magazine titled 'Frozen thoughts' which was lying in my house . Happened to get my eye on it as it was somewhere near the idiot box. It predominantly contained articles and experiences relating to philosophical thoughts, life and value of relationships. I didnt have the patience to read all that as the IPL finals was just half an hour away and my mind was already pre occupied with Doni ,Warne and many others. So I was restlessly flipping through the pages of lengthy paragraphs trying to get a glimpse of just the content,just when my eyes fell on a page full of terse sayings. I thought I ll settle with this and started giving a closer look.

It was a collection of quotes and maxims on meditation,sources including great thinkers and achivers from different epochs. The list ranged from Buddha to Bruce Lee, Richard Gere to Bhagavath Gita . The quotes employed different analogies and examples to portray the typical nature and behaviour of the mind and the meditation led approach to tackle it. The ride through the sayings was an interesting and thought provoking one.

When I was done ,I sat back and thought about what I had just gone through.I was taken aback by the realisation that the essence of all the quotes was one and the same albeit the different choice of words adopted in each. What startled me even more about the common-ness of the sayings was that the sources were completely unrelated in time . This drew me further towards their crux and bouldered my confidence on their verity. This was when I decided to mentally recapitulate the essential points of my just read wonderful quotes and my inferences from the same . Here they go...

The sayings did sound trite when they said that meditation is important for one to prevent thoughts from straying away and that one should sit in a quiet place with eyes closed and try to bring mind to a thoughtless state. However the excellent highlight was its emphasis on the fact that meditation is no activity which is carried out during a particular time. Meditation has to be intgrated in all our activities and after a certain point of time , meditation becomes life and fetches eternal bliss. For example, an activity as simple as sitting or walking becomes meditation if we bring in our full attention and consciousness to it. Meditation is not a state of rest, but a state of complete awareness and concentration on any object,physical or non physical. The endeavor of implementing meditation in our daily lives by pulling together all thoughts is a tought mental process due to the ever swaying nature of the mind. But this hardship and difficulty exists only in the initial stages. Because, once the meditated state is imbibed by the mind, it is ever lasting happiness which is going to prevail. Happiness totally independent of worldly issues. There lies no necessity of going in external pursuit of happiness. This eventually leads to mental peace,calmness and self realisation at a later stage which remains the ultimate aim of all .This is analogous to the case of muddy water where the water becomes clear when the mud settles down. Only thing is that we should remain patient till mud settles down completely . In the meditated state, the power of the mind reaches great scales and can be used to accomplish the most arduous of tasks and the right decision arises automatically and involuntarily in the most dilematic circumstances.

The principle of Karmayoga as emphasised in the Bhagavat Gheetha, postulates that one must focus on his/her duty without thinking about the end result. If one does that, fruitful results follow path eventually. Now lets compare this with the precept of meditation. Focus on our duty or task at hand is the same as centering all our thoughts to the activity we perform. And the undue worry and concern for the results is nothing but letting our thoughts wander away to things which are not in our control . This meandering of thoughts is what the art of meditation tries to put a barrier to. As beautifully claimed in Karmayoga, the unmindfulness about the upshot of a task will purify the mind off needless negative thoughts and will keep disappointment and sorrow out of the mindframe. This stunningly, is all about the eternal, lasting bliss dealt about by the preachers of meditation. As we travel back along the path of the two principles, we realise at a certain point that they converge to a common source and an unifying motive. ..That they are branches having grown from the same tree!!

The very realization of the convergence was overwhelming and produced goosebumps on me. It was a state of gratification ..but I very well knew that this was negligible when compared to the immense perpetual joy which can be derived out of practising them.

But the time I had recovered from this feeling, the Chennai Super Kings had lost their first wicket..joy was lost and tension resumed...