What is Meditation?

Fundamentally, meditation is a device to regain mastery over your mind. Once the mind knows its place, there is reduction in thoughts and hence your fears or daydreams or anxieties do not pull you into the future or the past (where all experiences are stored). Once that happens, you can experience inner peace firsthand and a taste of it is enough to keep going higher in consciousness.

Meditation is thus an art that helps to reduce the traffic of thoughts in our mind thus opening a door to peace, stillness and true calm. Only this peaceful and relaxed state, a man is able to get a glimpse of divine. As the meditation progresses, the meditator can experience reduction in everyday fears, desires, daydreaming and nonsensical chatter, thus bringing benefits of wellbeing and reduction in stress. A clear mind is fresh and responsive, while an overworked mind is dull and tensed. Meditation for beginners is thus a balm to hyper active mind of 21^st century.

To call meditation an action would be paradoxical yet for a beginner it is an action as it marks an important intent to discover the truth that lies within each of us. But as meditation flourishes it becomes a spontaneous state of being where the person is not pulled into the past or the future but is able to exist gracefully in the present moment with a serene and clear mind. Upon deepening of meditation, the meditator (or the doer) automatically drop off and what takes over is meditativeness that penetrates the life subtly hence making life a joy that it ought to be. 

“What is this true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, into one single koan”

— Hakuin Ekaku

Hakuin points at the eternal truth. In essence, all meditation methods are just devices to get started and reach a certain point in uplifting our consciousness, where spontaneous meditativeness takes over and methods can be dropped slowly, then you can truly walk in Zen or sit in Zen. However, in present scenario of the modern world, our daily lives are very stressed due to lot of pressures both existential and mental, thus these methods become very important to get a taste of peace and tranquility. Guided meditation for beginners thus becomes a map to navigate to the destination called bliss.