MEDITATION : How not to Meditate !

By His Grace and Blessings I write …

Meditation…..Gurus of Social Media

We are in a difficult situation and if you are watching any of the news channels you will realize that doomsday is not very far. Don’t worry this kind of media pervades and mushrooms in every country. Creating  sensationalism and capitalizing on the fears of society has always been and always will be a  very very profitable venture. After all this is an age of corporate fundamentalism and media is just a part of it. Say it’s like a big business corporation running TV 18 Network and all of your ETV channels .The main aim will always be to convert it into a profitable venture whatever it takes. Fear and sensationalism have a ready market and they will always sell. Rulers have known the utility of fear, sensationalism and propaganda since ages and have maintained their hold on power through their skilful use of these mechanisms. Now in this digital age, it’s great time for Gurus of media and on social network sites to capitalize the markets so readily available particularly on an issue like meditation.

So now you got my point. No no no you are still trying to make out that why am I talking about all this when the topic for this blog is Meditation. You must be confused. So what you thought?  You thought that I will discuss and fill your intelligent brains with …

1 What is meditation?

2 How to meditate?

3 When to meditate?

4 Why to meditate?

5 Where to meditate?

…….and so on so forth…Don’t worry that I definitely will but. .Yes but ..Do we really need that considering the infinite amount of information already available on the social media sites. One can get it from there so easily. People there are far more experienced and richly endowed with great powers to heal and lift this veil of Maya around our tiny brains through their enlightening discourses on meditation.

So like any of us would have done in such desperation, I did the same thing. I searched “Meditation” in you tube and see what happened…1000’s of videos cropped up. So I got confused by this great load of information and sermons around this topic and it posed an insurmountable hurdle to my little brain which has got very limited capacity to find a way through this maze so meticulously created by the masters in the art of meditation. So I did something else…I thought let me look alphabetically starting from say Meditation by “A” and reach to Meditation by Z…The idea was to find the best explanations around meditation and benefit from it. However, for every word I found so many guided  videos and audio by the experts of that particular alphabetical category. This is my experience with my search results.

Search for Letter “A”

My search of this first letter in English language startled me and made me little apprehensive and skeptical about these guiding lights. So when I typed letter “A” ..Asaram Guided Meditation got propped up.  Fear instead of bliss and peace ran down my spine and I thought no it can’t be. So I again looked for some more enlightened teachers under letter A and I found ‘Art of Living”…my heart was filled with compassion for the flora and fauna of the Yamuna plains which was so ruthlessly ruined under the feats of so many meditative  souls of this esteemed foundation.

Search for letter “B”

This time I got you know what?  Baba Ram Dev! Well I couldn’t make out as to how a business tycoon running a FMCG company (which has risen much rapidly then the wild grass in a rainy season or a wild fire in Amazon) will guide me in meditation. Well I thought my meditative being will grow as fast as his FMCG business. May be so fast that I will achieve an enlightened state in a day or two. Now whatever may be, fear again ran through my spine. I never wanted to achieve Nirvana so fast. I have my family, kids, business and a life which I wish to live long with health, peace and prosperity. Such instant Nirvana was not my cup of tea.  I moved on….

Search for letter “C”

Now it was turn of letter “C”…again I found some CA and then Chankaya as well. I recollected that there was some Chankya in the times of Mauryas in India. Has his great soul filled out of compassion for me  returned to guide me in this Yug (ERA) of Kali ?. Also some CA and some Accountants were there to guide me through meditation. I applied my rational faculties to it and found that it can’t be. How can a CA work unless he has seen some money in my pocket and also devised ways to benefit from it. So Madam ji  I had doubts about these people whose names began with letter “C”.  In a way after failing the great teachers of letter C, I moved on.

Search for letter “S”

I jumped to letter “S” this time as I found it boring to alphabetically type all letters. See what I got..Gurus of all colours and hues…Sri  ..Sadh…Sri  Maa..Shri  Shri..Gurus who are also available in other letters with different names as well, say if you type say “G” you will get .…Guru Guru…or Sadh G…or if you type “J” you are likely to meet some Jaggi and if you type “R” you will get some Ravi…you know ..They were everywhere and will speak on any issue whether they knew about it or not…well their wisdom lay in gathering information and throwing it at their cult followers who take it as a gospel of truth without an iota of doubt. Their cult followers also included all powerful people of the land who will touch their feat to seek their blessings so that they could continue enjoying power and pelf despite all their incompetencies and failures. I shivered at my imagination of an unholy nexus of all the holy cows of the land… seemed that Markets not meditation occupied every sphere of life and they were marketers out there to sell whatever i wanted ..…it made me fearful, doubtful and confused.  I wondered I was here to get respite from all these doubtful and fearful things but my search for this letter “M”(meditation I mean)  has further exacerbated it .

Last Straw at Camel’s back..

Then came the climax of my search after which I lost all interest  to continue my search for that blissful state of mind…. (at least my search ended  on social media sites where I had so enthusiastically started in search of a peaceful , blissful state of mind). What I saw this time was a glowing face of market guru well versed in the science of marketing through the PR agencies. Here was a big man whose face was very well curated with proper facials and manicured and pedicured  hands and feat. I recollected I had seen him on every news channel and on the first page of every newspaper next day of his adventure in a very ancient cave …so what it had to do with meditation .Well I tried to figure out with whatever little wisdom I had and could not but only bang my head against wall. So the search was sadly over …

Conclusion; At the end of my search I stand totally confused. There are more teachers across the globe  then the all the ancient techniques put together. Not only in India, others in Europe/America etc have also joined the bandwagon and have invested heavily in this profitable venture. Every teacher claims himself to be a master in his own right and adds to more confusion. You know in clear water, you never catch any fish. I feel opacity creates opportunities. There seems to be an unholy nexus of all holy cows brought together by what Adam Smith called Invisible Hand of Self Interest.

However hard I tried or whatever I did, I utterly failed to understand meditation and its various dimensions and as to why should I meditate. Everyone seemed to offer me unsolicited advice with one of his/her hand’s in my pockets. If my pocket was empty there is nothing for me and I was an unwanted soul in these holy alliances. Can the reader recollect something similar that happened to the greatest master of mankind..to Buddha. Remember how he searched answers for 3 basic questions of life for around 6 years and found nothing from the markets .Markets existed even then. Market not meditation has ruled all times Madam ji ..…

However, I must admit that I am person of a fickle mind. I keep on changing my mind in search of the meaning and purpose of life. I am reminded what Mahatma Gandhi said once and I quote…”

“My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question; but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth”.

So don’t think I can’t change my mindset as elaborated in the discussion above. I will get back to my esteemed reader on this issue in my future blogs as and when a newer truth stands revealed . Till then enjoy reading and commenting and if possible appreciating…Thanks

Disclaimer;  Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental and unintentional. This is purely a work of a fiction of a fickle mind. I don’t intend to, nor do I have the intelligence or experience or abilities to undermine great works of the great masters who so arduously and assiduously work day and night on social media sites to uplift this suffering humanity. I can’t fathom deepness of these meditative brains so deeply immersed with one pointed pursuit of making us all happy by relieving us form the burden of our maya. It’s easy to offend others when blinded by hubris..and I am not the one who is blinded. Of course for me my fictional characters in this essay are a nemesis of the mankind.

Image; It’s a monkey mind and I am very much confused about how to control it. Many bigger monkeys of social media are adding to my confusion…Meditation?