What is Meditation?

The following is a letter that Sri Apa Pant wrote to his daughter on November 14, 1968:

Those who should know, speak of mediation as "mindfulness", Krishnamurthy calls it "choiceless awareness".

   Of meditation it is also said that it is "no-meditation". When you reach the normal, natural state of consciousness within yourself, you are in meditation. It is further said that when you are functioning in the day-to-day world with your senses in contact with sense-objects like seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling etc. your consciousness should be all the time within you.

   When I was talking to a high lama from Tibet, the most reverend Khentse Rinpoche in Gangtok, he once said that to meditate is to rest your mind between two thoughts. When a thought has vanished and another thought is yet to arise, in that interval you can realize the supreme consciousness, or Samadhi. The longer  the period of silence between one thought and another, the more you can be said to be in true meditation.

   Maharish Mahesh speaks of meditation as reaching to the source of your thoughts and remaining at a stage where no thought formation is taking place. It is when one reaches this point of "no thought-formation" that almost any mantra can help in fixing your super consciousness firmly. It is said by many that the Gayatri mantra is not a very easy one to start meditation with. You know "Aum Hreem Kleem." It is very beneficial mantra.

   When asked, the great sage of Arunachal Shri Ramana Maharishi said: If one watches whence this notion of 'I' springs, the mind is absorbed into that--that is tapas. When a mantra is repeated, if attention is directed to the source whence the mantra is produced, the mind is absorbed in that. That is tapas."

   Shri Padmanabhan of Travancore was asked about con-centration--mind control, mind purification, etc. He said: "Why bother about controlling the mind. You have to go beyond it. Leave the mind alone. no amount of control, concentration can get you out of it. Be relaxed, normal, watchful, alert, always. That is meditation. You can be, should be, in meditation always. There is nothing to achieve. Nowhere to reach. You are that--tat twam asi."

   Speaking to the great Muslim saint, yogi Bapak Rahim of Indonesia one day, the question was asked, "How to meditate?" He said: "Don't leave it to God." When another great yogi of Indonesia, Bapak Subhuh was asked about meditatin, he said that it meant "the surrender of your mind and all thinking-feeling-acting."

   Is there a path where all paths end? It is a voyage into the unknown.

With love.

Source: Surya Namaskars written by Apa Pant, ISBN-10: 8125013873