Meditația - Meditation

I see meditation as a form of therapy – both physical and psychological. We have been used to always separate the two, the body and the mind, but they are linked together. Our bodily sensations trigger certain thoughts and certain thoughts trigger certain sensations in the body. Meditation is the one medicine that takes care of both of these at the same time. 

If we have pain in the body we go to see our family doctor and if we have experienced a psychological trauma we go to a priest or to a psychologist. We end up having a whole array of therapists which we pay to take care of ourselves, but nobody can take better care of ourselves than ourselves. Nobody can know us better than we do. The problem is when not even we know ourselves. Meditation brings you face to face with yourself, and you may try to escape but in the end there is no escape. The mind has been extremely trained to run away, to keep itself entertained, to trick and cheat itself, to procrastinate. But the more you meditate the more you see you have no escape, you have to deal with your own problems on your own. 

For me, meditation is a medical practice. There are various types of meditation and I haven’t studied meditation under the guidance of any master or guru. I have been curious about it ever since I was practicing Karate, but then I remember I asked a Karate Shihan if meditation can help us increase our martial skills. He replied “forget about it, just train!”. Later on I have been recommended by my acupuncturist friend to meditate in order to calm down my over irritated nervous system. I never thought about it that way, I also used to think it has something to do with praying to Buddha.  But being sick and seeing that after more sessions of meditation I start to, at least, feel more calm about the fact that I am sick and stop being so desperate and worried about it made me have more confidence in this kind of practice. So I continued to meditate daily ever since. 

Experiencing life traumatizes most of us, all of us – in the exact same ways but at different intensities, at different times. We all experience the same things in the end. But we haven’t been thought to deal with our traumas. Our first reaction is to escape, to run away. We have a problem that bothers us, be it physical or psychological, and soon we find something else to entertain us so we can forget or “get over” our problem. Time passes and the contexts in our life changes and we may think we got over our traumas. But our traumas were simply left behind, unsolved. And whenever something similar happens it can trigger our traumas, and that will trigger the exact same reactions we had when we were experiencing those traumas – anger, depression. And that can follow us like a nightmare. This way we end up having fixations and obsessions and we become rigid. Our nervous system will eventually fail. And together with it, the other systems will fail as well. And so we become ill. 

When we meditate, we look at our reactions, but we don’t fuel them. We may hear something we don’t like – some noise, some music, some people talking, etc. We then see our thoughts about it, and our very organic reactions to it. But if we don’t engage in our reactions, those reactions will cease to harm us. They can’t touch us if we don’t let them touch us, because our reactions are our own creations, they don’t come from outside like stones thrown at us. So, first we see what our reactions are and this way we learn more about ourselves. We get to know ourselves more and more. And then, if something similar happens and we are not meditating, we know exactly how we are going to react. So we have a little bit of extra time to choose. Because we became aware of who we are. Before this, something happened, it triggered our reactions and we started burning. This time, we can choose if we let ourselves get burnt or not.

Also, throughout the day we experience so many things, we hear so many stories, we see so many people, we get excited in so many ways, or we may have some tough problems for which we can’t see a way out, so how can such a busy mind face all these? When we meditate, all these thoughts, memories, reactions, emotions, go round and round. After a while they go round and round slower. And slowly slowly they settle down just like the mud settles down in an agitated bottle of water after you just simply stop agitating the bottle and let it down. Then you can use your mind, because it rested. 

When we sleep we aim to get some rest, but we don’t always get the rest we dream of. We may have some pain that doesn’t let us rest – back pain, tooth pain, muscle pain, heat or cold may not let us sleep, too much or too little food, stress, projects, deadlines. And even if we fall asleep, the mind activity goes on, and it’s even worse since we are not at all aware of it. We may dream all sorts of things and wake up even more tired than we were when we went to sleep. But if we meditate, all we do is rest. Just stop all activity, sit and breathe. The mind will go on without you. And if you try to stop it, it will go on even more. It behaves like a spoiled kid. The more you tell it to stop, the more it won’t stop. You just have to let it go as it goes and watch what happens. 

If you try to focus, you miss the whole picture. Just like a camera focuses a spot and gets many many details for that single spot, but very little for the rest of the picture, if you focus only on your breathing or on certain thoughts and emotions, sounds or anything, you will miss the rest.

Because it is so simple, meditation is so complex, so difficult. It requires a lot of sensitivity and attention. We are not used to simple things. We are not used to doing one thing at a time. We get bored, we think at something else in the past, or in the future, but we can’t stay along with what happens now. Also, if you set yourself to stay with what happens now, that is just another activity, so it is not meditation. You meditate, and while you meditate meditation comes and goes. You can’t grab hold of it. 

Physically, your body gets some rest also. You sit with your back straight, not too tense because you soon get tired, not too relaxed because your posture collapses. You may keep your legs crossed. This way you stretch your ankles, your knees and your hips. They will also get numb, don’t worry about that.  At first it can be quite painful, but the more you practice the more comfortable it gets and the easier it will be to find a balanced spot. You may keep your palms rested on your knees facing the sky, or you may keep your right palm in your left palm like holding a small ball a bit bellow your belly button, or you may keep your palms in a prayer position in front of your chest – this way you can correct and strengthen your upper back too and you can stretch your wrists. Keep your eyes closed so they can rest, pointing  frontwards. You breathe slowly and completely and just rest there for a while. Breathing slowly you calm down your heart and your lungs. Your blood pressure calms down too. This way, water, air and blood can flow easily and more peacefully so all the blockages can be unblocked, oxygen and food can get wherever it is needed. Your vertebrae get stronger and your back posture improves and corrects itself. Your body has time to see what goes wrong and what can be done, since it already has the tools to solve most of the problems it can face, it has regeneration mechanisms. 

You don’t have to necessarily sit cross-legged to meditate, but I feel better if I meditate this way. You can also lay down, or stand with the palms facing your chest as if you’d hold a tree. But I believe that if you want to see some actual improvements you have to keep doing this on a regular basis. Motivate yourself to do this however you feel like. And start slow. Take a few minutes every morning and every evening until you don’t have to feel a burden anymore to do it. If it is a burden, perhaps you shouldn’t force yourself to do it. For me, being sick and getting better, being stressed and really angry and getting more calm and focused was motivating enough to keep doing it. 

Reading more about it also helped me make some connections with what I noticed about it. There are some series of scientific researches performed on meditators, social experiments held in prisons, books and speeches of zen masters. I haven’t learned any specific technique, but the type of meditation I’ve documented myself about the most is called Vipassana Meditation. Vipassana means “to see the reality as it is”.

So, I try to keep meditation as simple and as real as possible. I have no religion, no spirituality, no gods. I know nothing about religious matters. Of course, I have studied a bit the history of religions but this doesn’t mean I know something. I haven’t discovered anything on my own. I only tell here what I saw on my own, not what I have read somewhere or heard at somebody. We live in fear – all sorts of fears, and to avoid fear, to escape fear, we have created gods and religions, this is what I believe. We are too afraid to face our own fears – the fear of death, the fear of loneliness, the fear of pain, the fear of failure, of wasting our lives, the fear of not having a purpose, and so it is way easier and more comforting to believe. We don’t know, but we believe. This seems a bit childish to me. It’s as if we’d fool ourselves, but even religious people still fear death, still fear loneliness, still fear pain and so on – some of them even fear their own god. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to mock at your religions here. If you have a religion I respect your religious routine as long as it doesn’t force anybody else to accept it as well or forbids anyone else to have a different belief. You may know what you are doing there – I don’t know exactly. I have an opinion about it, that’s all. What I find to be rude is the institutionalized religion. I think religion or spirituality  is the business of the individual, and not a social policy. Each individual should deal with these matters on his own, there can’t be an institution which solves all these metaphysical problems for everybody – in exchange for some spare coins, of course. Institutionalized religion has failed throughout history to create a better man, to save humanity – it only separated man from man and created wars. My religion is true, yours is not. My religion is more peaceful than yours, therefore I should destroy yours. If religion would have remained an individual business, a private, intimate business, all these wars and antagonism in society would have had to find different soils to grow.

Also, it is very easy to control a large number of people when all their beliefs are institutionalized. They all pray at a time, they all celebrate at a time, they all go to work again at a time, and those who don’t follow the routine stand out, become visible targets. I grew up in an Orthodox Christian background – remember how Jesus treated the temples of God!? He turned their altars up side down. I may have some respect for Jesus, but how can I have any respect to the altars you built for Jesus!? Since he, himself, would turn them up side down.

And since meditation is mostly regarded as a Buddhist practice, I have to mention I am not a Buddhist. I respect Buddha, but I don’t know much about the Buddhist rituals and I don’t follow any of them. Actually, I only know very little from what is believed to have been said by Buddha and since it made sense to me I have some respect for him. I can’t see him as a god though, I see him as a very wise man. I pray to nobody, I only say thanks once in a while to whatever goes around the Universe that makes the Universe and this life as it is possible for me to experience. I believe that since this reality, as we experience it, is possible, then anything is possible.  So, how can I tell who created this, what happens after we die, and so on and so on... the possibilities are endless. 

This is, briefly, how I see religion today. I have no relationship whatsoever with that which you call god. I don’t know if meditation may help me or anybody have a relationship with god. So far, what I experienced during meditation is pure physical sensation. I don’t know what Enlightenment is, and since I don’t know I won’t go into it. There are people who claim that they are enlightened, perhaps you should ask them. Enlightenment is not my biggest worry at the moment. I have the same worries we all have – I have pain, I have experienced psychological traumas that wouldn’t give me peace of mind, I may have insomnia once in a while, I had fights with different people, I have been disappointed, I have fears, frustrations, wishes. So how can I jump over all these to go straight to solving the Enlightenment puzzle, since I don’t even yet understand what is this thing we experience that we call life and what exactly we are. 

I hope I have explained this practice simply enough so I don’t bring even more confusion above it. 

Wish you peace!