Meditation as practiced in the east (India, Tibet etc) has its origin in Hinduism and has been widely practiced as a spiritual practice in Hinduism and Buddhism. In its pristine form and purpose, it is a means purely for spiritual uplift – to attain God, self-realization, salvation, moksha, samadhi or Nirvana, whatever may be the name of the goal.
Meditation as a Means to Healthy Life
Thanks to the gigantic efforts spanning over a period of 50 years by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917-2008), his Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique, aimed at bringing the positive and beneficial side effects of meditation, namely, attaining physical and mental well being, became extremely popular in the west.
Mahesh Yogi, according to TM website, trained over 40,000 teachers, opened thousands of teaching centers, and founded hundreds of schools, colleges and universities in spreading the art of TM to more than 6 million people across the globe.
Is Meditation Really Easy?
In many recorded conversations of great spiritual masters and their disciplines, one most oft quoted question from aspirants has been why they are not able to concentrate their mind in meditation and why no perceptible success seems to be within reach within a reasonable period of time. If that is the state of affairs even amongst serious religious aspirants, it would quite be an obvious problem to practitioners of meditation for non-spiritual purpose.
Meditation and Physical Exercise
Doing meditation can be compared with doing physical exercise. What types of people discontinue doing physical exercise after starting it in all enthusiasm? Not surprisingly, those for whom physical exercise is highly essential are the ones who often discontinue doing it! On the other hand, the motivation of a basically healthy person to continue with regular exercise is always high. This is the anomaly in life.
The same anomaly exists in doing meditation too.
Why Do People Discontinue Meditation?
Techniques like TM focus on people who are highly stressed, who face lots of tension in life, people suffering from anxiety, depression, hyper tension, etc., and meditation is offered to them as a panacea for all their ailments. On the other hand, there are also people who do not have any extreme conditions, but are eager to practice meditation with an intent to enhance their overall physical and mental well being.
Meditation requires taking control of the mind by prescribed means like chanting the mantra, sitting in the right posture and doing pranayama and other techniques as instructed by the masters. And those who have ailments face tough resistance from their own minds and physique in attaining the controls so essential for successful meditation. Hinduism calls them “vasanas” – deeply inherent tendencies. The stronger the vasanas, the tougher is the fight to succeed in meditation.
If meditation aimed at attaining the lower goal of physical and mental wellbeing is akin to doing a minor incision to cure a lesion, meditation for gaining the higher goal of attaining spiritual enlightenment is comparable to a major surgery. Naturally, the hurdles involved in attaining success there are far too many.
What Yoga Sutra Says about Hurdles in Meditation
In the Saint Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra (an ancient Hindu scripture of aphorisms which explains “Ashtanga Yoga” –- the 8-step practice of Raja Yoga) states clearly what the obstacles are in attaining success in spiritual meditation. They are:
- Disease
- Doubt
- Lack of enthusiasm
- Lethargy
- Clinging to sense enjoyments
- False perceptions
- Non-attaining concentration
- Falling away from the state when obtained
Great Hindu spiritual masters know these hurdles and that’s why they have prescribed many preconditions for an aspirant to undertake meditation.
As for those who meditate for health benefits, the specific hurdles and ways to overcome them are elaborated in the following article.
