Over the past year, I’ve slowly begun to ease myself into the practice of meditation. Initially, it started with a few minutes before going to bed. In the past few months, this has expanded to include some time in the morning as well.
Discipline has been a long-standing sore point in my life – a sore point that many of you will be able to relate to, certainly. So, sticking to the practice of doing anything for a long period of time has never been a strong suit. Now that I think about it, brushing my teeth is probably the only activity that I’ve practised consistently in all this time – voluntary practice, i.e 😊
So, understandably, all it took was the slightest deviation from the expected for my practice of meditation to come to a standstill. Today, I had a lot of work. The next day, I was tired. A few days later, I received an unexpected phone call.
You get the gist.
The result was this: my concentration in meditation was extremely poor because I was just not allowing the mind to get used to the daily routine of sitting down to meditate. Instead, I would be filled with thoughts of how the day was going to go, how it had gone, the things I had meant to do that day that I hadn’t, my argument with a colleague, the new TV show I’d watched the night prior and so on.
In short, the mind was focusing on everything other than what it was meant to focus on.
The only way forward and out of this was to keep putting in the practice, to keep bringing my mind back to the object of meditation every time it wandered off. This was particularly challenging because I had chosen one of the hardest practices – concentrative meditation.
But, slowly and steadily, a daily practice was formed. Every time I deviated, I brought myself back – again and again and again – until the mind had gotten used to sitting down in meditation on a daily basis.
And then, I fell ill.
It wasn’t a major illness; my most prominent symptom was a lot of weakness. But it was enough for everything to come to a ringing halt.
I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed early in the morning anymore. So, my morning meditation routine was compromised. Of course, I could have sat down to it whenever I woke up. But to the gleeful, toddler-like mind that had received a reprieve from the boring act of meditation, it just wasn’t an option. If I wasn’t doing it in the allotted time slot, then I wasn’t to do it at all.
And because I wasn’t doing it in the mornings, I was just one short hop away from breaking my nightly meditation as well. Anyway, my morning routine was shot. Why bother with the night one then? So, I hopped. Happily.
It took me many days to even realize that I had fallen prey to deviation. I had deviated from the path of meditation at the first hurdle. The mind had cooked up such a realistic, convincing story about my being ill that everything in my world began revolving around it.
Yes, my body was feeling the truth of the story – it was considerably weaker than it had been, I had chills, a slight cold etc.
But.
If I had really wanted to, I could have still meditated – no matter what time I woke up.
Why didn’t I do it?
Well.
The mind still looks upon meditation as an act of doing. So, I am forever pondering how to do meditation the right way and at what time etc. It is only with enough time and correct practice that meditation can move from a boring act of doing to a beautiful state of being.
So, when the chance presented itself, the mind veered away from this boring act to far more visually stimulating and engaging activities like watching videos, singing and so on.
What is the remedy?
Bring the mind back even when it feels like the world is crashing down, which is exactly how I felt when I fell ill and my entire routine went out of whack. Some of you may face far bigger obstacles, like serious illness or the death of a loved one or financial instability.
But no matter what, this is still the simplest solution and in fact, the only one. No matter what obstacles present themselves, the only way to keep moving forward on the path of meditation is to keep bringing the mind back to the objective at hand. Even if it takes you days, like it did me, to understand that an obstacle has arisen, it’s okay; it may even take months, sometimes.
With every subsequent time, however, the distractions become lesser – we won’t view them as distractions anymore because our concentration is focused on the greater, bigger picture of liberation through meditation.
It is possible, very much so. If you are on the path too and despairing of ever getting it right, this story of a monk’s meditation practice just may put things in perspective – 15000+ hours over a period of 20 years!
The profound act of meditation has many layers; the more we surrender to it, the more is revealed.
All it takes is determined will.
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