Meditation Practices
How to Begin with Meditations
Those who are new to meditation sometimes wonder how the physical aspects like eating, drinking and exercise are connected to meditation, because that is what we do in the first course. At first
glance, there is indeed no apparent connection but those who are into serious meditation know very well that the physical world and the spiritual world are the two sides of the same coin. You cannot have peace of mind and stress-free life unless your physical life is healthy, happy and harmonious.
Our body is the medium to experience meditations
That is why we take care of the bodily functions before embarking upon the meditation path.
We have to be conscious of three aspects here. The first thing is that serious meditation involves sitting for a long period of time. A person who has some physical ailment cannot ever dream of putting the body to such a torture if there is any kind of physical ailment. Just imagine that someone is having a back pain. How can he be expected to fulfil the requirement of sitting in one position for a long time?
Secondly, our body is the medium through which all wonderful metaphysical experiences have to be enjoyed. Whether it is the thoughtless state or whether it is peace and bliss, all these coveted
states are to be felt by our body. If there is any kind of toxic material in the body, we will be unable to enjoy those wonderful sensations. It is always better to clean up the whole system right at the beginning.
Thirdly, what happens is that in the present world most people do not do meditation as a means of connecting with God. The basic purpose of theirs is to lead a stress-free life. Unfortunately, most of the stress is due to physical causes. For example, if someone has got a liver complication, he is bound to be angry or sad. Same is true of thyroid problem also. In fact, every disease would lead you agitated. If we try to cure these diseases by meditation, it is like buying a plane and running it on a road. The physical tensions and negativities should be removed at the very outset by changing your food habits and lifestyles so that when you graduate to meditation proper, you can experience something far higher. It is a pity that they do not do so in the beginning, and two aberrations arise:
Because their body is not in the right shape, they either don’t get to experience anything, disillusioned and they say all the things like meditation are absolutely bogus. The fact of the matter is that they didn’t get any benefits because they didn’t condition their body.
The other distortion is that by some hard efforts, they sometimes do get some benefits. But those are not even 1 percent of what they could have received if they had taken right care of the body.
That is why in our school we first take care of physical aspects of the body and only then graduate to the higher aspects or emotional aspects.
This is not peculiar to our school. Our Scriptures have always maintained that:
Jaisa Ann, waisa Tan, waisa Man.
That means if we want our mind to be peaceful and stable, we have to make sure our food is right and our body is right.
Even in the Western Science, we have been always reading in our school: “Healthy mind in a healthy body.” So, if we want to have a healthy mind, we need to have a healthy body also. We should be very clear that our mind is given energy and nurtured by the very food that we eat, since it has no independent source of providing energy to it.
The kind of energy that we get from our food has a tremendous impact on our mind also. So, this connection between the food and the mood should be recognized and put to good use by following all the simple rules of holistic living. The benefits are twofold:
One, your bodily aches, pains, diseases and obesity etc. are taken care of. Two, you qualify for the wonderful world of meditation. It is a win-win situation.