A Post for Parents to Understand The Essence of Meditation

Compilation of Social Media Ramblings on the subject by Jayaram Rajaram

This is a post for parents to understand the essence of Meditation and Oneness in Diversity. While experiencing the wonders of meditation and yoga is ideal, understanding with clarity what India has to offer is important if we are to educate our children with these core values of oneness. This post is a compilation of my comments on an international mediation post on FB which led to an insightful discussion with people from world over ( The original post is here https://www.facebook.com/NewPerspectivesByShared/videos/vb.149439235544476/221682404986825/ ). I felt there is a lot that the world needs to know about what Bharath , one of the world’s oldest civilizations has to offer. While the world is embracing meditation and yoga, it is high time we Indian parents start taking advantage of these phenomenal tools and also help our children take advantage of them for immense lifelong benefits like heightened intuition, enhanced memory, clarity of thought, understanding core secularism through an experience and feeling of oneness etc.

So here goes:

Meditation comes from Sanatana Dharma, Yoga and Vedantam which is the core of the Advaitham philosophy and school of thought. This is a gift from India (Bharath) to the world. We believe in Ekam Sat Viprah Bahuda Vadanti which means there is only one Truth but the paths are many. We do not need to convert anyone to anything. We allow people to seek the truth and believe in Vasudaiva Kutumbam which means the world is our family and the same one God resides in every creature. Loka Samastha Sukino Bhavantu – Let all creatures be free and happy, let my thoughts and actions in this birth contribute to their freedom and happiness. Sanatana Dharma now called Hinduism is timeless and is not polytheistic as propagandists make it out to be. It is pluralistic and The one God we refer to as Brahman or Paramatman can manifest in any form the worshiper can relate to and love. We accept Ganesha, Allah, Jesus, Rama, Krishna , Shiva, Saraswati, Durga or any other God or name one wishes to give the one God as manifestation of the one Truth or God. We honour God realized souls or Gurus who can guide mere mortals to this one Truth. No dogma, purely individual and not against physical / modern science. Meditate and find balance for a peaceful world that promotes oneness in diversity and not sameness. We accept all religions as true without expecting any reciprocity , as expecting reciprocity is desire and unmet desire leads to anger which is futile and removes the benefits of meditation and yoga 🙂 So we believe man and woman move from truth to truth and hence nobody is wrong or nobody is to be condemned. Even polytheistic religions of the world or schools of thought or even atheists are not to be condemned (and are not condemned by Sanatana Dharma) and they too can benefit immensely from meditation and yoga as they are for all of humanity without any discrimination. In a nutshell meditation is for every human being!

When one meditates and enters the no-thought zone they slowly realize God or the source within. We call this nirguna bhakti. This means the source has no form as is also stated in Christianity and Islam. One could call this God consciousness , Christ Consciousness, Brahman consciousness etc. The essence is that any picture of Christ, the Kaaba stone or deities in Hinduism are aids for the spiritual child to achieve one pointedness of mind and to give a personality/attributes or association to easily focus and slowly move inwards to realize the formless source within. For this one has to eliminate the mind through practice. Not easy but a slow and steady process. The breath controls the nervous system and thoughts is what some schools of yoga talk about. We only have control over our breath. In essence if we master our breathing slowly over time we can get into deeper meditative states and manage life’s situations with a better sense of balance. Slowly we will realize that we are all ONE. The division is caused by ego or what is referred to as Maya. Love , oneness and mutual respect are the need of the hour. We mustn’t just tolerate one another, we have to respect each other and our paths from our very core.

Further, Christ, The Prophet, Rama , Krishna, Buddha, Guru Gobind Singh, Sidhas, Sapta Rishis, Jagad gurus have all walked this Earth at some point and are all God realized souls who have shown the way to millions and continue to inspire them. We have to learn from all of them without getting carried away by political versions of any religion that seeks control and blind belief without seeking, as that causes huge problems for everyone. In Sanatana Dharma we are very clear that nobody is superior or inferior- we are all one despite our bodily appearances and differences in approach to the One God.

If we read and introspect on teachings by Jagadgurus (Gurus who have experienced the Truth) or all realized souls from any religion or spiritual path we would never condemn any religion. In all cases it is unrealized /ignorant people who mess up the message and meaning handed over to them by realized souls, for control and dominance or out of sheer fear and ignorance. If we seek and practice our faith without the need to dominate and control others the world will be peaceful. While Sanatana Dharma is individual with no one person starting the religion and with thousands of scriptures and timeless Vedas discovered through meditation and penance by rishis, even founders of today’s organized religions were God realized souls who understood oneness. The issue of bigotry comes in when mere mortals and followers of any religion misinterpret texts without seeking and understanding things in perspective and context and apply it blindly to dominate others who they feel they are superior to when the message of their religion is equality and oneness. A percentage of people of all religions without exception are guilty of feeling superior to another and brainwashing others to believe so and there lies the problem. When we meditate I believe we have to keep telling ourselves that all people and all creatures are manifestations of the One God and parts of the whole or rather the whole in parts intrinsically interwoven and connected though invisibly. I pray and meditate for this perfect world everyday .

Meditation is a great way to understand that the jivatma (body and self identification) and paramatma (our source/ God what is within and keeps us alive) is one and the same. After knowing this, one must slowly reject the body as ”Not Me’ and dwell on the source.

Having said all that I have, I owe my very little (almost insignificant) understanding of the subject to all the mahaans who have walked this Punya Bhoomi called Bharath. We can all learn much more from the teachings of Adi Shankaracharya, Kanchi Paramacharya, Swami Vivekananda, Ramana Maharishi, Paramahamsa Yogananda and countless realized souls who have walked amongst mere mortals and left behind a wealth of knowledge that cannot be learnt in one lifetime . Best is to meditate and slowly tap into universal consciousness.

So, whatever your faith or religion is, walk into your place of worship, whether church, gurudwara, monastery, temple , mosque, synagogue etc and slowly ‘just be’. Enter the no thought zone, focus on your breath or start by just one pointedly focusing on the image of God of your faith (if any image or form exists/can be given ) without asking for anything or praying for anything- You can do this at home or in a park or even in office, on the plane, in a bus- just about anywhere! Trust and be mindful of the present moment and acknowledge any thoughts and then bring back focus to the No Thought Zone. Absolutely no need to pay anyone any money and no need to convert to any other faith or religion . Stay in the religion of your birth and understand with confidence that we are all one.

The more spiritual, inclusive knowledge is shared, the more peaceful our world will be is what I firmly believe. This is not my knowledge, it is knowledge from the timeless Vedas with no one source. It cannot and must not be attributed to any human being as rishis who meditated discovered the sound of the Vedas through austerities. It is ‘Aupurusasya’ meaning no man or woman wrote the Vedas- Their vibrations exist as part of the cosmos (what modern science probably calls the Big bang). Vibrations create and sustain life and every creature and object has a vibration. As humans we have the option to tune in to the right frequencies through meditation and yoga because what is inside us (the microcosm) is actually a replica of what is there in the Macrocosm (cosmos, space, multiple universes etc) is what the Vedas say

As a parent I pray that every child learns to meditate, so at least the next generations learn that we are all one and learn to live peacefully with mutual respect, warm-heartedness and compassion for everyone.