I have failed to sustain the meditation habit in past. It is interesting to note that I have restarted the practice each time I have quit. Sometimes there were gaps of multiple years. Till now, I cannot say that I have greatly benefitted from meditation.
Ironically, during times of turmoil, I felt that meditation is useless and discontinued. It is ironic as meditation is supposed to support one, precisely during the turbulent times. Somewhere deep inside(let me call it samskar), I do believe that the discontinuity happened because of my lack of practice and not because of some inherent flaw in meditation. Samskar tells me that if I am more regular with meditation, it will indeed support me during times of trouble. Hence I come back to it again and again. It is not all inner-voice and samskar though. There have been periodic articles in magazines extolling the virtues of meditation.
So here I am, back at meditation, possibly seventh time around.
PS: I have assumed samskar and gut-feel to mean the same thing.
(To be continued)
1 comment:
Bravo Sambaran,
Hope you find peace.
Just in the view of hopefully giving you a perspective ...
Example 1
Think of science or engineering. If we are put in front of a tiger or in the middle of a desert or any such hostile condition, it is unlikely that with our knowledge of science, we will do any better in saving ourselves from the immediate peril. But that wouldn't render the knowledge useless.
Example 2
Think of running. If you are a fast runner, it gives you very little edge over a fat person if you are being chased by a tiger. But, if you have been running for years, you will be in a fitter condition to deal with other extreme conditions like hunger, thirst, heat and cold.
Moments of despair, extreme anger, sorrow etc. are like tiger. They suddenly jump at us giving us no chance to prepare ourselves. I doubt the efficacy of meditation or anything to deal with such a situation. However, there are equally or even more difficult circumstances, which meditation may give us real strength to deal with: constant stress, competition, ambition, dissatisfaction, depression, etc. And by dealing more effectively with such conditions on a day-to-day basis we may actually significantly reduce the probability and frequency of the extreme conditions.
I feel, by testing the efficacy of a measure against the right kind of problems, we can develop our faith in it bit by bit.
What say? :)
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