My experiments with meditation: Salvation through music

(part 4)

I reasoned that among our five senses, listening is the most unwieldy. You can block sight by closing eyes. You can block taste with an empty mouth. Maintaining an odour-free area is very easy and even if there is a smell, nose quickly adapts to it. Touching the sitting surface is inescapable. However touch is so commonplace that the feeling-of-touch almost never registers on consciousness unless you focus on it. That leaves out SOUND.

You cannot easily block out sound. The perfect earplugs are not generally available. "If you cannot beat them, join them". Hence I thought of a meditation technique where instead of blocking the sound, I choose to immerse myself in it. The sound will not be of ambient-noise which I cannot control. Instead it will be the music of my choice through the earphones. I chose evening-prayer-of-ramakrishna-order.

The meditation session will mean sitting with your favorite hymn/music/tune plugged to your ears. The idea is to focus on one aspect throughout one meditation session. Sometimes I focused on the beats of drum, sometimes on the words of the hymn, sometimes on the written words of the hymn which I imagined in my mind. However in a particular session, the focus will be on a single aspect. In case the thoughts wander around, it needs to be brought back to the drum-beat/sequence-of-words/sequence-of-lettering.

(To be continued)