Meditation is a state of choiceless awareness. It is a state of being. Meditation is doing nothing as opposed to doing something, anything. It is a state of total acceptance- of noise, of negativity, of bliss, or of anguish. A blissful path and the very destination of beatitude, Meditation itself is the journey of our consciousness towards the Self, of its realization. It is a state of total awareness. ‘Awareness’ is a term not very well understood. All that we do today is out of our unawareness because even though we think we know what is going on in our body through its movements, in our senses through the perceptions, and in our mind through thoughts; yet we are, usually, in absolute unawareness.
Meditation¬ – though it requires no action– leads us to an empty experience from which oozes out utter silence and bliss. Mind has nothing to do with meditation; meditation has to do with everything beyond the mind and beyond all that the mind creates, be it joy, sorrow, illusion, or acts full of false arrogance. Release from these clutches of the mind is meditation; being in the state of NO MIND is being in meditation.
The attainment of meditation requires no age limit and does not specify any geographical location of perfect silence on which to practice meditation. One can practice meditation techniques at any given time and place. The span of one sit-in of meditation practice can correspond to the age of the person practicing the technique. For example, a 25-year old person can sit down for meditation for 25 minutes at the least.
Swami Ananda Vinod Discourse on ‘What is Meditation’?
What is Not Meditation?
– Meditation is NOT concentration.
– Meditation is NOT hypnosis or autosuggestion.
– Meditation is NOT relaxation.
– Meditation is NOT thinking.
– Meditation is NOT thoughtful observation.
– Meditation is NOT rituality.
– Meditation is NOT a state of mind.