MEDITATION
When we meditate at the heart center, what does that feel like? Is the mind
actually focused in the heart area?
Previously I had meditation practice that would create more lights and
visualizations and different meditative symbols. Now it's more just an
awareness of a vastness like an openness or a cave.
Visualizations, lights, animals, appearance of a saint are not so important as
the peace that pervades the mind.
Do they use these words just to scare people into doing good actions or do
they have a symbolic meaning also?
The hell is given different categories. In the Puranas, they are mentioned that
if a person does this or that thing, they will go to this or that hell. Hell and
heaven in Yoga are not after death, but while we are living. A person in
miseries often cries out ”I am living in hell.” Hell is a notion that our mind
has created. Pain and miseries is hell; peace and happiness are heaven.
If one is meditating in order to bring some benefit to the Self, of the rajasic
type with self-interest involved, doesn't meditation help us overcome
selfishness?
Meditation always starts from rajasic state of mind called vikshipta, the
restless state of mind. The aim is to bring peace. The mind gets purified by
meditation. The samadhi state comes gradually. Otherwise everyone would
start by samadhi right away.
If the goal is to give up attachments, both material and ideological, doesn't
peace itself become a desire? How does it differ from other attachments and
desires?
Peace is the result of nonattachment.
It's said that 'If you want peace, my child, see no one's faults. Make the
world your own.'
Right, but how? As long as the mind is not sattvic, the mind will see
everything as colored by negativities. Only one's own idea feels right.
I understand a little bit about service and self-interest, but how can you plan
a building without interest in the outcome?
Without using the mind, nothing is done. The mind's nature is to plan
whether you are attached or not attached.
SN: There is a verse which says that the wise work with the same intensity
as one who is attached but they are not attached.
How do you know whether or not you are attached?
If we are unattached, our mind will be at peace in profit and loss.
© 1997 Sri Rama Publishing
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