Everybody has some or many opinions to manage our own wellbeing. One of them being meditation. There are so many schools of meditation and so many tutorials. In my 55 years of life, I have struggled with it and like everything else felt something is wrong with me or the way I am doing.
Now I know … meditation is also a journey … and “one size fits all” doesn’t work. Classical meditation of sitting with eyes closed in silence, focusing on one thing, puts me to a nice slumber . That too is meditation, it calms you and sleep creeps in.
Silence I have come to know is not an absence of noise …. But as the statistician in me would say, Silence is state of being inspite of the noise. Just like there cannot be an absence of light.
In other words, expecting absence itself is a myth. Life continues to happen in and around us, so there is a constant presence of activities, outcomes, stress, noise, thoughts, reactions . But how you choose to step aside is precisely that, your choice. That has brought me silence.
Mornings when I am at the vegetable cart, there are so many people talking, chiding, sharing around the cart. There are some who seem to be in a perennial hurry and wants their stuff first. I am there, as clear and present to be noticed, but I no longer get drawn to these noises, I choose not to get affected by it. Last 3 years I tried to tell myself not to get affected by the traffic and other folks on the Indian roads while driving. Today, I notice them from a defensive driving perspective, but not get sucked in when someone cuts me off rudely. It has not only brought peace, but also made my tasks enjoyable.
Is this Meditation? Did it serve the purpose of finding peace? Did it improve my performance as they tout to corporates?
This Durga Puja, I enjoyed to the core as I have never done before. I was in midst of so many and yet I found my silence. I made choice and it gave me that warm fuzzy space of silence and focus. I was out with some of the Rainbow Room folks to different puja pandals, but my singular focus was on what it meant to the folks made me enjoy the madness. I noticed at my community puja, when everyone was jostling for the Pushpanjali and the bel -pata, or the prasad, I was sitting there watching Ma Durga’s face … and a beautiful silence wrapped me in its arms.
To learn to stay in the present and to chaff out what is actually the purpose of the moment, allows silence to work its magic on you.
Try it … tune into silence .
Meandering Dialogues 