What is meditation? And what are the benefits of meditation? Anyone who has the slightest inkling of meditation will know that there are many benefits. MANY! Simply sitting quietly and focusing on your breath has a relaxing effect, and I will not argue about whether or not this can be considered meditation. However, there are two types of meditation: focused and unfocused. Within these two categories lie all the different types of meditation techniques. Some forms of meditation are said to be relaxing, others exhilarating, and still others transcendental. Whichever form you attain through any specific technique, all meditation is transformational. It transforms your consciousness and you awareness. In this context, you need to understand consciousness so that you can achieve greater success with meditation.

 

But, "What is meditation?"

An state in which your consciousness is focused on something other than the mundane is meditation. You can practice meditation in any posture: sitting, standing, or lying down. You can do it any environment: noisy, busy, or quiet. And you can do it at any time: morning or evening; happy or sad, angry or loving, bored or excited… you get the idea. T'ai Chi is considered to be "meditation in motion" and the highest form of meditation in Tantra is when you meditating while in movement. Therefore, when you ask, "What is meditation?" the following three states must be experienced:

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3 Vital Steps

1. Be Aware: You need to be aware of your surroundings. This information doesn’t have to come from your wakeful consciousness alone – your autonomous nervous system will do most of the work. Your body will tell you how to make yourself comfortable, but you need to be in a posture that will not make you fall asleep.

2. Be Conscious: In the context of mediation, I want to draw a distinction between awareness and consciousness. While awareness is a living body’s interaction with its environment, consciousness is about being self-aware. Example: While eating one can say, “The mouth is chewing the food.” One is aware of the chewing. But in meditative consciousness, the statement would be: “‘I’ am eating, and ‘my’ mouth is chewing the food.” It’s important to be self-aware/conscious of what you are doing and deliberately connect your ‘self’ to the activity.

3. Be In Control: While unfocused meditation expects that you not control your thoughts, you still need to flit from focusing on your thoughts to not focusing on them. Example: A thought enters your mind, and you’re engaged with it. After a while, you need to be able to disengage from that thought and let it go. This is easier said than done! However, if you manage to practice Step 2 above, you will achieve Step 3 quite easily.

 

What are the Benefits of Meditation?

Relaxation is not the ultimate goal of meditation - it is only the superficial benefit. Most meditative practices focus on concentration and transcendence. It is also a misconception to think that this can occur only after years of practice. The benefits of meditation can be achieved with regular practice within a few months if not within a few weeks. It's important to practice the yoga asanas and pranayamas to prepare the body for meditation. Most importantly, to maintain the benefits of meditation, one has to continue the yoga asanas and even intensify them. 

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Tantra Meditation Techniques

Most basic forms of meditation ask you to focus on your breath. This is a great place to start, because it is the most fundamental physical activity that is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Yet we can exert some amount of control over it by breathing slowly/rapidly or deeply/superficially. This form of meditation is great for beginners, because you can engage in focused or unfocused meditation with this technique. In focused meditation, you can control your breathing; whereas, in unfocused meditation, you simply “observe” your breathing, thereby helping you to maintain that minimal control. Tantra meditation techniques are unique in the sense that they offer simple but powerful tips. One such example is to using the technique of "observation" in everyday tasks/emotions. Breathing is associated with every emotion or activity.

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Therefore, by becoming aware of how our breath changes with different emotions or observing the effect of different physical activities on our breath, we are actually performing an act of meditation.

 

Be aware of these simple steps and practice them, and you will be able to expand or contract your mind through meditation. You will become as big as a mountain or as small as a muon (an elementary particle that is similar to the electron but with much greater mass). You needn’t be skeptical! Our consciousness is not posited in any fixed part of our body nor is it bounded by an external limit. It is only our adult brain that imposes limitations on our consciousness. Through any kind of focused thought process (you may or may not call it meditation), your consciousness can descend into the infinitesimal or ascend to the infinite.

 

Too much?!

Consider the following situations:

1. Our suspension of disbelief when we watch a movie. How immersed are we? To what extent do we identify/become the main character/protagonist of the movie?!

2. Recently, a virtual reality software program recreated a woman’s dead child. The mother was obviously moved to tears reaching out and ‘touching’ the 3D version of her child. To what extent did the mother consider her child to be real?!

3. Research has shown that the parts of the brain that fire up during a dream (under MRI scanners) are the same that light up when we’re awake. How real are our dreams?!

 

Tantra has documented techniques in mediation to help us create (or recreate) experiences. It tells us how flexible our consciousness can be, how intangible reality is, and how we can exert our will and control over the universe.