THE WAY OF ABHYASA

The word “meditation” is derived from the Latin root which means “to heal”.

We live in a world of allurements and entanglements. The sharp arrows of desire, craving, animal appetite, of passion and pride, of ignorance and anger, of hatred and greed, wound our souls, again and again. Our souls bear the scars of many wounds: they need to be healed. Silence is the great healer. We must take a dip every day in the waters of silence if we wish to be healed, cleansed, ennobled, and strengthened for the daily tasks of life.

While many regard meditation as a difficult art, in itself it is so simple. Meditation is directing our attention to eternal things and keeping it there for a while. Within every one of us is a realm of peace, power, perfection.

Through practice, we can, at will, enter this realm and contact God. When we do so, we become conscious of infinite power, a wondrous peace, and realize that everything is perfect and in its own place.

To know what meditation is, we need to go within ourselves and, in the words of Sadhu Vaswani, “sink deeper and deeper”. No one else can do that for us: we need to do it ourselves. We need to silence the clamour of our unruly minds. We need to strip ourselves of all pride and passion, selfishness, sensuality, and sluggishness of soul. We need to remove veil after veil until we reach the inmost depths and touch the Pure White Flame.

This first demands that we throw the dirt out of our mind. One is as one thinks, taught the great Rishis of ancient India. Therefore, take care of your thoughts.

‘The mind,” Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once said, “is like a clock that is constantly running down and must be wound up daily with good thoughts.” Fill the mind with noble thoughts. The minds of many, I am afraid, are full of unwholesome thoughts and wrong ideas. It is such thoughts that do not let us live a healthy, happy, and successful life.

Often, we pay scant attention to our thoughts. We say, “after all, it was but a thought.” But we must never forget that thoughts are things, thoughts are forces, thoughts are the building blocks of life. With thoughts we are building the edifice of our own life, building our own future. People blame their stars, their destiny. “Men heap together the mistakes of their lives,” said John Oliver Hobbes, “and create a monster they call destiny.” Destiny is not a matter of chance: it is a matter of choice.

We are building our own destiny, every day, with the