Friday, January 13, 2012

Yoga or Meditation



Recently when I was having a casual talk with one of my friends, we somehow slipped into the topic of spirituality. She is more of a religious person who does all kinds of fasting, rituals etc. Now while we were discussing about the universal doubt “existence of God”, she spilled out a statement saying that yoga and meditation are two different things and according to her both are two different worlds altogether. This statement actually made me look deeper into the unexplored dimensions of our life and helped me understand the link between yoga and meditation to some extent.



Yoga in Sanskrit means, union or becoming one. So yoga is not about twisting your body or standing with your head down or doing all those unimaginable asanas. If you are sensible, you can notice in your life that for different states of our internal feel, you exhibit different external postures unconsciously. Have you noticed this? When we are happy, the way we talk, walk, sit, see etc is in a certain way and the same things we do in a totally different way when we are actually unhappy. Ancient yogis have capitalized on this link and they brought out a totally a new domain of science called as Yogic sciences for our well being. It goes this way that when you hold a certain posture, you can actually change the way you feel. So here we are becoming conscious about the way we do our external activities in order to attain a certain state of calm and peace within us. In yogic tradition it is believed that this yoga was first introduced to mankind by the Adi Yogi (Shiva) himself and he was the first person to show the way to people to attain their ultimate nature. So yoga comprises of everything we do in the name of sadhana for self-realization. What we call meditation or Dhyan is one of the limbs of yoga (Ashtanga yoga). So if you are in yoga, meditation or Dhyan has to happen. In addition there is nothing called as doing meditation, if you become aware about your inner nature you become meditative, that’s all. But now unfortunately meditation is being propagated in a totally different perspective which will subsequently destroy it with time. Meditation is not about becoming something; it is all about knowing that you are a no-thing.

Unless and until these things comes into your experience, yoga, meditation, soul, self etc are mere a group of alphabets or wordw and you will have your own set of ideas and concepts in your minds for these as you do it for all other things. Doing so will take you nowhere. These subjective aspects of life cannot be approached with total logic as you do with the survival aspects of life. Unless you  explore the deeper dimensions of life, you will lead a very superficial life as all other animal beings on this planet and the whole human life will go waste upon you. It is high time that we should move towards the path which will help us to know and experience life in it full depth and details.

So don’t get lost in this war of words and start your journey to know it yourself. Only then there is a possibility to live here as a complete human being, else you are one another animal among the countless on this planet.

5 comments:

  1. Ur connection with the Guru, is seen in your writing, nicely explained the link between yoga and meditation.

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  2. Thank you Rohini, I think you got the essence of the article.....that make me very happy :)

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  3. U know what, the pic that is seen in this article, u can c the dog doing the "Cat" :D :D lol!!

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  4. Rohini....it does better than me.....thatz why I did not post my pic.... :)

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