The Practice of Meditation

There is not in this advice to meditate the assumption that the aspirant, is aiming at great things. The trouble with us D that we do not know anything well, or well enough, or we are far from knowing it as it is. What do we know, fop example, of strength, or love, or courage, or the wing of a butterfly? The crudity of the- average mind is almost incredible. 'Meditate on the strength of the elephant,' says the yogi, and then you will get a better conception of strength not a definition of strength, but an experience of strength in the mind. All things have qualities. To see those qualities well is to have them in the mind. The relaxedness and the alertness of the cat can be ours not by mental formulation and definition, but by contemplation. All thing are qualities, and we can be one with a group of those, in one act of direct perception.

The Practice of Meditation. The teacher of concentration often tells his students simply to go on trying to keep the attention upon one thing, and bring it back whenever it wanders, until at last it obeys, like a 'broken-in' horse, and concentration then becomes a habit. This is not the best way; it lacks psychological subtlety.

Let it be noticed, first of all, that the mind has a habit of drifting picture follows picture on a line of least resistance, or a line of habit, and this is mostly habit of the emotions, of desires and aversions born of past pleasures and pains. Thus if one says 'cow', the succession of so called thoughts may be 'milk baby cot furniture store Stenton 's San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge  iron-foundry  fire forest fire fleeing animals  running  Olympic games' and so on, over the hills and far away.

The second thing to notice is that we have the power to stop this flow, and often do so. For example, in the saner Riven, we might stop at the bridge and begin to go over the picture of the bridge. We might even start wondering about its material, its design, and indeed many things. The exercise of this power is concentration.

In concentration the same picture is attended to in successive moments. Some people ensure this by the repetition of a word. But when the power of concentration is established there should be no need of such repetition It should be enough that you have decided to attend to the idea of the bridge. Further, such attention may be actual. Disregarding for the time being all the rest of the scenery, you may decide to look al the bridge more carefully than before. From this comes the term concentration. You are bringing your diffused attention to a focus on a comparatively-small thing. Then, of course, you will see it better than ever you did before. All the same, actual visualization in meditation is not necessary; people differ very much in this respect, and it is not important.