Meditation – What and Why?
By Rajan Narayanan
The root word ‘med’ is the same from media, medium, medicine, mediation, etc. The root word connotes ‘connection’ or ‘in-between.’ Meditation is the popular English word used to describe Dhyaana the seventh part of Asthaanga Yoga. Dhyaana refers to the journey of the ‘Dhee.’ While popularly people state ‘Dhee’ to mean mind, it is not the mind. Monks and Vedaantins have used the term ‘Intellect.’ But that too is vague and misleading. Dhee refers to ‘Intuitive Awareness’ – clearly the vaguest term of all, but less likely to mislead.
When the mind stills, and in that stillness one begins a journey of trying to communion with the Ultimate Self, and all this happens in an intuitive and effortless way, that is Meditation.
The highest fruit of Meditation is the Realization of the Self. But every step on the way is improvement in physical, mental and spiritual living. One keeps better health. One has a sense of peace and happiness that seems unshakable even during the most trying of times. And one develops spiritually in the communion with the Self.
How exactly does better physical and mental living take place? This is probably the most meaningful question for most people (since spirituality that is not from a bottle is not real to most people). This is, in fact, very well known. Medical doctors and healthcare professionals constantly talk about taking time for an exercise regimen, a work-out, and relaxation techniques, one of which includes a glass of wine – the spirit of the wine is about as close as the medical profession can come to understanding spirituality. Companies provide gyms and fitness centers or subsidies for attending such facilities since they have shown improvement in employee health and health insurance costs. Clearly these help to reduce stress in the body and allow for better physical and mental health.
The Biology based Medical Science knows the correlation, but does not know the underlying model, the causality, that makes it possible. The Spirituality based Yogic Science knows the underlying model and causality. And for every simplistic model it presents, to explain the assumptions of the model, a higher level of model is explained until one arrives at the source of creation and the rationale for creation. (And that fountainhead goes beyond explaining just physical and mental health, but in fact explains everything that happens in the world . . . all of existence. Most religious perspectives make a leap of faith, but the Raja Yoga approach (or simply the Yoga approach) explores the link step by step in a systematic fashion MORE
Quiz on Gandhiji
WAKE-UP CALL FROM THE NORTH-EAST
By B.Raman
| Twenty-six persons were killed and over a hundred injured
by two explosions in Dimapur, the only railway station in Nagaland
in India's North-East, on October 2, 2004, the birth anniversary
of Mahatma Gandhi. The same day, in a series of co-ordinated attacks
in different places in Assam, also in the North-East, involving
the use of hand-held weapons, hand-granades and explosives,19
persons were killed.
An intriguing question is why were the strikes organised on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. To achieve a greater impact, insurgent and terrorist organisations often time their violent acts to coincide with important anniversaries of symbolic significance such as the Indian Independence Day, the Republic Day, the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh by a Hindu mob in December, 1992 etc. The Bodos are a major tribe from the plains of Assam, who have been in a state of ferment since 1967 due to feelings of discrimination against them by the majority Assamese. This ferment, particularly amongst the Bodo youth, led to the formation of two militant organisations. One called the Bodo Security Force (BSF) led by one Ranjan Daimari came to notice in 1989. It was subsequently re-baptised as the NDFB. The second, founded by Prem Singh Brahma, is called the Bodo Liberation Tigers Force (BLTF). |
While the NDFB advocates an independent Bodoland, the BLTF wants a separate State of Bodoland within the Indian Union. Since 1956, the North-East has been a major cauldron of insurgency/terrorism due to feelings of ethnic separatism among its inhabitants. The area provides all that terrorists/insurgents need for keeping alive their movement--- sanctuaries in Bhutan, Myanmar, the pre-1971 East Pakistan and the post-1971 Bangladesh; facilities for across the border training and procurement of arms and ammunition; State-sponsorship from the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh; a regular flow of funds from the smugglers of narcotics from the Golden Triangle; and an ineffective administration in North Myanmar. The North-East needs the urgent attention of our policy-makers and national security managers. Unfortunately, this has not been forthcoming. There is an active volcano over there. It is waiting to explode."MORE.
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