This list does not mean that a practitioner can never enjoy his or life. On the contrary, life must be lived to the fullest. Nor must this list be taken literally. What it does mean though is that someone who is at the beginning stage of his journey should keep his life as simple as possible. This reduces the number of distractions. As it is, meditation isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Once you have reached a certain stage in your practice, these hurdles will cease to be obstacles on the path. They don’t distract or affect an adept any more than a jasmine bud would hurt an elephant.
Hurdles of Religion
Often I meet people who are reluctant to adopt good practices just because they belong to a different religion. This is one of the hardest hurdles to overcome. From the moment we are born, we are fed with religious information in one way or the other. We form our concepts around God, realization, the nature of this world, good or bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral based on what our religion tells us.
A good meditator puts his religious practices on hold during the intense practice of meditation. Most religions recommend certain actions to be pleasing to God or a ticket to heaven and they also label many acts as sins. Meditation is not one of them. It is not done to gain a place in heaven or to acquire any religious merit. The sole purpose is to wipe your mind clean of its inherent tendencies so you may write a new story. Anything that conditions the mind will eventually become a distraction in meditation. From that perspective, religion is but a hindrance for a serious meditator.
The following are the obstacles which dharma interposes: ablutions, worship of deities, observing the sacred days of the moon, fire sacrifice, hankering after vows and penances, fasts, religious observances, silence, the ascetic practices, contemplation and the object of contemplation, and alms- giving, world-wide fame, excavating and endowing of tanks, wells, ponds, convents and groves: sacrifices, vows of starvation, Chandrayana, and pilgrimages.55
Meditation in its purest sense has absolutely no connection with any religion. It does not insist in following any book, belief or God. As I wrote earlier, any thought (other than what you are meditating on), any emotion, any belief is simply a distraction. Sometimes, often in fact, our knowledge becomes a hurdle too.
Hurdles of Knowledge
Arjuna questioned Krishna on the battlefield saying that war was not the way to go and that it would result in bloodshed. Krishna, in reply, said:
yadātemoha-kalilaḿbuddhirvyatitariṣyati,
tadāgantāsinirvedaḿśrotavyasyaśrutasya ca.56
Your intelligence is lost in the forest of delusion, Arjuna. You’ve read too many books and heard too many sermons. Your knowledge is not your own. You will only realize the truth when you get past second-hand knowledge.
When we let our mind rest in its most natural state, the stream of primal consciousness flows unimpeded. Until then, all knowledge acquired from secondary sources remains a hurdle.
Now I shall describe, O Parvati, the obstacles which arise from knowledge. Sitting in the Gomukh posture and practising Dhauti (washing the intestines by Hatha Yoga). Knowledge of the distribution of the nadis (the vessels of the human body), learning of pratyahara (subjugation of the senses), trying to awaken the kundalini force, by moving quickly the belly (a process of Hatha Yoga), entering into the path of the senses, and knowledge of the action of the Nadis; these are the obstacles.57
This is a clever verse. I have personally known many seekers who link fitness of the body or asanas, postures, with direct realization. This is a grave mistake. How long you can hold your breath, how well you can bend your body, how clear is your nose – these may add to your physical fitness but have no direct relation to the insight that dawns from meditation. During my own journey, I never bothered with any of these. There was a short period of time when I practised postures to get rid of the pain but nothing beyond that. I simply meditated. Day and night, that’s all I did, meditation. Everything else, many yogic feats, simply followed on their own. It is important to be free of concepts and conceptualization. As a meditator you must rise above all definitions and beliefs passed down to you. Simply let the truth dawn on you in its purest form.
If you are committed to practice, everything becomes very simple. Sit down and build concentration on the object of your focus or contemplate with mindfulness. When you do that, you will run into obstacles, distractions, hindrances, hurdles. Gently bring your focus back to your object of meditation. This is the whole science of meditation, the rest is commentary.
Ekagrata – Concentration
If Arjuna, the great archer and warrior, from the times of Krishna, was one of the five Pandava brothers. His immediate younger brother, Bhima, was a ravenous eater, almost a gobbler. Once it was a new moon night, it was dead dark, and Bhima felt really hungry in the middle of the night. He sneaked into the kitchen, managed to find food and condiments and started eating. He had been doing this ever since he was a kid. On this particular night, however, Arjuna was awake and he followed Bhima to the kitchen. When he saw his brother eating in such pitch darkness with perfect ease, it startled him.
He had an insight, “If Bhima can find his way to the kitchen and food, and eat in this dark as if it were broad daylight,” he thought, “why can’t I do the same with archery?”
Arjuna started practicing at night with great focus and perseverance. Later, it was this skill, of being able to shoot in the dark that allowed him to win an important battle against a formidable opponent called Jayratha.
The term is ēkāgratā, single-mindedness, for concentration. If I split this word for better understanding, it is comprised of ēk, one, and agra, proceed. It means to proceed with oneness, with focus, with synchronicity, in a channelized fashion. Imagine a rope-walker, he is doing the act with utmost one-pointed concentration. A momentary lapse in his concentration can cost him dearly. Just before you enter into the meditative state, a certain uninterrupted stillness is required for a reasonable period. If you can learn to concentrate, meditation happens effortlessly. Yogic texts are replete with exercises on the art of concentration and in many, if not most, terms concentration and meditation have been interchanged freely. In simple words, as you must know by now, concentration is the practice of fixating your mind on one single object. You can do so on a form, on your
breath, on a sound or anything else that appeals to you.
Even if you practice mindful or any other form of contemplative meditation, you will still benefit immensely from the practice of concentration. It improves your memory and contributes to the overall wellbeing of the brain. Our brain, which is a muscle, gets a good workout from practicing concentration.
The most important point to remember here is that you must not engage in any intellectual examination while doing this exercise. Do not examine, appreciate, analyze or condemn your object of visualization. Just focus on the object and try your best to maintain your focus. Your mind is going to wander off every few seconds, bring it back. Do not hold long sessions of concentration initially. Instead, hold sharp, short, crisp and lucid sessions of no more than ten minutes each. You can gradually increase the duration. Sitting still for an hour while your mind is wandering off all the time will not bring results as quickly as you holding your posture and lucidity for ten minutes but practising rigorous concentration with utmost alertness.