Dhyana Vahini - Post 20

Chapter VIII

 

One-pointed Attention is Essential for Meditation

 

It is not correct to say that the qualities and attainments needed for temporal progress and spiritual progress are different from each other. The spiritual is only the purification of the temporal. Success or failure in both depends on one-pointedness (ekagratha). For every item of work, one-pointedness is very important. This too is but spiritual discipline.

Avoid no-pointedness and many-pointedness

There are two paths along which this spiritual discipline may proceed: no-pointedness and many-pointedness. No-pointedness is the stage of sleep; it is also called the quality of ignorance (thamoguna). Many-pointedness is the result of the restless quality (rajoguna), turning the vision of the opened eye on creation and its sights. 

Avoiding both of these, without falling into these two extremes, if the eye is neither closed as in sleep nor opened wide as in the fully awakened stage, but half-opened and directed to the point of the nose, the pure quality (sathwaguna) will become one’s nature, and concentration of the mind can also be easily acquired.

Of course, this does not mean that mere fixing the sight on the tip of the nose is enough. Fix it there in the beginning and then turn the vision to the name and form you have in mind; that is meditation (dhyana).

When you are engaged in repetition of the name and meditation, other thoughts might enter you at first, but you shouldn’t worry about this. There is no great danger on account of them. When you begin remembering the name of God (nama-smarana), sit down with enthusiasm. If you enter upon any task with firm determination, no impurity can affect you. 

Your only concern is to see that you are fully pure when you start the repetition of the name, etc. Do not worry about formalities for this. Select the name that you like and the form of that name. That name is itself the mantra. That mantra is ever pure, ever active, everything.

Stick to one name and form

But do not change the name and form to suit the fancy and have one thing one day and another the next. Whatever the name and form that first gave you contentment, hold fast to them without swerving. They will get implanted in the heart, without fail. Afterward, everything will happen through His grace. If workers are ordered to dig the earth, their work is simply to go on digging. The gardener alone knows how much of the earth is to be put under which plant and how the earth is to be so put. So too, the order is to “Constantly dwell on the Lord’s name”! Provided you continue to do that work, He Himself will direct where and how that has to be utilised.

Introspection

In spiritual sadhana, the aspirant has to give his whole hearted, dedicated efforts without measuring his efforts, without expecting quick response from God for his efforts. 

One pointed devotion, implanting Lord’s name and form into one’s heart as Swami says, this cannot go hand in hand with expectations from Lord to yield to our prayers / devotion. 

As Swami has given the example of workers digging the earth and the gardener knowing the actual depth up to which the digging has to be done to get the desired results, in same manner, the duty / dharma of the spiritual aspirant is to put his whole hearted efforts without any “ifs” and “Buts”.

It is the Lord to reward for the intense sadhana, which is His grace.  Since we have stories of great spiritual masters who have crossed the ocean of Samsara with their purushartha, there need not be any doubt about the Lord rewarding a sincere sadhaka at all. In fact, He is ever waiting for such sincere sadhakas to whom He can give His hand at the penultimate stage in their spiritual evolution and take them to Prashanti, His abode of peace.

Love.