Meditation

Encounter with meditation #1. I caught an episode of the TV series Medium the other week that had the father-in-law of Allison DuBois paying her a visit and telling her that his son should go see a doctor. They showed a flashback of the father having a heart attack (and dying). Allison's husband Joe eventually goes to see a doctor who recommends that he does some meditation to help lower his blood pressure. Joe was skeptical about the whole meditation thing but decides to try it anyway. He takes his meditation guidebook and looks for a spot outside his office to meditate during his lunch break. While he was there, someone else arrives. It is the owner of the company Joe works for and the chosen spot just happens to be where his boss does HIS meditation during breaks. This unexpected meeting brings Joe to the attention of his big boss who later pays him a visit, shares his experience about the benefit of meditation, and invites Joe to an upcoming after office event. At the end of the episode, the father pays Allison another visit and admits that nothing is wrong with Joe but that it was his way of helping out his son.

Encounter with meditation #2. When I go to the library, I make a bee-line for light reading in the romance section. Having read most of the Nicholas Sparks and Cecelia Ahern books available in the library, I venture out and borrow books by other authors in the nearby bookshelves. Sometimes, if we arrive towards the end of the day, the returned books waiting to be shelved are stacked in the trolley and parked along the aisle. On two consecutive visits to the library, I found books written by the Dalai Lama on the trolley. I borrowed both of them.

The first one I read was How to See Yourself As You Really Are, while the second one (the one I have been reading on the bus to work), co-written by Laurens van den Muyzenberg is The Leader's Way. Both books mention meditation. The first book mentioned breathing three times through your left nostril, then three times through your right nostril, then three times through both nostrils. The second book has the co-write giving a layman's description of the same thing on pages 62 to 63.

Van den Muyzenberg writes:

Visualization exercises involve some more advanced control over the mind. This type of meditation asks you to imagine yourself changing into something else, and its purpose for non-Buddhists is to calm the mind. Here is just one example of how to go about it.

Imagine that you have three channels in your body. The central channels is a transparent tube about the width of your little finger, running straight down the center of your body from the crown of your head to the base of your spine. The right and the left channels are also transparent tubes but are narrower than the central channel. They run from your nostrils up to the crown of your head, where they curve down like an umbrella handle to run along the central channel, parallel with the spine to slightly below your navel, where they join the central channel.

Having visualized these three channels, first breathe in through your left nostril, imagining that the air is flowing into the crown of your head and continuing down the left channel to the left of your navel, where it switches to the right channel. Here, you breathe out through that channel, passing the crown of the head and flowing out past the right nostril. Repeat this three times. Next, do the same exercise starting with the air coming in through the right nostril and going out through the left nostril. Do this three times. Lastly, breathe in through both nostrils together, bringing the air past the crown and down through the right and left channels to the point where they join the central channel. When the air reaches the central channel, tighten your inner pelvis and hold your breath. As soon as you no longer feel comfortable, exhale naturally through your nostrils, but visualize that, instead of air going out, it dissolves inside the central channel. Do this three times.

On page 65, the Dalia Lama describes the Padme Hum. I found this part interesting because we often see people chanting while doing meditation. I figure this is the Padme Hum which apparently has deeper meaning than just a repetition of words.

This mantra is also often recited as a dedication when someone has died. When my mother passed away,my brother and I and many others recited Om Mani Padme Hum more than a hundred thousand times.

The meaning of Om Mani Padme Hum is very inspiring. OM, pronounced as AUM or OHM, means body, speech, and mind. When we use the sound OM, it signifies that we would like to develop a pure body, speech, and mind, such as those of Buddha. Purity, here, refers to the absence of negative thoughts and emotions and of bad (unwholesome) actions. The remaining syllables indicate how to make this transition and use objects as symbols. MANI, meaning jewel, relates to Right Conduct, taking the right action inspired by an altruistic intention. PADME means lotus. A lotus is perfectly white even though it grows out of mud. It presents an image of your mind that is impure (stained with mud) and can become pure (white lotus flower), so relating to Right View. HUM means "indivisible"; that is, Right View and Right Conduct must be combined.

Breathing exercises helped me immensely when I was going through Lamaze. I don't think I am ready to go down the road of serious meditation just yet but I do believe that there is benefit in doing so.