Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 6)

This evening I plan to write rather extensively on the subject of dharana, which is a Sanskrit term used mainly in the philosophies of Ashtanga Yoga, meaning, "holding steady", or "to take hold of" in reference to the practice of deep meditation, though which the object meditated on is held in the mind with full, unwavering conciousness. So, I find myself at least attempting to meditate in this way quite often these days. I can definitely see myself doing it a lot more often in the future, too: In only eight days, I'll be forsaking Asheville once again, as I've done twice before during the last four years, to spend a few months living in Finland again with friends I have there. And because it takes a good eight hours to fly from any point in New York or New Jersey to Helsinki, you can be sure that I'll be spending a great deal of that time in some level of deep meditation, if only as a way to conquer the ceaseless boredom and restlessness that comes with long plane flights like that, sleeplessness, oncoming jetlag and the anxiety that will surely flood my heart as soon as I touch down in that other country.

If you happened to read my Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 1) post, you may already know that dharana is listed as being sixth of Patanjali's eight principles having to do with Ashtanga Yoga, which is mainly the kind of yoga I choose to explore when I'm home by myself or teaching one of my occassional "classes". The ancient yogins, male and female, from back in the day in India, state that dharana proceeds a pair of other, secondary terms that are meant to break down the theory of deep meditation so that more people can understand the complexity of the technique. While dharana stands for the object of meditation, dhyana is said to be the meditator himself. Samadhi is the name given to describe very act of meditation, in itself. The yogins of India said that to understand these three sacred words is to understand what deep meditation is. You might say that these three words are even like stepping stones, or stairs descending into a dark and mysterious basement...You go deeper and deeper into the deep form of meditation, so deep that in the end, it's said that even the concept of "self" dissolves, leaving only the meditative mind and memory. That sounds pretty freaky, now, doesn't it?

In the world of today, I really find that there are more things that I concentrate on, or else, need to concentrate on, than were there for me when I was a little girl living in Fairview. However, I don't mean to say that I never concentrated on anything at all when I was young. I think that one of the main reasons why my eyesight is so bad today is because of my habit of questioning the world around me in quite a different sense than most other children, and certainly most adults, do. When I was a kid, instead of just wondering why the sky was blue, I wanted to know what the air was made out of. And when I was four or five years old and found out that the air was, in fact, made up of myriads upon myriads of invisible, yet forceful things called "atoms", I then graduated to wondering what sight was made of. I would stand in the yard on an overcast day and squint into the gray horizon, taking notice of the fact that everything we see is actually made up of something not totally unlike pointalism, only far smaller and more refined. My parents always told me that my eyesight fell downhill so fast because I drew and read too much, or that I did it with my face held too close to the paper for too long. But really, I think they were both wrong, and that I'm so myopic now because I was studying the atoms of the air and their components too closely...

Mm, but I digress, and I seriously shouldn't be doing that, especially when I'm trying to discuss something as important to a highly meditative yogini like me as dharana. There are many methods of practicing dharana, ya'll, but one way that I particularly enjoy is through mantras. Whether they know it or not, nearly everybody has created a mantra at one point during the course of their lifetimes, which they've either lived up to or not. When I was a kid, one of the mantras I commonly used was "If you don't like what I'm cooking, get the hell out of my kitchen". That one was really directed towards self-defense, though, as a way to stay above those who constantly ridiculed me for my "weird" ideas and theories on the universe. To me, my mantra was telling the others that if they didn't like what I was saying or doing, then they should simply stay out of my life. But nowadays I'm acutely aware of just how childish that must sound, especially coming from someone like me. I've always labled myself as being very anti-social, but I'm really not. I love to have people around me. I love to have a lot of friends and friendly family members. As far as mantras go, there is one manta stemming from the holy Sanskrit language, which a lot of people are already aware of: OM. Upon hearing this mantra spoken or sung, you might get a mental image of an order of orange-clad Buddhist monks in their seemingly-eternal chant of "OM, OM". But what most people don't know is that the mantra of OM actually has four syllables and a thousand, or even a million, different meanings. I have a bright red tattoo of that symbol in the center of my left shoulder blade, to show what the all-encompassing mantra means to me, personally. But when I'm meditating, it's very rare that I choose to employ the sacred OM as my mantra. There are countless additional Sanskrit mantras out there to choose from, anyway, and when choosing a mantra to use for your own meditation, the declaration or prayer has to be something that you feel comfortable with doing. Also, you should know exactly what the Sanskrit words mean when translated into English, so that you can truly live up to the meaning of the holy words. OM is considered to be a bija mantra. Mantras are holy truthful words that are handed down through generations by religious seers, yogins, monks or nuns who had attained self-realization by chanting them. Mantras are words or syllables in Sanskrit which, when repeated in meditation, eventually cause you transcend into that coveted higher state of conciousness, which is called Nirvana, or enlightenment. Sound waves echo eternally as something known as "sound energy". Sound energies, like sound waves, have always existed in the universe. They cannot be created or destroyed, and are in the command of the great power to heal you physically or spiritually, which explains exactly why you usually feel so wonderfully happy when you hear one of your favorite songs played on the radio. This is one of my absolute favorite and most beloved mantras of all time, which you may recognize, or not:

Hare Krishna
Hare Krishna
Krishna, Krishna
Hare, Hare
Hare Rama
Hare Rama
Rama, Rama,
Hare, Hare.

Coming Soon: An essay on the concept of dhyana, or, once again, meditation. I can't wait to get on it, honestly, but at the moment I feel more than a little weak from the Master Cleanse that I've just begun. I'd like to talk about that later, I think, because what it's been doing to be entire body is rather interesting, to say the least. And besides, the drink, made of purified water, organic lemon juice, organic Grade-A maple syrup and Cayenne pepper, tastes great, like an unusually spicy sort of lemonade.