Wisdom from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Meditation is a journey from sound to silence

Monday, January 16, 2012

Meditation is a journey from sound to silence

3:14 PM |

Germany, 1 January 2012
It is so nice to be back in Berlin.

So today we are talking about meditation, right!
What is meditation? Why do we want meditation?
In order to go deep within ourselves, to understand ourselves or to learn anything about ourselves we need to be in a cordial and homely atmosphere. A formal atmosphere is not congenial.
Do you all feel at home? Why don’t you take just a moment to greet the person on either side of you and behind you.
Now tell me, how many of you think that meditation is concentration? No! You will be disappointed, meditation is not concentration. It is de-concentration.
To do any work, you need concentration but to relax and expand you don’t need concentration. Relaxation is the mother of concentration and so if you relax well, you are able to concentrate better. Isn’t that so?
Now how do we relax? That is what we will see this evening.
As I am speaking, do you notice what is happening in your mind? Just notice, your mind says, ‘yes’, or ‘no’. Do you see a dialogue happening within you? It is very important to notice this dialogue.
So there are simple principles that we need to understand about meditation. Before we go into that, let’s see what the benefits of meditation are.
How many of you would like to know the benefits of meditation?
The first benefit of mediation is it improves the bio-energy in our body; in our system.
Have you noticed, sometimes you meet someone and for no reason you don’t want to talk to them. Whereas with some other people whom you have not met so often, still you feel some sort of closeness with them and you feel comfortable. This is because of the positive energy.
Meditation creates positive and harmonious energy around us.
The second benefit is it improves health. There are number of researches on how meditation helps in hypertension, diabetes, heart problems, skin problems, nervous system problems and a number of other problems.
Third, meditation can help one to keep a pleasant mood. It is a big help in preventing many of the mental illness and physical illness.
Apart from the health benefits, meditation improves concentration. It helps one to be in the present moment. The mind vacillates between the past and the future. We are either angry about the past or anxious about the future, all the time. So meditation helps keep the mind from swinging between the past and the future to be more in the present.
Meditation is a journey from sound to silence, from movement to stillness. I would say that meditation is food for the soul.
Music is food for emotions; knowledge is food for the intellect, entertainment is food for the mind and meditation is the food for our soul or spirit.

So let us do a short meditation. Let’s nurture our emotions with music first and then we will learn a little more.
(A short meditation followed)
There are a number of meditations in CDs that I have made. In the beginning you can put on a CD and meditate. Later on you can do it by yourself. And some breathing techniques, pranayama and Sudarshan Kriya will all help you go deep in meditation.

Do you have any questions? I will take some questions.

Read more at What Sri Sri Said Today

Labels: Concentration, Meditation, Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya

Wisdom from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Meditation is a journey from sound to silence

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