Dhyāna: The Importance of Meditation

Yoga and meditation have been a prominent influence in my life for as long as I can remember. When my sister and I were growing up together, my mother would take time out of our day to get us to meditate and do yoga with her. This would not come easy with little girls who loved to play pretend. The child that I was had more interest in faster movement, such as dance, but my mother’s words always stuck with me. I wasn’t the most obedient child. Nevertheless, I was much easier to handle than many kids, for my mother listens to my emotions while giving space to encourage discipline. Meditating was a way for me to clear my thoughts and create a sense of calm that was typically hard to find in a child experiencing life for the first time. Along with my mother, my interest in meditation took flight from growing up watching Avatar: The Last Airbender expedited my desire to understand meditation outside of daily practice. When my interest for yoga and meditation took hold, my mother took notice and enrolled me in martial arts courses so that I could practice more discipline and calm energy. My mind was an empty glass being filled with various new perspectives.

Growing up in a military town had me discover that my spiritual journey was not going to be supported within the environment, but rather from my mother who gave me the religious freedom to decide what to believe in rather than just baptizing me into her beliefs. Unlike most friends’ parents, my mother gave me the opportunity of free will in my spiritual journey. This opened my eyes to religions and spiritual practices beyond that of Christianity and brought me the open space to meet those whose cultures are what helped shape meditation and yoga as a whole. I was merely a child learning from those who knew before me. The connection and bond I had with my mother was evermore strengthened from the freedom she gave me to understand this.

Time went on, and I found myself no longer meditating upon attending college. Without my mother to remind me and with the various costly classes, I soon stopped these moments of mindfulness for the sake of not putting academic finances to waste. While I excelled in my studies, my mental health depleted. My emotions destabilized because I could no longer run away from them; the emotions came to extremities I was unfamiliar with. Today I find myself in an emotional drain from my day to day life; feelings swaying from one end to the other within the hustle of the city. My mind is always on the dollar and which bill is next, just like everyone else struggling in this materialist society. The brain is always alert but the consciousness is never present.

Understanding this now, I learn that it is imperative that I bring my healthy upbringing back into my daily life. The world around us is only becoming more demanding with less time available, and it is important that meditation assists in stopping this fast paced world from forgetting its own origins. With a pandemic here to stay, our need to prioritize our mental health could not be more urgent. With instant gratification being available to us with just the click of a button, our need to slow our perception of time is essential now more than ever. With a culture and an economy that now treats spiritual values like the next new-age trend, re-evaluating our understanding of what spirituality is and what it means for us should now be a priority.

My mother once spoke about how the world would be a lot better if meditation was implemented in public school education. History unfolding itself over time reinforces my agreement with her theory. Our relationship with our handheld devices has never been a healthy one, but the pandemic twisted the current dynamic into an uglier codependency not many predicted. I am one of many victims who can find themselves lost in the digital dimension. Time slips from minutes to hours; every completed task is met with two more things that need to be done. Dhyāna is the Sanskrit text that is translated as “meditation,” which means to withdraw from the typical daily senses to achieve elevated awareness and/or mindfulness. This, however, is simply an English translation, for the language and practice originates within older texts of Buddhism and Hindu Sanskrit to achieve yoga practice.

In Buddhist text, dhyāna is equated with concentration, leading to several forms of practicing this level of mindfulness. One could focus on the body or even a specific object, losing focus on surroundings while other practices involve focusing on all external surrounding energies. These several types of practices achieve mindfulness and encourage sitting down with oneself to follow the pace of the environment, which is a lot slower than the internet realm. Exposing oneself to the environment that brings them silence in this loud world will help that person focus into paying attention to the more important needs and questions that require answering. Why am I unhappy? What can I do to let myself find inner peace? No one’s purpose is servitude for another being, so only you can start to let your body experience joy by exposing yourself to the outside world instead of staying in the corner of the internet before the metaverse takes a grip onto humanity’s neck. The more we expose ourselves to the true pace of the environment we live in, the more we can loosen our demand for instant gratification from the world.

Some argue meditation dates earliest with Buddhism. However, Hinduism also contains several sacred texts on dhyāna as well. Both refer to dhyāna as part of yogic practice. Many argue with validity that the translation of Dhyāna as meditation in this sense simplifies the meaning of the text to only finding a sense of calm when in reality there are many components that lead spiritual leaders into the self transcendence many others have not reached. Far too often meditation finds itself appropriate with yoga into a eurocentric standard so that it's treated as yet another hobby that can be exploited. To prevent this, one must research and listen to the leaders who created this culture. I would even go as far as to recommend learning the language for understanding how the mother tongue affects how one perceives the practice in just about every other part of one’s daily living. Learning the original words will help you understand the complexity of the practice that English translation fails to encompass.

These days time flashes by with many looking for the next new fad to discuss. Everyone needs money now, everyone needs their Amazon prime order delivered today, everyone needs all of their favorite foods available to them at all times to serve asap, everyone needs their favorite musician to release their new album now. Human society possessed these traits for a long time, but the current industrial revolution has enhanced this pace to events and fads becoming old only within a matter of days. To accuse cellular devices to be the main cause for our present pain would be too simple, for it is we who made our codependency exist. The internet may have brought many negatives, but it also brought positive growth such as gaining the ability to connect with our loved ones from far away. Information for educating ourselves is available at all times, including texts of meditation. It is our responsibility to create a healthy relationship with the creations we make onto this Earth so that we can continue to progress without the cost of harming others and the planet itself.

And so the year begins, and I find myself starting over on what was my biggest passion as a child without realizing it then. I begin each day with simple 15 minute sessions with myself and will typically focus on the Muladhara chakra pool, keeping in mind my other new year goals related to my physical health. Some days I focus on the color orange and slowly lengthen the time I spend with myself. My intention by the end of the year is to meditate the same as I used to as a child, with the minimum of meditating one hour daily. Meditating in the morning before my chores often triggers thoughts of what my mother used to say. I would laugh to myself remembering how with a mother like mine, she can truly be almost always right.