An important topic these days is meditation. Many people confuse meditation with yoga and any other rituals.
From the media, we have been taught that meditation is related to smells, body positions, and more. But we must know that none of these things mean meditation. Each of them are separate therapies and have nothing to do with meditation.
Meditation is about thinking, thinking about one’s actions while trying to find answers to questions such as: why did I do so and why not the other way around? Why was I afraid? Or why do I enjoy this more than that? and so on.
Because meditation was the path to mental and spiritual peace of the Buddha, Gandhi, and others, lot of people tried to follow their example in the hope of reaching that state of peace and continuous happiness.
Now, because the world has shown a high interest in meditation, meditation has been taken out of context and widely embraced by various industries to make a profit.
Buddha, for example, needed no special carpet, no smell, no special place, no special light to meditate on. He meditated under a tree, in a place where he could focus on his thoughts and not be interrupted from thinking.
So when you want to start meditating, get over all the TV commercials that make money from our hopes.
What is meditation about?
There are people who have tried to live through meditation, for example, Jiddu Krishnamurti. He said that meditation is about those moments when we are truly aware of what we are doing.
For example, if we have a problem, then meditation would mean thinking and being able to answer the next questions: why do we see this as a problem? Why do we feel upset or hurt by this problem? Is something a problem because it does not meet our expectations? etc.
So, meditation is about a series of questions in which we seek the answer in ourselves, in our minds, and in our actions.
In this process we must be open-minded, accept that some of the answers we find may not please us, especially the personal ego. However, if the meditation is carried to the end, it helps enormously, because analyzing the problem passes our anger, and finding the source of the problem helps to solve the problem and self-knowledge.