From Dhaarana to Samadhi

Q: Why can't we straight away practice Meditation and skip Dhaarana?

A: To experience Samadhi, we need something more, it’s not just dhaarana or it’s not just dhyana. When we perfect our dhaarana, then there is a spontaneous experience of meditation. Because meditation we cannot do, if I say "I am meditating", it means I am not meditating!! May be conventionally you can say that, just to communicate the idea, but factually it is not so. Because one really cannot meditate, meditation has to happen. As long as the sense of "I" is there, "I am Meditating", the very element of "I AM" will nullify your meditation.

There is a beautiful episode of Swami Rama in the book "Living with Himalayan Masters". When he was very young in the gurukula in the Himalayan caves, he was given the practice of mediation, and he says in the book, there was a big row of students, all siting in the cave, one by one, and His Guru started walking around to find out how well his students are in meditation.

Jyothi Ma on Dhaarana

Then Swami Rama says in the book, I could feel, I could sense, I could hear my guru coming near, hear his walking steps etc., then all the time, I pretended to meditate. When my Guru came and asked “What are you doing?, then Swami Rama opened his eyes and said “I am meditating”.. for which his Guru Bengali Baba replied, "your very statement 'I am meditating', tells me that you are not meditating". Because all your indriyas are outward, when you can hear your guru coming, when you can smell your guru presence, when you can feel his presence, physically here, How can you say that you are meditating ?".

So if the meditation has to be perfected, it has to happen. How can you make it happening? How can you make your meditation to happen, and not you doing it ? There the Dhaarana comes into picture. So initially it is wise on our part to spend more and more time on dhaarana, and not worry too much about dhyana and not at all worry about Samadhi.

Samadhi is bound to come, meditation is bound to happen, provided you focus, you spend more time on your dhaarana. So it is dhaarana, when perfected, when you become the master of your dhaarana, then the other two results Dhyana & Samadhi, fruits of the destination, you are bound to get.

- Extract from the DVD 'Concept of Dhaarana'

Dhaarana - A Kite to fly

Dhaarana

If your dhaarana is perfected, it will be like a kite. How the kite is handled ? You allow the kite to fly very high in the sky, but you always have the control in your hand, the connectivity is the thread. Is it not a great kill to keep the kite flying all the time, but at the same time you being connected to it with the thread? All the time you are very skillfully handling your fingers and hands, your attention and your dhaarana is completely absorbed to the kite. It can be beautiful analogy to understand what dhaarana is all about.

So if you know how to handle this movement of thread to control the kite, then you have perfected your dhaarana, otherwise, it is an uncharted plane of existence, you really don’t know, where to go, how to go, how far you have gone, and the worst thing is, if you don’t know how to come back, then you are lost as well. So through dhaarana, you are going to create a beautiful path which becomes very familiar to you, so that everyday you start your journey, reach the center of your consciousness and at the same time you are not afraid of it because you yourself have created the path and you also know how to come back. Otherwise we would be become the case of Abhimanyu in Mahabharata. Our dhaarana should not become like a chakravyuha.

So your dhaarana teaches you how to move confidently, step by step in a very scientific way, understanding what it is all about, experiencing your own center of consciousness, experience how is the self can recognize consciousness, stay there, enjoy the flight, and then come back, with a successful landing.

Dhaarana - a path to succeed in Meditation (Dhyana)

Dhaarana - A path to succeed in Meditation

What is Dhaarana? Dhaarana is a power of the mind to hold on to something singularly, to the exclusive of everything in a state of complete absorption

In dhaarana practice, a word of caution is that, when you want to travel in the path of Dhyana (meditation), which is the next step of Ashtangayoga, i.e. Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama , Pratyaghara, Dhaarana, Dhyana and Samadhi, you are two steps away from Samadhi. So when you are practicing dhaarana, your journey is a uncharted plane of existence. There is no defined highway to give you the milestones to tell you that you have covered 10 kms., 15 kms., or there are no hand-post to say that this path, this road is going to lead you to this place etc. So dhaarana is a very important aspect of your sadhana if you want to succeed in your meditation. You need to prepare yourself perfectly tuned in dhaarana to spontaneously dive into Samadhi.

Summer Camp 2013 - Series 2

Pranams to all the readers. While we are contemplating on the "Shiva Shaktya Yuktho" that Guruji was talking about on the first day of the Summer Camp at Sadhana Dhama, let us today dwell upon Jyothi Ma's intro session.

Jyothi Ma has chosen a very interesting and dynamic topic - "Dhaarana" as taught in Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra text for this year Summer Camp. Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is a classical tantric text, which offers 112 varieties of dhaaranas or techniques of concentration, a subject most relevant to modern times, which also can easily be blended into personal life style. These dhaaranas, interestingly enough, can be practiced even by a beginner, aspiring for qualitative concentration and gradually deepen one’s meditation.

What is Dhaarana? Dhaarana is a power of the mind to hold on to something singularly, to the exclusive of everything in a state of complete absorption

Jyothi Ma's in her session, first took the blessings from the Guru Paramapara to make her self and the channel to receive the divine knowledge and trend the path of self enlightenment . She then welcomed all the aspirants to her session on Dhaarana. She shared her sincere intention to give us lot of practice sessions along with little theoretical background. She stressed that, without theoretical background, whatever one try to learn as practice is going to be without proper foundation. The 'why' and the 'how' and 'what' of what we are doing, doesn't get the answer which would then become a blind approach.

Following is the brief synopsis of what Ma spoke on her first sesssion which itself is a wonderful reference for each aspirant in the path of Sadhana to read, contemplate and practice. She explains beautifully, what Dhaarana is, why one need Dharana and how to practice Dhaarana.

Strength of Sankalpa:

Actually it is not how much we learn or how long I speak or how much I teach, the important factor is it has to be the qualitative learning. Those who are very eager to learn sometimes, they feel they are given very less time in the camp as there is so much of thirst to get everything in one swallow / one gulp. And there are some who come to the camp, with the casual approach without any real intention with no Sankalpa in attending the camp. In both the cases, probably they don’t really get much.

When there is so much of thirst to get more and more, a person's dhaarana will be on the thirst and not on the knowledge and When one doesn't have the sankalpa with precise orientation, then the mind cannot maintain the dhaarana of receiving. Then also the listener is the loser. The recipient gets less because the absorption becomes very weak. So it is very important to know first these obstacles in the concept of Dhaarana.

What should be one's approach to practice Dhaarana?

Jyothi Ma then shared one interesting conversation that transpired with her Guru "Shri Srividya swaguru Sri Satyanandanatha of  Sri Vidyaranya Tradition" wherein He in the course of some discussion had made one striking point that, “I have been teaching this Srividya to many many disciplines, the group is growing very big and there are disciplines who are much much senior who might teach so much about srividya. However if a disciple has a conventional mind, then the very convention of the mind becomes an obstacle, an impediment in the process of receiving the knowledge".

Mind's conventional approach - Block in the path of Sadhana

Many of us, have this conventional mind because, it is the nature of the mind to  hold on to one convention or the other. Precisely because, mind cannot stay comfortable without a support. It needs a support.  Convention is a very easy support for the mind to stay and then nourish and then enjoy those conventions. It can be understood through one's habit patterns, it can be as simple as drinking coffee everyday, to a complicated process of doing puja, rituals and all your's spiritual practices. So called, the greatest spiritual practice can also turn into a convention and the mind becomes habituated to that convention, a pattern of living, a pattern of feeling, a pattern of one's own very existence.

Jyothi Ma then emphasized that:

Coming to camp like this annually, can become a convention too. Without any orientation, without any purpose one may attend this camp because he/she needs a change. So your reception gets limited to that convention. See the beauty of this concept of convention. It is very sad that the very convention blocks even a senior disciple's in the path of spiritual sadhana. So the guru tries very hard in different ways to break those conventions created by Himself in the disciple. But some are hardcore disciples and they never want to change. 

In their initial acquaintances with their Guru, these hardcore disciples formulate certain ideas, concepts and conventions as far as his/her sadhana, their relationship with the Guru and all the spiritual knowledge is concerned. Once it gets crystallized, it is finished, one can't go beyond that. These are the difficulties you find in your path of sadhana. 

So a sadhaka has to be very very open minded, and follow the 'Neti' principle, neti in samskrata means not this...,not this.... Keep yourself open like the open space but be sincere to what you are doing. Don’t you ever become a hardcore disciple in the process of doing your sadhana because you never know when you are going to reach your destination. 

For e.g. if you don’t know if your destination is Bangalore, you may get down in any point of the station, thinking that station itself is Bangalore. Is it not? In same way, in spiritual path you really don’t know the destination, only when you have reached the destination, you would know. But until such time, you really have to guard yourself against this hard core discipleship. Otherwise, what happens is, this conventions of disciplines, conventions of sadhana, will make the conventional mind to think, "oh whatever I am doing is perfectly fine, I am the most dedicated disciple, I am the most diligent practitioner...etc.", these are all the aspects of this spiritual ego.

You are bound to get wonderful experiences in the path of your sadhana and those experiences should never become your destination and you should not think that you have reached the goal. This is the toughest part in the path of sadhana. Therefore when I am talking about dhaarana’s also, I want you to keep your mind very open and not get struck with these conventions. Even the greatest of the puja’s, the greatest of the yantra’s i.e. 'Srichakra', that itself can become a stumbling block if I don't know how to open out myself to all the nuances and the beautiful energy dynamics that the Sri yantra or the Srividya practice can offer.

Dive with open arms

Even if I go to the vast sea, the ocean, and if I only carry a small cup, then who is at fault? The ocean is not at fault, the problem is with me, because I decided to carry a small cup. So I would only get a small amount of water. But here is the ocean with open arms to give you everything, if you are ready to dive deep into the ocean then you get the precious stones. But if I don’t want to touch even the water with my hand at the seashore, carefully I would take the cup and then just take the water in the cup and go away. So the problem is with the conventional mind. So when you do the practices of the dhaarana, please see if you can maintain an unconventional mind, not getting struck with any of the experiences, any of the methodology that I am going to give you, but keep flying high without any hesitations reservations and be ready, prepared to come down to the reality when it is needed.

It may not make any sense to you now, because we are yet to begin the practice, but keep this word of caution in your mind. Keep examining and exploring, if your mind is a conventional mind or not. This would help you not only in your sadhana, but in all walks of life. Otherwise your own mind can deceive you with your spiritual practices. 

(to be contd..)

Friends, let us dwell upon on the profound message of Jyothi Ma on Dhaarana before we move further into other wonderful dynamics of Love & Family Life and Dhaarana.

Till we meet next time, Happy Sadhana & Vande Guru Paramparam...

- 'Bansuri'
(a messenger)