The word meditation is derived from Old French (meditacioun) and in turn from a Latin Verb (meditari), meaning to ponder, to think, and to reflect or contemplate.
There are so many different kinds and methods of meditations. Here is short list of them:
Transcendental meditation, Zen meditation, Mantra mediation, Taoist meditation, Mindfulness meditation, Guided meditation, Sufi meditations, Yogic meditation, Metta meditation, Hindu meditation, Vipassana meditation, and so on.
Some of these are mentally focused, others are morally centered; some focus on self-awareness in quiet places, few of them focus on energy, others are centered on physical AND the mental connectivity; and few are fully focused on the spiritual or transcendental nature of man and the creative force beyond.
Regardless of which one you use, or may think it's best to use for you, one thing is for sure------and that is, it HAS TO do two things to be considered real meditation:
1) Propel you to think or contemplate about the internal and the external (whatever you think they are).
And
2) The thoughts and contemplations during meditation MUST produce real world effects both [within and without]. "Within", because maybe you truly feel less anxious and more calm and centered overall; and "without" because what you feel internally can fully be interpreted as such------externally [by others]. Yes, BY OTHERS! Why? Because I can be a delusional person, thinking I am feel more peaceful and centered every time I meditate, and yet other people that I encounter in my every day life may be experiencing anxiety and depression and bad change of mood whenever I interact with them. So what I feel during my so called meditation may all be in my own imagination, and unless our meditations have a real world effect externally, they are just a game we play with our own abilities to manipulate our own imaginations, and with it, our own feelings and emotions. Even if what you are feeling is real within yourself during the type of meditations you have selected to perform everyday, if they cannot be translated to the external feedback, it is of no use at all.
Yin cannot be without yang! Internal cannot be without external! 'Faith cannot be without works'. Light cannot exist without the existence and the knowledge of darkness.
Mystical savants hide themselves in caves, jungles, deserts, islands, and mountains for months and years, they sit quiet for many many hours every day, and subsist with little food and go through a lot of austerity. These acts of meditation and severe self-abnegation, unless they can result in solving not just individual chaos within, but also, the needs of the world at large, they remain inefficient.
Mediation in any of its forms is ultimately meant to create and enhance a sense of virtue and balance within oneself AND the world at large; and just like a book review that gets sent to other colleagues to be reviewed for accuracy of knowledge and authenticity, similarly our meditations and the feelings of peace, security, assurance, mindfulness, kindness, generosity, and so on ...... must also get checked and book-reviewed so to speak by the external world. This is simply to verify and make sure we are not deluding ourselves!
Unfortunately, for most people, meditation for them is just about them and how THEY feel. But that's half the work, the other half is closely watching its effects on the outside world and the people you meet and deal with everyday.
Mediation needs a major reform in whatever configurations it is practiced in my opinion. What do I mean by that? Well,......at the moment meditation is practiced at certain times of day for a certain duration and under very strict settings. For example, it is done in quiet places, or practiced with certain sounds and instruments and so on.
The problem is when you are done doing all the necessary procedures in your particular meditations, most people have realistic jobs and lives in which it's all noisy, stressful, foul, and ugly. The real life is far different than all the traditional procedures of meditation. You go to work, and you find out your boss has fired you, your spouse leaves you, your children are behind in their home-works and have been doing drugs; you get a phone call that your father has got in an accident and just died; you worry about corona virus and its uncertainties, you get a letter from the IRS, your niece or your friend commits suicide, .........I can go on and on. But that's real life. I hear and have seen many people practice different forms of meditation, but when real life hits them hard, they fold and lose it. They become disorganized and start to relying on hard liquor and fall off the wagon. It's like what happened to all those meditations, philosophies. inner peace and calmness! It's just gone and forgotten!!
I don't think there is anything wrong with sitting quietly and thinking deep as I myself do often, but in my estimation, real test of functional meditation consists of [constant study] of my internal reactions to [unexpected] external changes in real time. In this new context, ALL circumstances in real life become functional reflection and practical meditation! When I spar with my students I am meditating, when I get tailgated as I am driving my car and I am not having the best day, that's my time in meditation; when I straight blast someone in the street because I have no choice, that's my meditation; when I give some money to a person who appears to be a genuine homeless, and has pissed his pants in the booth he is sitting at in some pizza joint, looking exhausted from apparent hardships, that's my meditation time; when I do BJJ, that's my meditation time; when I write and teach that's my meditation time! In fact, all day long, in my normal everyday activities I am constantly in a state of meditation--------that is, I am constantly studying my weaknesses and strengths (reactions) in relationship with the real world events. This, to me is functional meditation. The reflection and the thinking processes in such meditation are all under real settings of a real stressful life and not some self-made, artificial, quiet, peaceful place. More importantly, my reactions to real stresses would naturally become what I call an "instantaneous meditational-observation" (IMO), no more time-consuming and no less reflexive than a boxer slipping a jab. ...................What I see and take note of, can then set the stage as an assessment gauge for my next time real life events in countering similar stresses, and now I have a real meditation laboratory that I can compare my emotions, my thoughts, and my innate and acquired instincts in real time!
All respect to other branches of meditation, but this is Shahram's meditation!
Good luck my friends! 👍🏼
