Meditation or Dhyana gives us an opportunity to be self-aware even in stressful situations. With the help of dhyana, you can observe your own feelings, emotions, thoughts, reactions, responses, sensations, the motives hidden behind your actions, and your expectations. You can realize how you subject yourself to suffering and anxiety in various situations. With the help of dhyana, you can learn to control your thoughts, cultivate discernment and respond to situations arising in your life with intelligence and thoughtful consideration. For this, you do not have to find a specific place and time to practice dhyana. With practice, you can learn to enter into a meditative state wherever you are and whenever you find time to relax.
The early Vedic hymns may not mention the word dhyana or dharana explicitly, but we have indications in the scriptures to believe that the Rigvedic seers were familiar with contemplative and meditative methods of self-enquiry. The Upanishads are not speculative works of human imagination, but revelatory scriptures envisioned by the Seers as they were exploring the riddles of human existence. Similarly the Vedic hymns, constituting the samhitas, were transmitted to them in deep meditative states. Apart from the Seers and Rishs, the Vedic texts mention many types of ascetics, the long haired ones, who appear to have practiced some kind of breath control, with elements of shamanism, mantra and tantra yoga, and had the ability to display some siddhis (perfectiosn) such as levitation. Vratyas were another group of ascetics, outside the pale of Vedic society, who seem to have been treated rather unfairly by the Vedic scholars and who practiced austerities and esoteric rituals, some of which found their way into Hinduism possibly through Shaivism.
Bum Bum Bhole ~ Boom Shankar!!
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