Mindful on a Monday

I make it a point every Sunday night to have a moment of solitude back in my hotel room. It is an opportunity to reflect back on events of the past week before starting another. I realise how important it is to quiet the mind even for 10 minutes - it allows the mind to reset itself, to find its balance again and to allow residual thoughts to subside.

During his lifetime, Mahatma Gandhi had a practice of designating one day of the week as a day of silence where he would completely abstain from speaking and would only communicate through handwritten notes. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth is especially revealing about his many dietary practices and the austere discipline that he imposed on himself. For example, he would only eat vegetarian food that does not require any cooking such as nuts and salads, and he would limit his personal possessions to only five items whenever he is travelling. I read a greater part of that book early last year while I was staying at the Aston serviced apartments in Jakarta, lazing and sunning myself beside the swimming pool. It made me feel a little bit bad about my own bourgeois lifestyle then.

One of my favourite Indian gurus, Swami Vivekananda likened the mind to a lake and thoughts to ripples on its surface. When the mind is at peace, the ripples dissipate and one can see right through to its bottom. Imagine one's soul like a shining jewel at the bottom of the lake. With a mind calmed, we allow the true essence of our soul to shine forth by quelling and preventing the ripples of thoughts that obscure this inner light.

We may think that we have peace of mind when we are resting at home, watching TV, or sleeping. These activities perhaps would take our mind away from more stressful things but they do not necessarily make the mind ripple-free. At home, we are constantly engaged in conversations which brings out a whole gamut of emotional responses in our heads. Watching TV is mostly a form of escapism where we choose to react to stimulus from another world instead. Though we might claim that we are getting entertained or informed, our minds are constantly reacting and responding emotionally to the random chatter from the idiot box. Even during sleep, the mind is full of activity, as I've mentioned in an earlier blog entry on REM sleep.

How then can the mind achieve total and complete silence? Only through meditation and prayer. Hindus, Yogis, Buddhists, Sufis and Christian mystics all meditate because it is the key to spiritual realization. The Godhead resides deep in our souls, ready to blossom like a lotus, if only we could quell the waves and storms that rage through our mundane minds.

In meditation, the mind grasps a singular thought or object of contemplation and eliminates all extraneous thoughts, allowing the mind to be focussed like a laser beam to penetrate the inner layers of the soul. Prayer in contrast is an inside-out means of achieving spiritual peace. Instead of using our minds, we tune our hearts towards God and allow our complete being to be spiritually aligned; eliminating all discordant thoughts through the sheer power of our inner conviction. We pray with our hearts and meditate with our minds. Both are paths to spiritual enlightenment.

Monday is here and the madness of the week has begun. The waves are starting to build up and if we do not know how to control them, we might end up being trapped in the middle of a raging storm. We need to know how to manage our thoughts and our minds. We need to be mindful before our minds get really full.