Vedanta Society, Boston

Meditation is challenging enough for beginners, but it also has challenges for those who are not beginners. Other than wrestling with the mind and trying to bring some order to the chaos in our heads, a major challenge is to maintain the meditative awareness after the meditation is over. Even when a measure of calmness and clarity is achieved while meditating, it evaporates quickly once the grind of daily chores begins. What should I do when the petty ego effortlessly wiggles its way in after I leave my meditation seat?

A few minutes of meditation in the morning and in the evening are clearly not powerful enough to neutralize the messiness of life during my non-meditation hours. Old ways of thinking and reacting, perfected through countless lives, cannot simply be wished away so easily. To meditate daily is a good habit and there is no doubt that it helps. But if meditation has to become life-transforming, then something more needs to be done.

One thing we can do is to practice dotting.

Remember the dotted outlines of pictures that children use to connect the dots and experience the joy of drawing? Without the dots, it would be nearly impossible for them to draw a good picture. We need the dots until we learn to draw without their help. It is possible to see our morning and evening meditations as two dots on the spiritual canvas of a single day. It is difficult to draw a picture with just two dots. We need more—even if they are mini dots, not as big and prominent as our “sitting meditation” dots.

How do we make dots? It’s quite simple really. Every opportunity we find to remember God can be converted into a dot. The very first dot of the day can be the moment I wake up. If I use the first moment when I wake up in the morning to mentally repeat my mantra or to take a look at a holy image or symbol next to my bed, that would be a day well begun. The last dot of the day can be before I fall asleep. If I look at the holy image or symbol before switching off the light and keep repeating the mantra until sleep takes over, it would be a good end to the day. Besides, we already have our two major dots when we pray and meditate in the morning and evening.

In addition to these four dots—when we wake up and when we go to sleep, and when we sit at least twice for meditation—we can find many opportunities to practice dotting. I can, for instance, resolve to repeat my mantra before I drink water or tea or coffee. I can do it before and after every meal. I can do it before I start driving and after I reach my destination. I can do it before answering the phone and at the end of the conversation. I can do it while I am showering or doing my dishes or taking the trash out.

Mentally repeating the mantra just once doesn’t take even a second, a couple at the most. None of us is so busy as to not have a second to spare. If we are inventive enough, we can think of many things we routinely do throughout the day and convert them into opportunities to think of God. In the beginning this may need some effort, but soon it becomes a habit if we practice this for a few days. When the day is filled with many such dots, it is easy to connect them into a beautiful picture. This is what radically improves the quality of the prayer and meditation we do morning and evening.

The goal is to stop thinking of meditation as an activity and to make it who we really are. What we want is to move from doing meditation to being in meditation no matter what activity we are engaged in. That is the difference between merely doing spiritual practice and really being spiritual.

In religious literature and music there is often the encouragement to “dive deep” within. Prayer and meditation help us do just that. What does diving deep inside oneself really means? What are the benefits of this kind of inner exploration? What kind of challenges do we face—and how do we overcome them?

When practiced sincerely and vigorously, the Four Basic Practices no longer appear to be “four,” they become one with our life. No longer are they simply what we do but become a measure of who we truly are.

It is not much use to talk about religion until one has felt it.

The first two steps—Hearing and Reflection—help remove some of the obstacles to spiritual freedom, but not all. What is it that remains to be done? How is meditation as nididhyāsana different from the meditation that I do now? Read more:

When “hearing” (śravaṇa) of the Truth fails to remove my ignorance, I don’t find spiritual freedom but instead find myself beset with doubts and questions. That is the time to take the second step.

The purpose of Vedanta’s Four Basic Practices is to lead us from bondage (bandha) to freedom (mokṣa). This journey is said to occur in three steps. Which is the first step I need to take?