To meditate is to immerse yourself in whatever you do

The true meaning of meditation is to immerse yourself totally in whatever you are doing. To just be.

Meditation therefore is immersion. Contrary to popular notion, to meditate you don't need a room, a pre-arranged environment or music or solitude or even quiet. You can immerse yourself in whatever you are doing __ cooking, reading, singing, cleaning, playing golf, gardening, carving fruit, walking....whatever, and you will find yourself meditating. As the Buddha discovered and taught, meditation is not an activity in itself but it is concerned with our alertness while doing any action. Meditation means to add awareness and alertness in our actions. Which is why immersion is a better word to describe the meditative state. For instance, when you are immersed in reading an unputdownable book, you may miss hearing the telephone ring or someone at the door. Surely, this has happened to you more than once in your Life. It would be fair to conclude that at such times you are meditating on or are immersed in something. Now, therefore, a pre-condition for immersion is always joy.

Only when you enjoy something, do you immerse yourself in it. For instance, if you ask a teenager to clean up her room or do the dishes, she's going to be grumpy. But let her read her favorite piece of fiction or listen to her favorite music or allow her uninterrupted access to facebook and you are unlikely to find her unhappy even momentarily. What gives you joy could be anything __ a poem, a dance, music or a painting. It could even be just watching the traffic crawl from your window or feeling the waves crash into you on the beach. Wherever there is joy, chances are you will feel timelessness, a certain oneness with whatever you are experiencing. That oneness state is meditation.

Joseph Campbell (1904~1987), American author and mythologist, famous for his 'Follow Your Bliss' philosophy, says he was inspired greatly by the Hindu Upanishads. His rationale is powerful in the context of our learning today. He declared: "Now, I came to this idea of bliss, because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked."

So, immerse yourself in what you love, be in a rapturous state always, just being; your eternal meditative threshold will be eventually attained!