Make Meditation your Hobby!

 

Photo Credit: Discover a Hobby

Make Meditation your Hobby!

‘Football, Tennis, Basketball’ – all these sports bring a glint into your eyes, and if your favourite team or player is in the fray, your blood races with excitement and anticipation. Even though you may have never participated in any of these sports, nevertheless you do participate when you watch the sport live in a stadium or on TV – even though that participation is vicarious! You do it because you have a love for it, a passion for it and it makes you feel good. If your team wins you go into an emotional high and if it loses you are down in the dumps! But that is the beauty of sport, you always live to play another game, another day!

When it comes to yoga and meditation, we tend to put it off to another day. Who wants to wake up early, let me sleep some more, I’ll get up in ten minutes and start – and by the time you actually wake up it is too late and you decide to start the next day and so on! But like Swamiji says if you treat meditation as a hobby, then you do it because you enjoy the practise. Make meditation your hobby, get up early and do it because it makes you feel good, it gives you the experience of the deafening silence early in the morning. Do it for the experience, for the bliss, for the peace, for the beauty of silence and deep introspection.

Like Shunru Suzuki said, “Just to be sincere and make our full effort in each moment is enough – there is no nirvana outside practice.” There is a story of a musician who was visiting Carnegie Hall for a performance and was just getting out of a cab. A pedestrian asks him how to get to Carnegie Hall and he responds, “Practice”. Observe that he did not say ‘talent’ or give directions, but he said ‘practice’.

When you have the backing of a spiritual Master, your practice is important for your own last mile connectivity, the Master has shown you the way, it is up to you to reach your destination – because each individual has to travel to his own abode, that journey is his/hers alone, no one else can do it for you. Remember, you cannot become anything that you want, but no matter what your age or situation you always have a degree of control over what you can get good at doing. That is the magic of deliberate, mindful practice. Most of your material dreams can be fulfilled this way. By making meditation your hobby, by enjoying the journey and by becoming the journey as well as the destination – you will feel the joy, bliss, peace and oneness with the Self and the Universe. You are the journey, you are the destination, become it and enjoy it!