Course – 1🔗

11 Lessons & 11 assignments

POWER OF MEDITATION

Lesson 1: WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE AIM IN LIFE? Lesson 2: GENESIS OF MEDITATION Lesson 3: IMPORTANCE OF MEDITATION Lesson 4: DEFINITION & MEANING OF THE TERM MEDITATION Lesson 5: WHAT IS THE RIGHT WAY TO APPROACH MEDITATION? Lesson 6: BENEFITS OF MEDITATION Lesson 7: GLIMPSES OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON MEDITATION Lesson 8: FROM ‘MEDITATION IN LIFE’ TO ‘LIFE IN MEDITATION’ Lesson 9: WHEN TO DO MEDITATION Lesson 10: THE THREE KINDS OF MEDITATION Lesson 11: COMMON FEARS ABOUT MEDITATION

Objectives: To realize the importance of meditation To understand the role of meditation in improving holistic health To know when to do meditation To get clarity in applying them in their own life

Lesson-1

The list is endless. For each individual, there will be a specific goal or many goals. But every single goal, without exception, points to the same thing: a yearning to be in ananda or bliss.

No!

Each of us is searching for bliss, but we search in many different ways. However intellectual, however sophisticated may be the ways in which we express it, we are all seeking only bliss. Only the ways in which we are searching are different.

But ninety-nine percent of us are not even aware that bliss is our true goal! Because we are unaware, we search outside ourselves for this bliss. We search everywhere in the outside world for something which is there within us, just waiting to be discovered.

A small story: One evening, a man was searching hard for something in the courtyard in his house. His wife asked him what it was. He replied that he had dropped a gold coin. His wife also joined in the search. Soon, others gathered and practically the whole neighborhood was searching for the lost coin. Suddenly one neighbor asked the man, ‘Where exactly did you drop the coin? How come we still haven’t found it?’ The man replied, ‘Oh, I lost the coin inside the house.’ Everybody searching became angry and asked him, ‘Then why are we searching here?’ The man replied, ‘The problem is I have no lights inside my house. So I started searching by the light of this streetlamp here!’

This is exactly what we do in our own lives. We are all experts in searching for answers in the wrong places. We search for bliss everywhere, in money, power, relationships, ideologies, but we don’t move in the one obvious direction – inwards.

What is bliss? In life everyone has experienced some moments of great happiness. But it has always been for a reason. It is a nice feeling but it has two disturbing qualities: the feeling doesn’t last and it is the result of some cause or reason.

The state of that happiness does not seem to remain forever. It is there temporarily, and when it changes or goes away, once again you feel pain. Only the happiness you experience for no reason at all, which does not die for any reason, is real and permanent happiness. This is what is called bliss. Such happiness doesn’t depend on anything outside of you.

The word ‘ananda’ itself means, ‘that which cannot be reduced, which cannot be lost’.

Ananda does not translate into ‘happiness’. You will be surprised to know, it simply means ‘that which cannot be reduced or lost’. Bliss is that thing which does not reduce for any reason.

The Panchadasi¹ says (11.13): ‘All beings are born of bliss and live by it, pass on to It and are finally re-absorbed in it. Therefore there is no doubt that Brahman is Bliss’

Self work out

For any one who wants a single solution for all of his problems is attaining bliss. That could be the first and last solution.

Everyone has experienced some moments of great happiness. Go back to your life, where great explotion of happiness has happened. Pendown those moments. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vedanta literature, a fourteenth-century Advaita classic by Vidyaranya Swami, on the metaphysics of Vedanta

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Meditate on

Ananda does not translate into 'happiness'. You will be surprised to know, it simply means 'that which cannot be reduced or lost'. Bliss is that thing which does not reduce for any reason. Mediate few min on your very understanding about the word Ananda.

Conclusion

Truth 1:Each of us is searching for bliss, but we search in many different ways.However intellectual, however sophisticated may be the ways in which we express it, we are all seeking only bliss

Truth 2:Ninety-nine percent of us are not even aware that bliss is our true goal! We search everywhere in the outside world,0.00000001% we may or may not look in for bliss.

Truth3:Hard truth is bliss which is there within us, just waiting to be discovered.

Lesson-2