The Meditation Mantra

In 1931, Paul Brunton, an Englishman who came to India in search of spiritual teachers, met Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Kanchi of the time, and asked him if there were any enlightened people he knew of. He was given two names. One in Varanasi who might refuse to give an audience. The other was in Tamil Nadu, in a place called Tiruvannamalai, whom anyone could meet. Ramana Maharshi had left home as a 16-year-old after experiencing a state of death to silently meditate on the Arunachala Hill and its caves. His fame spread and soon the world he had left had come calling to him. When Brunton met him, he asked him about meditation. The reply was: “You have to ask yourself the question, ‘Who am I?’ This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem, and you will solve all other problems thereby.” The technique was thus relentless enquiry. For any thought, who is thinking this? For any pain, who is feeling this?

In the beginning of the 20th century, a Buddhist monk in Burma, Ledi Sayadaw, began to teach and popularise a meditation technique. Until then, it was something that only monks practised, but he widened its reach. Lay followers took it up and started teaching others. It went by the termVipassana or insight meditation and became first popular in Burma and Thailand. A young Marwari businessman of Indian origin, SN Goenka, in Rangoon suffered from crushing migraines that came frequently. Having tried modern medicine without any reprieve, he was referred to a 10-day retreat being conducted by a civil servant, U Ba Khin, the first accountant general of independent Burma. With daily practice over time, the migraines went away. But Goenka now became a teacher of that tradition himself. In 1969, when his mother had a medical problem, he decided to come to India to teach her this technique. His plan was to hold one 10-day retreat for her and other acquaintances of the family. But one led to another by word-of-mouth demand. And soon he would go on to set up Vipassana centres all over India where millions have taken part. Unlike Ramana Maharshi’s technique, the Vipassana method involves a tripod. First, there is concentration on the breath. Then there is body scanning, or going part-by-part feeling sensations in the body, all the while understanding that it is impermanent. And then there is a small topping called “Loving Kindness” meditation, where goodwill is consciously created within oneself towards everyone.

The two approaches being so different says something about how meditation has no single definition. There are some commonalities. Both train the mind in some way to bypass the regular flow of thoughts. Breath observation reins it in, for example. Other forms of meditation let the thoughts loose and use that to control the mind. All of them, even if the religious elements are removed from them, make the mind subservient to control. Numerous studies are showing that there are real practical benefits to it.

In 2018, NIMHANS got 68 Vipassana meditators of different proficiencies, novices who on average had notched up 1,080 hours of meditation, seniors who had 10,364 hours under their belt and teachers with over 15,000 hours. They were hooked up to EEG machines that looked at brain waves and asked to meditate. Among all meditators, delta, theta and alpha waves were stronger than they were during non-meditation. Delta relates to deep sleep, theta to deep relaxation and alpha to restful, yet alert, states. Expertise mattered, the seniors and teachers were found to be more effective in generating alpha waves.

In 2024, IIT Delhi and AIIMS Delhi along with Mahajan Imaging published a study on another form of meditation. Instead of EEG, they used an fMRI scanner that looked at blood oxygen flowing into the brain. This was an experiment with a control group. There were 30 meditators and 31 non-meditators. Both were played an audio recording of Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar taking them through a meditation technique called Yoga Nidra. The meditators showed a quietening of the regions of the brain associated with background chatter. The effect only lasted when meditating. Scans taken afterwards didn’t show the change.

There have been many studies conducted abroad too. In 1982, Nature published a paper about the remarkable ability of Buddhist monks who practised a meditation technique called “Tummo” to raise their body temperature at the extremities, something that the medical fraternity thought wasn’t possible. The Dalai Lama had helped Herbert Benson, a Harvard Medical School cardiologist, to conduct the test on three monks adept in this practice, which involved using intense abdominal breaths. By also accompanying it with a mental visualisation, it became a form of meditation whose objective was mental cleansing of impurities. Benson found that the monks could heat up their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3 degrees Celsius. For most people, such feats are of little use. Nor do they have the time required for them. Instead, there are studies that show how meditation can improve daily lives. Elizabeth Hoge, a psychiatrist at the Georgetown University Medical Center, showed that a meditation protocol called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) reduced anxiety and had the same effect as an anti-depressant called escitalopram.

The earliest meditation techniques predate even the Buddha. He learnt from teachers and came up with his own practices. New forms have constantly been devised since then, right to the present. In the 1950s, for instance, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came out with Transcendental Meditation. If in the Vipassana tradition of SN Goenka, long hours were necessary in a retreat followed by two hours’ daily practice, the Maharishi sought 20 minutes twice a day from a practitioner’s time. A short mantra would be given and it would be repeated silently in the mind by the meditator sitting in a comfortable position. This was an ancient tradition of a sanyasi giving deeksha through a mantra that had been modernised to allow everyone access to the training. Transcendental Meditation became widely popular across the world, partly because it did not insist on a religious conversion. More recently, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s Isha Yoga became similarly widespread through workshops that could spread across a few days in which a technique called Shambhavi Mahamudra was taught.

Not just spiritual gurus, even regular people have come out with their own forms of meditation. Arpit Bansal, a cancer surgeon and gut health specialist from Prayagraj, had already tried various forms of meditation. While scuba diving in the Azores, Portugal, he experienced a moment of stillness and told his guide instead of moving, he just wanted to be in one place in the water. Drawing on a concept in the book Blue Mind by Wallace J Nichols, a marine biologist, Bansal says the states of the mind can be divided into “Red Mind” and “Blue Mind”. Red is when you are experiencing a fight-or-flight state. Earlier in mankind’s history, this was limited to moments of extreme stress, as when chased by an animal, but now is a concomitant of daily modern life. Blue Mind is the state of calm, most associated with water. And so, Bansal promotes a form of meditation in which people don scuba diving gear and weights and sink to the bottom of a pool. The water itself creates the state of meditation. “Underwater meditation is a unique bottom-up approach to help people live more in the Blue Mind. It’s like a nervous system reset,” he says.

Meditation is found in almost every sphere of life today. Corporates have sessions for their employees. Some even make it a permanent fixture of their work environment. Or take sport, where high-performing athletes make it a part of their regimen. Pullela Gopichand, former national badminton champion and coach, has credited meditation practice for making him a better person and player. He also trains athletes in it. Ten-day Vipassana retreats regularly happen in Indian prisons. Political leaders meditate, a prominent example being Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Two years ago, on December 21, World Meditation Day, he encouraged Indians to incorporate it into their daily lives. He posted on his social media account, “Meditation is a powerful way to bring peace and harmony to one’s life, as well as to our society and planet.”

HOW TO MEDITATE

There are numerous forms of meditation and many can be learnt easily. YouTube has plenty of guided meditation sessions. There are apps aplenty. Ten-day Vipassana retreat centres exist all over India and they take no charge. Applications can be made online on their website www.dhamma.org.

The simplest way to meditate harks back to the Buddha using a tool available to every human being on Earth. The breath. Find a silent space. Sit in a comfortable position and remain just observing the breath. See it entering and leaving. The mind will wander. When it does, bring it back. It will wander again. Gently bring it back again.

An equally simple form of meditation is to take a word and repeat it. A mantra. The word you choose is up to you. If you are a devotee of a god then that deity’s name, for example. It concentrates and calms the mind.

Even short spells of meditation have benefits if done daily. One study showed 13-minute sessions led to better moods and reduced anxiety.