A word signifies an object only conditionally. Greek philosophers invented paradoxes to emphasize relativity of the meanings of words. “Will you be able to recognize your father? Yes! Will you recognize your father in one of these (covered) people? No. So you can’t recognize your father.” This paradox is easily resolved when we notice that… Continue reading Words are the boundaries of the own world
Category: meditation
Mind Wholeness, Absent-Mindedness and Torpid Mind. Mistakes in Meditation
Summing up the block of seven lines that Patanjali dedicated to exercising the state of mind wholeness (chitta-prasadanam), I shall try to explain why this subject has been essentially significant. One can by intuition guess that mind non-wholeness (chitta-vikshepa) correlates with vritti. And indeed, this opinion was shared by all commentators of Yoga Sutras We… Continue reading Mind Wholeness, Absent-Mindedness and Torpid Mind. Mistakes in Meditation
Sutra 1.34. Breath control as a method of gathering chitta
The next line of Yoga Sutras does not involve any difficulty for translation, as well as for commentary and understanding. प्रच्छर्दनविधारणाभ्यां वा प्राणस्य ॥ ३४॥ 1.34 pracchardana-vidhāraṇābhyām vā prāṇasya pracchardana (n.) – a well-known word that in terms of literature on yoga denotes “exhalation”. It consists of the prefix pra + cchardana – a… Continue reading Sutra 1.34. Breath control as a method of gathering chitta
Sutra 1.33. Meditation for overcoming hostility
As it has been said earlier, maitri – “amicability” – comes as one of the yogi’s basic features. Yet most people, especially those brought up in the post-USSR environment, have difficulties in experiencing this feeling. For several generations they were being habituated to take counter-revolutionists, Germans, Americans, capitalists and others of the kind for foes.… Continue reading Sutra 1.33. Meditation for overcoming hostility
The Koans of Zen and Meditative Question
“The Koan is the door, the answer is the key. But the basic point is not about opening the door, It is about what you will see there…» (Probably, if I have put it here, someone might have said this somewhere…) In one of the previous articles of this blog in have outlined… Continue reading The Koans of Zen and Meditative Question
Meditation Ability and the State of Traineeship
Here we shall notice that since meditation is the attempt tosearch for an answer that is not obvious to the question that is not trivial, one’s readiness to “look” beyond one’s habitual stereotypes comes as a mandatory precondition of its performance. It is safe to say that if the answer that has come asa result… Continue reading Meditation Ability and the State of Traineeship
Meditation in the Context of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
The word “meditation” is one of the brands that the mass consciousness has inseparably linked to yoga, spiritual practices and person’s development. And this opinion is justified: yoga is not yoga without psycho-practices, since it was yet in Hatha Yoga Pradipika that they wrote that “All the methods of hatha are meant for gaining success… Continue reading Meditation in the Context of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras