What Do You Meditate On? (LOH 213)

I got myself started on some yoga exercises in the comfort of my home. One of the my favourite poses is “Savasana” - complete mind and body relaxation. In this pose, you let yourself go and just relax (everything heavy).

In this pose, it almost feels like drowning in the air around me. The crisp electricity that flows from my fingertips through my veins, up to my chest and then my stomach, to my legs and then back to my fingers. My skin suddenly feels like it’s porous and just sucks in all the air. It’s like there’s a well inside me that just keeps flowing and I feel it.

However, this feeling did not beat the one of simple awareness. I was done with all my work for the day and decided to step out my gate for a moment. There, was a gorgeous view of the sunset, gloriously blazing overhead falling behind the trees and the one-storey building on my street. At that moment, it all stood still.

I sat outside and my mind went blank. I wasn’t thinking of my past or concentrated on the future. I was just living in the present with gratitude for everything I have, everything I have lost and everything around me. It was like sinking in a sea of consciousness. It was beautiful how everything was quiet within despite the children being loud on the street or the car honks, the bicycle dings and the mothers being loud with their friends. In that very moment, all was still.

This reminded me of an illustration I read somewhere. A man who wanted to be an artist went to an art exhibition of some of the most popular artists. He came across so many paintings that stroked his heart strings but then one took him off guard. A painting of a storm. There was lightning beautifully crafted on the canvas with angry waves of the sea.

Then the artist looked at the name of the piece and was perplexed when it was written “Peace”. He began to wonder, who could this disturbed person be to see such an incoming disaster as peace?

However, he looked on, fascinated by the blend of colours and the vivid brilliance of it all when he saw it. There was a tree, painted with candid clarity in the distance and on that tree he made out the eagle protecting her young. Then he understood.

Peace doesn’t come about by safety measures or carefully executed plans of the future. No. Peace was a state of mind. The intrinsic knowledge of things incomprehensible to others around you. Why? You are sheltered not by a house, or a bus, but by the fact that you understand that there are things that hold more value than these.

At that moment, even as the harmattan wind blew and carried dust, as nylons took to the air with the whirlwind and I stood up, my heart sang with what I had meditated on - Nothing. I hadn’t done anything but let my mind wander, not to the past or the future but in the present. And that was a luxury.