If you think the purpose of meditation is to escape from everyday life, you are mistaken. Its purpose is so we can enter life more fully. It’s like sharpening a sword before going into battle.
Once in a while I’ll put on my sunglasses or my reading glasses and the lenses are dirty and I have to clean them so that I can see properly. Likewise, the mirrors of our minds, which reflect the source of our being, become thick with layers of impressions accumulated through the vicissitudes of life. With vision clouded, we are not able to function as effectively as when we see clearly.
That too is the purpose of meditation, to quiet the mind so that it can reflect reality as perfectly and peacefully as a frozen lake, to connect us consciously with our source of being. Just as some people wouldn’t dream of driving their car without putting on their prescription glasses, others wouldn’t dream of going through life without meditating. The underlying logic is the same: vision.
Buddhist monk, scholar, and author Thich Nhat Hanh puts it similarly in his inspiring book, Being Peace:
Meditation is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a re-entry into society. We call this “engaged Buddhism.” When we go to a meditation center, we may have the impression that we leave everything behind–family, society, and all the complications involved in them–and come as an individual in order to practice and search for peace. This is already an illusion, because in Buddhism, there is no such thing as an individual.
I can hear people screaming, “No such thing as an individual?!!” But if consciousness if infinite, and we are all nothing but consciousness, then we are all part of an indivisible Ocean of Oneness. That perception becomes more clearly seen with the quieting of the mind that comes from meditation.
The type of meditation Thich Nhat Hanh promotes is mindfulness meditation. That is a process of being completely present in what you are doing. If you are taking a walk, you engage your senses as you walk. You notice the breeze, the trees, the sounds, the light of the sun. You notice the fragrance of the flowers, you hear the singing of the birds. You are aware of your breathing. You are also aware of any thoughts that discretely enter your mind. When you are able to enter into the present moment so fully through mindfulness meditation, troubles from the past and stresses about the future melt away.
You can do this while you eat, while you bathe, while you listen to music, or while you engage in conversation. Consciously choose something each day as the proving ground of your mindfulness meditation. It doesn’t matter what it is: cleaning the car, doing the laundry or even paying the bills. Soon it will be second nature in all that you do.
When you have this as the purpose of meditation, life enters into a new dimension of freedom. It is the awakening of consciousness. And at its deepest level, as physicist David Bohm once saw it, it is an awakening to the undivided wholeness of the universe. With that perception of oneness comes the dawning of love. With this perception comes the realization that every moment is a special moment, if we can be fully present.
As Meher Baba said, “You and I are not we but One.” It is for this sake of experiencing oneness that the soul goes through all of evolution and the seemingly endless chain of reincarnation. This is the beginning of the spiritual path, the involution of consciousness, where the soul’s imagination becomes more and more infinite, advancing ever nearer to the final experience of absolute oneness, an infinity that gradually is perceived as the Divine Beloved.
This conscious experience of oneness with the Divine Beloved is what the advanced mystics call God Realization. This is when the limited ego is shed. This is when the drop loses its dropness and becomes nothing but Ocean. The Sufi poets sometimes describe this with the metaphor of the moth being consumed in the flame of a candle. This is the height of divine love when the lover and the Beloved are one.
