What Meditation Is Not

1. Repeating any mantra or stotra, namasmarana or japa may help some people to quieten the mind and bring it to one-pointed concentration, but it is not meditation. 2. Concentrating on a single point, as in trataka, is not meditation. 3. Contemplating a single thought or idea is not meditation. 4. Worshipping images (murti puja) and offering prayers in their various forms is not meditation. 5. Twisting and turning the body into various positions, or asanas, may be good for making the body supple, but it is not meditation. 6. Bioenergetic exercises, pranayama, holding the breath (kumbhaka) or manipulating the breath in any form may be useful for raising the level of vitality in the body's cells, but it is not meditation. 7. Guided relaxation processes and creative visualisations may be useful for relaxing the mind at the start, but they are not meditation. 8. Listening to good instrumental or classical music as an aid can be a real help in preparing for meditation at first, but "musical entertainment" is not meditation. 9. Singing bhajans (songs of devotion to the Lord) is not meditation, but - as a natural and spontaneous result of meditative experience - bliss is sometimes expressed by singing songs of devotion to the Lord. It has been observed that people spend a great deal of time "preparing for meditation" and are left with no time for meditation itself. Teachers have suggested many of the aspects mentioned above to beginners as a good help in the preliminary stages of sadhana (spiritual practice). What happens in the end, though, is that people cling more and more to the preliminary stages and get stuck there, without going any further along the path. The point of separating real meditation from the preliminary stages is to help seekers set out on the real journey and to travel it faster.