Mindfulness is more than sitting down withe eyes closed.

When I was thirteen, I used to ask everyone if they meditated. I think it was the fact that I had picked up a book from my father’s collection and read it.

I don’t remember what book it was but what I understood from it was that if you could sit down alone for some time and closed your eyes, you would be better off than before.

MEDITATION IS STILLNESS

I didn’t know what to expect but I did sit still for some time and I didn’t realize that the stillness was almost like I was in trance and I liked it a lot. I was an introverted child, so, there was nothing unusual about sitting alone in the room all by myself, daydreaming or reading.

But what I felt trying to not think anything, trying to sit as still as I could was an experience I had never had before.

Back then, I had no idea if the quietness in my mind had anything to do with the peace outside. I didn’t know how “I was supposed to feel”. There was no internet to google “how does it feel to meditate,” so, I trusted what I was doing.

I had no way to know if it worked for me except believe that it was. Which was why I continued to do it.

But back then, I didn’t understand the utility of the exercise, I didn’t understand why quietness was a good thing. Now that I am older, “peace” is a word I understand slightly better and that makes it easy to go after it.

But do you really go after it? But isn’t going after peace actually counter intuitive to peace itself.

I would find answers to these questions gradually. But found I did.

MEDITATION IS A TOOL OF MINDFULNESS

Living mindfully isn’t just about sitting down in a quiet room and chanting om. Meditation is a tool of mindfulness.

You can be mindful without meditation. Mindfulness is just what it sounds like: to be mindful or aware of every passing moment. And this, simply means that one is not sleepwalking through life.

It also means that a task, no matter how small or insignificant needs to be done with utmost presence.

MEDITATION IS BEING PRESENT

Now, let me get into what I mean by “presence”. It basically means just being there one hundred per cent when you are doing something.

If you think about it, there are several things you do the entire day. Starting with brushing teeth in the morning, taking a shower, making breakfast, chopping onions, mowing lawns and all of these could easily be termed as “boring”.

But, what if you truly paid attention to these things?

FLOW

I am going to take a page from the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (a book that I highly recommend) which can perhaps simplify the idea of meditation.

Csikszentmihalyi, as part of his research for his book, talked to several artists and researchers whose jobs involved some degree of effort that made them push slightly harder.

But this didn’t mean you always had to do super-challenging work. Csikszentmihalyi also stated examples of peasants and factory workers and how they found “flow” in their work.

Can you imagine being a line man and taking pleasure in the most rote actions in the assembly line or being a woman in pastoral Europe, tending to sheep from day and night and yet these two groups of people have reported feeling the “flow.”

Flow, according to the writer of the book is the feeling of being so involved in the work that you do it for the sake of it. One doesn’t think about the consequences or the results and does them for the sake of it.

Time seems to go by so fast that one doesn’t realize. It’s a kind of deep involvement in the task at hand not because you are trying to be “involved” but because you are enjoying it so much that nothing else matters.

MEDITATIVE INVOLVEMENT

Even though the writer argues that this kind of involvement is only possible when the tasks are challenging, I would say, one can find this meditative involvement in pretty much anything.

Take brushing your teeth for instance. I have tried this, and you should do. When you brush your teeth, don’t think about anything, not the day ahead at work, your spouse, the credit card debt, the Netflix TV series you watched the night before.

Just focus on the micro actions of brushing your teeth. If you look at the mirror then notice the way the bristles move up and down, notice how the foam sticks to your teeth. If you use an electrical toothbrush, notice its movement. That’s what being “present” means. You are paying attention to everything that you are doing right at that moment.

Do the same when you are clipping your nails. Don’t think about what you would do after or what you want to eat for breakfast or lunch or what groceries you have to get.

YOGIC MEDITATION AND MINDFULNESS

The saints in India reportedly feel the same “flow” in yoga and meditation. Meditation and what it brings to the mind is the same across cultures.

You may ask, what’s the point of all this? The point of this is what the point of meditation is. To just be.

MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION IS TO JUST BE

The problem of our times is the inability to just be. We want to watch videos when we are reading, we want to eat when we are watching videos, we want to take a walk when we eat. Our minds are at different places all at once.

Even while I am writing this, I am reminded of my novel in which one of my characters meditates. It’s so rare that one does something just the sake of the action itself.

But this happens in any kind of meditation practice. You start and then get distracted but always, you must bring your attention back to the now.

WHAT MEDITATION IS NOT

Meditation, unfortunately, is also one of those things that people say they do, but don’t really. Sitting quietly in the doctor’s office in the waiting area is not meditation.

Neither is standing in a line not looking at your phone. Then what is meditation? If the thesis if this article is that you can meditate without really closing your eyes, sitting down like a yogi then how do you do it?

There are many ways to meditate that people claim as being “right”. I will say, that find a method that works for you. Try to empty your mind and every time you feel like your attention is taken away by something else, try to focus back on the “now”.

It’s not easy, but over a period of time you will see a difference. What’s important, it always remembering that focusing on the “now” is the real meditation, even when your eyes are not closed and it’s not quiet.

How to Meditate Anytime, Anywhere

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