My usual meditation session this morning was not the kind that I experience every day. I had a monkey mind working overtime and it took a great deal of effort to stay on course.
This is to be expected and not the first time that I have experienced such a disturbed session. What came as a surprise to me was when I opened my mail box this morning, I had received a forward from another meditator friend Ramesh. He sent it because it referred to a message from a highly revered sage after who I am named, Ramana Maharishi.
I reproduce the email message here for the benefit of my friends who meditate.
“Sri Ramana Maharshi on wandering mind:
In the evening a visitor asked Maharishi how to control the wandering mind. HE began by saying that it was a question which particularly troubled him.
Sri Ramana Maharishi replied laughing: ‘That is nothing particular to you. That is what everybody asks and what is dealt with by all the scriptures, such as the Gita. What other way is there except to draw the mind back every time it strays or turns outwards, as advised in the Gita? Of course it is not an easy thing to do. It will come only with practice.’
The visitor said that the mind strays after what it desires and won’t stay fixed on the object we set before it.
M: “Everybody seeks only what brings him happiness. Your mind wanders out after some object or other because you think that happiness comes from it, but find out where all happiness comes from, including that which you regard as coming from sense objects. You will find that it all comes from the Self alone, and then you will be able to abide in the Self.
All doubts will cease only when the doubter and his source have been found. It is no use endlessly removing doubts. If we clear up one another will arise and there will be no end to them. But if the doubter himself is found to be really nonexistent by seeking his source then all doubts will cease.”
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