T H E S E R I E S
YOGItimes magazine for the modern yogi
Making Love
The easiest way to think about the state of dhyana is to think of those moments when the only thing in the world that you are aware of is the object of your attention and nothing else, not a thought, a sound, a smell, nothing – only you and the object. People have experiences similar to dhyana when they are making love. In those moments when you and your partner are completely connected and there is nothing else in the whole world but the two of you. That is a state akin to dhyana.
With the practice of dhyana, we begin to have deep connection to the object of our focus. Let’s say that you are meditating on the breath. While practicing dharana, you keep sharpening your awareness of the breath and lengthening the continuity of your attention. When you finally begin to enter the state of dhyana, it is like slipping into the breath. The effort to hold your attention on the breath disappears and you are simply consciously connected to the breath, like an unbroken stream of oil pouring from one container to another. In dhyana, one “looses” consciousness of the world around and retains only awareness of self and object.
The way you know that you are in the state of dhyana is that time passes by “super-quickly.” For example, let’s say you are meditating on your breath and you decide to sit for an hour. If you are meditating and it seems like you have been sitting forever, you are still practicing dharana. You keep trying to return your attention to your breath, but the mind keeps leading you to be aware of the time. When you enter the state of dhyana, the effort to hold your attention on the breath ends and with it the awareness of time and the rest of the body. All you notice is the breath. Time does not exist in your awareness. Nor does the rest of the body. Hours may pass but they seem like seconds. It is as if you and the breath have become one.
In reality it is impossible to directly “practice” dhyana. You practice dharana (see last month) and then after a certain point, dhyana just happens. When the state of dhyana is achieved in your practice, it is a real milestone. It is an indication that you are progressing on the path of yoga. That is not to say that we should judge our progress by how often or how soon we achieve dhyana. Achieving the state of dhyana is an indication that the way you are practicing is effective. Other indications of an effective yoga practice are health, lightness and steadiness of body, sweet body smell, freedom from craving, mental clarity, emotional stability, compassion, good memory and a joyous demeanor. Although it is not advisable to judge your progress in yoga and become competitive, it is helpful to honestly and objectively evaluate the effectiveness of your practice. It is especially important to bring a fresh perspective to your practice. That fresh perspective can be a new teacher, a new pose or a new approach to a familiar pose or practice. The point is to be on the lookout for unconscious habits in your practice, i.e. in your life. Unconscious habits, by definition, will be outside of your field of awareness and you won’t know how to access them, but simply by declaring your intention to discover them, they can be revealed.
When it comes to the practice of dhyana, there are two ways I like to think about it. One way is through the consistent practice of dharana, returning one’s attention until it becomes so rapid and subtle that the mind becomes very quiet and slips into dhyana. The second way is to create continuity in your actual yoga practice. Practicing regularly, continuously without interruption is a form of dhyana. The secret to success in yoga is the continuity of practice. The longer you maintain this unbroken and continuous practice, the more progress you make on the path of yoga.
In the state of dhyana, we touch eternity. Eternity is not a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is the realm that time and space cut out. Eternity is now. It is the ever-present now, with no beginning and no end. When we achieve the state of dhyana, we begin to actually live in the now. Not as a concept, but in actuality. In this state, we are completely free from all human suffering. Suffering exists in our ideas of the past or the future. In the now, there may be pain, but there is no suffering. In the eternal present there is only love and rapture. In the state of dhyana, we are living as lovers: in the moment, connected and in bliss.
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