DHYAN ( MEDITATION, ધ્યાન ), WHOSE, WHY AND HOW. ( 1 )

Next few blogs on dhyan are translated from a book " Shree Mota ni dhyan avastha and dhyan "  This book is a compilation of excerpts from letters written by Pujya Shree Mota to Sadhaks, and previously published in his various books like Jivan pagaran, Jivan prerana, Jivan pagathi, Jivan sansodhan etc.
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Dhyan is one of the tools to develop and keep alive the spirit of efforts for the advancement of life. Concentration on one thought process is also called dhyan. One purpose of dhyan is to silence ( નીરવતા ) the mind. The other purpose is to maintain this silence while performing  our daily works, and eventually to develop such capability as to performing these works without any effort to maintain this silence.

Now a days everybody sits down for dhyan with closed eyes. Just as we need capital to start the business, it is essential to have some training of the mind to concentrate. Without this training of concentration, dhyan is not possible.

It is of utmost importance to have fixed time and place. Even more important is to have a fixed and continuous, concentrated mental attitude.

Whatever thought comes in your mind offer it to God with love and devotion. This continuous offering of thoughts is also a kind of dhyan. One can also concentrate and be centered on sat-guru's heart. Dhyan can also be on nothingness (શૂન્યત્વ) also. But this nothingness can not be dry and devoid of any purpose. Mysterious and deep purpose pervades this kind of dhyan.

If you have uncontrollable thoughts then you should not start dhyan. Make an effort to calm the mind. Try to concentrate first on your heart and then be centered. At the same time try to elevate consciousness by remembering Him while keeping joyous attitude ( aspiration for Him ).

While doing japa ( chanting-remember ) devotion and love sprouts in your mind and when this becomes continuous, you get completely absorbed in dhyan. Dhyan then reaches to its maximum height and in the end you experience various sides of ultimate truth.

Keep practicing even if you have lots of thoughts and may not experience complete concentration for a while. If you practice for a long time with patience, then one day divine will express itself in the practice and then you will have control over your thoughts. We should have complete faith and heart in the practice of any tool and there should be unbroken continuity in the practice. Concentrate on the center between your eyebrows to stop the thoughts. Concentrate on your heart center to increase love, devotion and good qualities. Instead of paying attention to stop the thoughts, let the thoughts pass by. Our attention and focus needs to be on increasing concentration and to be centered on the heart center.
                                                                                                      
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Pujya Shree Mota
Shree Mota ni dhyan avastha and dhyan ( શ્રીમોટાની ધ્યાનાવસ્થા અને ધ્યાન )
Edition 2; pages 21 - 24.

SELF CONTROL ( સંયમ ) ( part-3 )

                                                        Self control of emotions
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It is very necessary to have self control over emotions if one wants to maintain awakened sense of discretion ( વિવેક શક્તિ ) in one's life. Emotions loose its strength if it is expressed according to one's desires and is useless in our work of self development. Sometimes this uncontrolled emotions can make one's life miserable and unbearable. At times these emotions can be very pleasurable and then one is swept away in this flood of happy emotions. But the knowledge and awareness  that this ( being swept away in happy or sad emotions ) is not our goal, does not occur without this sense of discretion.

These emotions are useful in our life only if we strengthen them by self control. Before training our emotions, we need to develop the habit of turning them into appropriate work and activity. It is not possible to train life energy like emotions without containing them. It is essential to contain the emotion before we train them. Self control is the containment of these emotions.

Emotions is a divine energy that initiates, warns and increases our strength in life experiences ( if used in right manner ). This short lived flow of emotions produces increasing sense of purpose ( bhaavna, ભાવના ) and that in turn gets stronger and stronger. In this fashion emotions are at the root of bhaavna. Flow of emotions that arise out of purity is always well directed and only that can strengthen the real sense of purpose.

We get divine energy without much effort if we can keep continuous awareness ( with knowledge ), when emotions arise from incidents that we hear, see or experience in our life.


Pujya Shree Mota
Jivan murm (જીવન મર્મ )
Edition 1; pages 27-29.
                          

SELF CONTROL ( સંયમ ) ( part-2 )

The main purpose of self control is to bring and express balance in all activities of life. Only self control can train all senses to act properly, all the time. Our senses like things that are harmful from a spiritual point of view. We get attracted to these harmful things knowingly or unknowingly. It is the sense of discretion in self control, that does the hard and delicate work of turning the senses to goodness and good purpose. Life is delicate and sensitive, and needs to be worked on tenderly. It cannot tolerate harsh treatment. If it is done without the cooperation of the senses, and with force, then life can snap and life force may be wasted. We must always keep in mind not to lose a sense of discretion while we train ourselves to develop the spirit of self control in our lives. You should know that spirit of self control is being fulfilled when (1) goodness is expressed and experienced from training of self control ( with true knowledge ).  (2) you experience the best kind of interests and skills.

It is important to see that this self control is not used in excess, even though we have accepted it as our protector in life. Just as ignoring this self control is life destructive, an excess of it without proper understanding can also be detrimental to life. In simple words, self control means a boundary or limitation of our purposeful conduct toward other souls in our life. One needs this kind of boundary if one is going to behave with others and one's self in a similar fashion. One can not go out of this limit and behave similarly towards others. This limitation is necessary, not only for saints but also for everyone who is trying to develop spiritually.              
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Pujya Shree Mota
Jivan murm; ( જીવન મર્મ )
Edition 1; page 25-26.

SELF CONTROL ( સંયમ ) ( part-1 )

                                                              HARI OM

Karachi, 1939

I wrote to you about silence in my last letter. When you follow silence with devotion, self control becomes effortless. At the same time, the inner workings and uniqueness of this self control become self evident. At present, there is some kind of disgust at the very mention of self control. May be it is from our parents or our educational system. We have this uncomfortable feeling  towards the very mention of self control. There should be natural importance given to self control in life, but presently it is exactly reversed. My intention is not to scare you by writing about self control. The meaning of self control is quite different in my mind and understanding. I am not sure if you will like it or not, but it is my wish that you have some understanding of it. I am writing all this because you have shown eagerness and curiosity to know something new.

Just as you need a covering of skin to protect and increase life sustaining elements in the body, it is absolutely necessary to have the covering of self control ( with true knowledge ) to protect the developing inner life. Our soul, protected by spirited inner self control of senses, becomes our true friend. Without this protection, the soul gets surrounded by many layers of this worldly affairs and then falls into darkness. The soul, that has this protection of self control, increases its brightness and life becomes pleasant in all aspects.

Self control is the wall of external behavior created to protect one's life in all aspects.
                                                                                                                                      
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Pujya Shree Mota
Jivan murm ( જીવન મર્મ )
Edition 1; page 24-25.

MIND AND NAAM-SMARAN ( નામસ્મરણ )

Naam-smaran is the best instrument to nudge the mind out of its beaten track.  If naam-smaran is added to the thoughts in the mind , then it will definitely reduce the force, effect and impressions of those thoughts in the mind and also will change the final outcome of those thoughts. This needs to be done at that instant, with utmost sincerity of mind and heart. When some antidote is added to poison,  it looses its potency and becomes less effective and that may give different result than without this antidote. Similarly we can be free from the  clutches of worldly affairs, if we add lively naam-smaran to all the activities of mind and by the mind (with understanding and bhaavna ). One can not be free from anything without changing the nature of the mind. For this reason, all religions of the world give so much importance to training of the mind.


Pujya Shree Mota
Naam-smaran ( નામસ્મરણ )
Edition 1; page 53.