Shallow Readings and Meditation

Many hold that simply reading gurbani and not understanding a word is worthless. A while ago, I would have agreed that reading page after page without attempting to understand a word is a pointless task. But there is something to be gained through this practice.
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It is certainly beneficial to read and understand gurbani. There is no doubt about this. If one understands the Guru's message and puts it into practice, there is no match for this. The real problem is when one only reads for the sake of reading. I will call this shallow reading, as opposed to deep reading, which includes understanding.

What could it be for?
One may think that maybe it is a first step to connecting with gurbani. That you make a habit of simply reading then you go on to understand. I started that way myself. But this is irrelevant to those who are already connected and continue to practice shallow reading. I am referring to those who read 40 Jap ji's or 100 swaiyes... are they wasting their time?

It is also believed by some that reading gurbani like this will grant them superpowers, ridhiyan sidhiyan. I don't know about that... I don't think many here will take that seriously.

Anyways, I think there is value to be found in shallow readings... first, let's ask ourslves what is meditation?
There's a whole wealth of Meditation techniques from Zen meditation practices to Hindu dhyana to Sufi Islamic traditions. However, even though there are various different kinds of practices they are all developed on the principle of focusing on ONE thing. This is to train the mind to pay attention. The essence of all practices is to quiet down one's thoughts and take notice of our moment to moment experience. Notice how when something horrible happens, our brain goes nuts! All these random thoughts enter into our head, and cause suffering. Actually, horrible things need not happen. Our mind goes crazy and generates horrible thoughts even if we are in pleasant conditiones. Meditation aims to reduce those thoughts, to reduce fear and anxiety. What you are then left with are positive emotions of compassion and forgiveness. We suffer not because there are horrible events but because we have horrible thoughts. Queting these thoughts leads to a pleasant experience.

Meditation has been going on for a long time. People all over the world have wondered whether it was possible to be happy without the company of loved ones,without delicious foods, without drugs! There was a simple experiment people tried. They isolated themselves from these things, essentially from the world. In there isolation they uncovered the secrets of happiness. Later on these techniques became refined and strengthened to be applied while being in the world. One of these is known as the Discipline of Bhagati. We find Guru Sahibs advocating for these practices like Naam Simran and Seva (known holistically as Bhagati). These were powerful in social circumstances. But the principle even here was the same, to focus one's mind.

It is believed that seva in a gurughar is a purely physical task. Given how I have described meditation. It is not difficult to see how seva can be a spiritual task, there is a reason why it is included in Bhagati Yog. When you focus on the task in seva, when you focus all your attention to washing the dishes, handing out the food, making rotis even, then seva gains meditative value and thus spiritual value... that is if you can find a kitchen where the "gnanis" are quiet. Good luck with that!

Perhaps, now it is easy to see how doing shallow readings can have meditative value. If you focus your attention on the words, as you read them, and pay no attention to other thoughts, it becomes more akin to a meditation that we are already familiar with, Naam Japna. A practice has meditative value when it done to quiet one's thoughts, to bring home the wandering mind. naam Japna has meditative value because you focus on the sound of the word. Do you do that when you repeat the naam?

This reminds me of a Sakhi of Guru Nanak where he is invited to a Muslim prayer by these two muslims. Next day Guru Nanak goes over to their mosque. The prayers begin. While they follow their precribed way of praying. Guru Nanak simply stands there with his eyes closed. After the prayers are over those Muslims complain to Guru Nanak that he came but he did not pray. Guru Nanak turns this around and says "you guys invited me yet when prayers began none of you actually prayed, you were focused elsewhere. One was thinking about his business of horses and the other about his family."

Of course, many people don't do prayers in this way, including Sikhs (and of course, many don't read to understand). Even naam japna simply becomes a mindless repitition of words. The mind is left to wander and one constantly suffers. it's important to be mindFUL during meditation, to pay attention to the moment, to pay attention to the task/technique at hand.

What I am saying is that meditation is simply the focusing of one's mind on a task to quiet one's mind. If that is true then shallow readings CAN have meditative value. A sehaj paath that is not understood by the participants but is still listened to and focused upon, can be great for meditation.

Most Sikhs regard Idol worship as a useles ritual. The spirituality related to Hindu worship of idols becomes apparent when we consider the essence of meditation. I am not advocating for this practice nor do I mean to include it in the above mentioned Sikh practices. but it is important to note that if the mind of the idol worshipper is focused, then it has meditative value. Hence, God (happiness) CAN be found in a rock or shallow readings, if only you focus hard enough.

 
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Bhagat Singhji

Though all of your art work is a treasure, and your talented draftsmanship is a gift from the Creator. Though all of your mental gymnastics remind us of your great wit. Nothing could be a finer present to all of us on this cusp of a New Year, than this essay. I can see how much care you have taken to make your thoughts, so subtle, quite clear. I can appreciate that exactness of your writing. So -- from me, if not others, thank you so much. There is both depth and inspiration in what you have said.

Yes bhagatsingh ji you are right. Meditation simply means to have youre mind focus on the present, living moment and usualy on one thing. This state where thoughts and mental activity have ceased/slowed down can be achived by dance, song, prayer, devotion, seva and many other activities.

Close your eyes, plug in your headphones at the right volume to go with noise in the head and your body rythm and relax sitting back, lying down in comfort.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792

Play video but don't need to watch and see if while you hear you connect to the writers Bulley Shah, Baba Farid ji and Bhagat Kabir ji.

http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/islam/...tml#post139638
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792

Repeat if you don't succeed once.

Most will come close. No guarantees

Sat Sri Akal.

PS: It will be a soul-to-soul touch.

Bhagat Singh ji,

I read this while on vacation and did not want to respond at the time. It is a topic I’ve thought about and discussed with others for quite some time now. I hope that you do not mind therefore, that I give some comments.

You’re concluding remark:
You probably have a different understanding about “happiness” here; I however would associate this with the pleasant feelings accompanying instances of attachment. And sure, this is exactly what I see as being the driving force for any deliberate “focusing” on a chosen object, for example, breath. Indeed people jump at the idea of concentrating on the breath quite convinced that it is a good object. And yes, breath is indeed what many wise people have as object of contemplation, however in their case it is with “wisdom” that this object is known, and furthermore, it depends also on the accumulated tendency of the individual.

Some people will by their nature, incline towards contemplation on death or repulsiveness of the body or loving kindness, and some on earth or fire or water element etc. And all this goes back to lifetimes of development such that at some point down the road, the mind repeatedly focuses on one of the several objects capable of arousing deep concentration, being wholesome, and maintaining calm. At no time however, has the object ever been taken up simply out of “belief” that it helps concentration and so on. In other words, it is not like they decided to suddenly one day focus on a particular object having heard that this will give rise to a wholesome state of mind, but rather that their wisdom grew based on seeing the harm in sense contacts, knowing the difference between wholesome and unwholesome and inclining towards some objects of contemplation and finally, that one of these in accordance to their particular temperament, can cause calm to arise for an extended period.

How many people do you know that are in this position? I don’t know anyone and I believe that were I to come across one such person, I’d just be a burden to him given how much attached I am to sense objects and far from wishing to do without them.

As you may now have inferred, there are in reality only so many objects which can condition calm (the wholesome kind). Furthermore, of all these objects, breath is the most subtle and difficult to focus for an extended period of time. Also, it is not the objects which is the determining factor, but rather the “wisdom” which approaches the object. A Shivling will therefore not condition calm nor will a candle flame for example, and obviously the wise will not think to concentrate on these. On the other hand, a person who has no inkling as to the difference in quality between a wholesome state of mind from the unwholesome and the danger in sense contacts, but somehow comes to be convinced that if he concentrated on a ‘neutral’ object such as breath, that this will condition calm, and if he does not have a clue as to the restlessness accompanying moments of attachment, such a person invariably ends up encouraging attachment of one level or the other, taking happiness for calm and what is in fact unwholesome for wholesome.

But of course, if this ‘happiness’ is the aim, concentrating on the breath is one way to go. Better this than taking drugs. I have friends who practice yoga and enjoy the part when breath is concentrated upon. But these people know this for what it is and do not mistake it to be something else. And while the one who consumes drugs is unlikely to think that he is doing a good thing, most people who are engaged in one form of meditation practice or the other however, these people are clearly fooling themselves about it. The drug addict can be saved, but those who think they are already “saved”, how should they come to realize their mistakes?

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From one perspective it is understandable that people are attracted to the idea of being able to concentrate and remain focused. Indeed there are suggestions to the effect that a “concentrated mind conditions clear seeing and understanding” or something to the effect. Some people react to what they perceive as being much agitation in their lives and would like to change all that. However, the solution is not to simply focus on the task at hand, which on the surface does give the impression of calm. The truth however is that attachment often manifest to the ignorant as being calm and therefore desirable but in reality is no less agitated than say, aversion. It is failing to recognize what an agitated mind really is and what is the real cause for this that people are led by what I’ve come to recognize as “illusion of result”, associated with which are ideas regarding meditation on and off the cushion. Being ‘mindful’ in the manner you have described is in fact no different from how animals are when they stalk their prey and is therefore replacing one kind of evil with another. And if it were true that concentration is helpful for understanding to arise or that it clears the way for compassion and forgiveness, a thief who is an expert at opening safes, a hunter, an expert fisher and chess player should all be closer to achieving wisdom and goodness than most people. But are they, and why should it be?

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In the Buddhist tradition there is the simile of the “monkey mind”. The mind is said to be like the monkey jumping from one branch to the other without rest. Most people interpret this as being about the restless mind, particularly those of people involved in daily life activities. But this is a misinterpretation. The real meaning is that this is the nature of mind proper, regardless of whether it is agitated or not. The mind by nature, must necessarily take an object one after another on and on and if this were not the case, we’d not be able to function at all.

In one finger snap there arises and falls away, trillions of mind moments. It is because that this happens that we get the impression of objects being out there in this or that form and subsequently, that we can move our limbs and maneuver around them, else it would all be one and not even two dimensional. Furthermore, if this was not the nature of mind, we’d not be able to utter a word nor understand anybody else’s speech or gestures. So really there is no problem with the mind taking different objects repeatedly. Besides, concentration is in fact a mental factor arising with each mind moment whose function as momentary as everything else, is to focus on the particular object. So the problem again is not lack of concentration, but rather something else.

First and foremost it is ignorance (of the way things are) which is the problem. With this comes attachment, aversion, envy, pride, and so on, but worse of all, “wrong understanding”. It is the latter which leads us to wrong beliefs and wrong practices resulting in taking what is wrong for right, what adds to the problem as being a solution.

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Perhaps you need to consider the fact of attachment being the driving force by default when wisdom and other good mental factors are absent, and this is like, 99% of the time! ;-) And when attachment arises, like all mental realities, it accumulates as tendency. In this particular case of encouraging “reading regardless of any understanding”, wrong understanding is involved in addition to the attachment and with this comes its minion, namely ‘inclination to rite and ritual’. Dose it not appear to you that mindless reading for its own sake is the stuff of rite and ritual? It sure does to me. And knowing this, would you encourage the particular activity? And what if the Sikh texts teach similarly, would it not be defeating the purpose to be reading those texts in this way?

My essay is already longer than the one you wrote, so I’d better end right away. ;-)

Dear Readers Waheguru ji ka Khalsa Waheguru ji ke Fateh.

This is a very interesting subject. May I ask one question?

If you are in a swimming pool in a city or a canal or a village pond in rural Punjab, and you are learning how to swim, will you go to the deep part or the rapid flowing part right from the start. You can try but the chances of getting drowned are great.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792

Therefore, the same is the case with reading Gurbani. You have to start "Shallow reading" and do an Ardas every time you finish. Ask Guru Sahib that He may give you the opportunity to read His lovely words with full attention.

And while you are waiting for Guru Sahib to bestow His Grace, you must read slowly and carefully. A simple way is to read the word again which you have misread or not understood. In fact you must read the whole line all over again.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792

Mind is very dynamic. It is here one moment and it goes elsewhere at faster than the speed of light. You have to tell your mind, "Eh manna. Don’t go wandering. We will think about that subject, where you want to go, later. Right now let us be with our Guru."

If you do this slowly and diligently, the scenario will change in due time and you will be thoroughly immersed in the Word.

When you begin to get immersed, thank Him that He has been kind enough to let your mind stay with Him.

Confused ji, you really are not confused.

Exceptionally well written. I thank you.


Contemplation:

• For me it happens this way and these may be short fleeting moments or short periods of voluntary encouraged but mostly involuntary origin,
  • Some of the chief mental operating system kernels in reasonable mode, at specific level to you as to either not distract your senses as they cannot be reduced to zero or be complementary,
    • Kam, Karodh, Lobh, Moh and Hankar
  • Five senses providing complementary participation real or virtual
    • Vision, Hearing, Touch, Smell, Taste
  • Litmus test for me is that you will remember such instances virtually for the rest of you life in pretty vivid detail and sometimes yearn to experience again and again
  • Examples for me,
    • 1. I must be nine year old. I am at Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar. I am sitting on the upper floor and looking down through the window at the Guru Granth Sahib ji parkash and listening to kirtan. Meanwhile with my hands I am feeling the glass and glancing over the carvings the glass protects. Nice breeze is everywhere and the marigolds smell is in the air. I feel a connection between here and now, the gurus, the karigars who did carvings and did the sang marmar that I am sitting on.
    • 2. I am on my bicycle along a bicycle path going by the river. It is summer and there is not much traffic. I hear sounds of water flow, my bicycle tires rumbling on the pavement, fresh smell in the breeze and heat from the sun. I contemplate the virtual ageness of waterflow, the grains of sand and pebbles along the river bank, the wholesomeness and how little one is in relation to what surrounds us.
    • 3. I am lying in bed half awake in the morning. I just have a short little bout of cough. To my amazement our Tibetan Spaniel dog comes running by the bedside. He jumps on the bed, sense me. Pushes his back against mine and lies down. I wish to God that I may never see him die and I go to sleep.
    • 4. The following more or less a repeatable item for me with little concentration but I will put it in a category different from the Involuntary ones cited from 1 to 3 and call these as type V where V is for voluntary and more or less repeatable..

V1. I am at computer everyone is sleeping in the house and it is pretty quiet other than the PC and furnace fans providing ambient noise.


I watch the above video and listen to it. A wonderful now deceased singer Pathanay Khan from Pakistan. I right away visualize my aunt (she was like our second mom) by the Charkha. She is spinning the charkha and the video and sounds in the above show the emotion of the moment from many years ago. While I see myself sitting on a chownki beside her making poonian and putting them in a shikoo. I have a peace and blissful visual and experience.

V2. I am at my computer and watching the following videos,


Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792
I read the translation (not looking for source or authenticity but admiring the effort of the poster positively) and listen and watch the background visuals. I see the environment of the day, I see Baba Farid ji uttering the Bani in a typical Punjab banjar type setting. Hundreds of years gap disappears as I feel the peace and the truths.

I can get virtually similar repeatable voluntary experience many a times.

So I am not sure if the above supports some discussion points in the thread. In summary,

• I have involuntary and generally non-repeatable moments which do not necessarily create a belief .

• I also have nearly repeatable moments and experiences which do create a belief of if I do this I get this wished result of peace, connectivity, soul-to-soul connections.

I don’t think I will through “Voluntary” get a “monkey mind” but I am on watch based on confused ji’s post (I should not assume but I did that you are a man otherwise a soul hug rather than physical ).

Without any offence to anybody I do feel like ”monkey mind” if I ever find myself in the feverish “waheguru-waheguru” chanting scenarios or generally where I am led to attempts at creation of bliss in a crowd or arbitrary settings.

Humbly submitted for consideration and perusing.

Sat Sri Akal.

REf SHALLOW READING AND MEDITATION.

The views presented are excellent. I fully appreciate the gist of reading as presented by TEJWANT SINGH Ji.Sir you have rightly mentionted the way one must start and go with Gurbaani.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792
There is a way ahead of READING and MEDITATION and that is SIMRANu.READING opens the road for MEDITATION. And MEDITATION can a GATE WAY for SIMRANu.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792
In Gurbaani the ULTIMATE is SIMRANu only.

PRABH KAA SIMRAN SUB TE OOCHAA.

This can happen by the grace of SATi GURU Ji only.for this READING and MEDITATION can be very helpful.

Prakash.S.Bagga

Shallow reading poll follow-up for "Yes, Please Explain."

Shallow reading to me is like running through a goldmine with eyes not totally open and running too fast. Inspite, you are still likely to find a valuable nugget once in a while versus finding nothing if you don't do anything.

Sat Sri Akal

PS: However one may want to consider what is more valuable:
- Shallow reading for 1 hour
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33792
- Studying a shabad for 5 minutes
- Studying a shabad for 1 hour