“You can increase
Your heart’s intensity
And multiply
Your mind’s purity
Just by folding your hands
During prayer and meditation.”

– Sri Chinmoy

When we sincerely aspire for a goal, we will take help from any quarter and explore any means to reach our goal. We will listen to advice, read books, attend classes, practise techniques, make sacrifices, travel to far places, we will adjust our diet, daily schedule, exercise regime and sleep patterns – anything to help us reach our goal sooner.

Meditation is at once our goal and our means to reach our goal. The practise of meditationis our means; the perfect state of meditationis our goal. So let us be open and ready to welcome anything that will improve the quality of our practise and hence expedite our progress towards our goal.

In our practise of meditation we are concerned principally with our mind and our heart. We are striving to make our mind still, clear and empty while invoking the depth, vastness, silence, peace and beauty of our heart. Purity in the mind and intensity in the heart are the two indispensable ingredients of successful meditation – yet these two rare exotic birds are scarcely glimpsed in the dense hectic forest of our lives, and even more rarely caught and tamed.

As Sri Chinmoy’s poem states, our heart’s intensity and mind’s purity are enhanced when we fold our hands. How and why are matters not for conjecture, but experience. Folding our hands is a lightning rod that attracts intensity, purity, focus, speed, progress and success into our practise more effectively than anything else we can do on the physical plane. If our goal is important to us, then doing whatever we can to quicken the journey is a no-brainer.