To conquer our anger, we must invoke the stronger and higher powers of love, peace, patience, poise and forgiveness. These powers we can find and gradually embody only through the regular practise of meditation.
Offering advice on how to conquer anger through meditation, Sri Chinmoy writes:
“For some time, concentrate only on divine Peace and leave aside all other divine qualities. During your meditation, try to bring down Peace, sublime and solid, from Above. Your enemy is anger. Anger’s enemy is Peace. Anger openly hates Peace. If you invoke Peace soulfully, then anger will hate you ruthlessly and never will it enter into you, your life, consciously or unconsciously.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Invoking peace during our meditation is a long-term project: we will not become flooded with peace to the extent that we lose all our anger overnight. Meanwhile, here is another approach to employ when we feel anger at someone brewing inside us: instead of blaming that person, try instead to identify with their weakness. Putting yourself in their shoes, you will see there is some good reason why they behaved so badly. Ask yourself: “Have I ever done anything so stupid or heartless or negligent in my life?” Of course the answer will be: “Yes, I have done millions of wrong things and committed countless mistakes.” Since you are ready to forgive yourself for your own blunders, you must be ready also to forgive and forget the blunders of this person.
If you take this approach:
“By this time, anger will lose all its hunger for you and it will not be at all interested in devouring you. It will leave you, it will go elsewhere to knock at the door of somebody else.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Anger is
The tormentor
Of its possessor.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Anger is ink spilt and thrown over one’s graceful heart of sweetness.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Power should make one stronger. Yet anger is a power that makes us weaker. The stronger our anger, the weaker we become. We know this, for anger robs us of our greatest treasures – our poise, inner peace, emotional balance, mental clarity and above all, happiness. When we become angry we are indeed ugly to behold. We do not possess anger: anger possesses us
How then can we learn to diminish, and ultimately control our anger? In this passage,
Sri Chinmoy writes of the destructive capacity of anger:
“Anger is a great obstacle. The after-effect of anger is frustration and depression. We should take anger as a thief. Its very nature is to steal. We have love inside us and it is our treasure. If we allow anger, the thief, to enter into us, then it will immediately steal our inner treasure. When this happens we must immediately call the police. That is to say, when anger assails us we must cry inwardly for deep aspiration to come to the fore and chase away our anger. If we love someone, we cannot get angry; but for the time being we have lost our love. In order to regain our love, we have to call our aspiration-police to save our most precious love-treasure.
“Again, when anger comes to us we have to feel that it is something that is breaking us. We have come into the world to build. If we build something, then only will the world appreciate and admire us. So we have to see which qualities build our nature. Love and peace build our real life; anger only destroys.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Turbulence in our minds and emotions is so common, to have a chaotic inner life is accepted as the normal state of being. Yet the natural state for a healthy human is to have a clear mind and calm emotions.
When next you find your mind distracted, confused or perplexed, or your emotions in upheaval, find a place where you can be alone.
Sit still in your meditation posture with your eyes closed and focus for a minute or more on calming your breath. Once you are satisfied that your breath is under control, imagine you are seated outside in Nature.
It is the silent pre-dawn, and all around you is wrapped in dense fog. This is the fog of your thoughts and emotions, all-encompassing, inescapable and impenetrable.
Gradually, you sense the impending arrival of the dawn, for the air becomes brighter. Gaze fixedly at the point in the sky where you know the sun to be, and do not shift your gaze. Your aim is to see the sun. You know the sun is there, a vague luminous presence behind the omnipresent mist.
Looking at the point where you know the sun to be, imagine you can actually see the sun in all its beauty, power and brilliance. Feel the warmth of the sun on your cheeks and in your heart, imagine the joy and the thrill that the sun brings, coursing through your veins, tingling in your nerves, shining through your face.
Do not pay any attention to the fog enveloping you. It is no longer relevant.
Before long, the sun does its thing and clears away the mist. You are now seeing the sun for real, more beautiful and powerful even than you had imagined.
A baby’s eyes drink in the world with no ego-awareness, no thoughts, no judgement, no motive and no shame. To meet the gaze of a baby is to be engulfed in wonder and captive to an all-flowering divinity.
Imagine you are on a crowded subway. You notice some passengers: a derelict old man, possibly a drunk; an upper-class lady, prim and proper; a heavily tattooed menacing-looking thug. Standing across from you, a young mother absorbed in scrolling her phone, holds her baby with one arm. As the mother pivots, the baby’s eyes meet yours and gaze right into you, transfixed as though witness to a miracle.
Your outer world dissolves as you are drawn utterly into the steady silent stare of these wide-round eyes, purity-soft, agleam with fathomless innocence. Your eyes leap open, your face a pantomime of animated affection as your dancing heart embraces the baby’s sweet gaze in an eager flood of wordless love, play and light. Time and place cease. Each worry of your life is evaporated, every problem never was. The exchange lasts moments – moments in which a baby’s eyes summon from your dormant heart the all-encompassing truth of eternal beauty.
The mother pivots to her left and the baby’s eyes fix on the scruffy old man. You follow the baby’s gaze: the man’s face aglow with an unhorizoned smile of timeless wisdom and mystic freedom. Next the baby peers at the proper lady, summoning from deep behind her façade a compassion-heart aching with an aeon of human suffering. With its next glance, the baby transforms the tattooed thug into itself, his pure mirror-eyes the radiant perfection-proclamation of innocence-sweetness.
For purity, simplicity and tranquillity in all your being, see yourself in a baby’s eyes, then see the world through its unblinking gaze.
To gain free access to our soul-reality, we must transcend our thinking mind. Sri Chinmoy explains:
“When there is no thought, just a vacant mind, light itself automatically forms its own divine thoughts and ideas.
“When we meditate we do not think at all. The aim of meditation is to free ourselves from all thought. At that time there is no form, there is no mind at all.
“Thinking has nothing to do with spiritual life or meditation. We have to go beyond thinking. How do we go beyond thinking? Through aspiration and meditation. The moment we start thinking we play with limitation and bondage. Our thoughts, no matter how sweet or delicious at the moment, are painful, venomous and destructive in the long run because they limit and bind us. In the thinking mind there is no reality. Each moment we are building a castle, and the following moment we are breaking it. When we go beyond thinking with the help of our aspiration and meditation, we can see and enjoy God’s Reality and God’s Vision together.”
– Sri Chinmoy
In his famous poem, “The Absolute”, Sri Chinmoy expresses this exalted state of being:
“No mind, no form, I only exist;
Now ceased all will and thought.
The final end of Nature’s dance,
I am It whom I have sought.
“A realm of Bliss bare, ultimate;
Beyond both knower and known;
A rest immense I enjoy at last;
I face the One alone.
“I have crossed the secret ways of life,
I have become the Goal.
The Truth immutable is revealed;
I am the way, the God-Soul.
“My spirit aware of all the heights,
I am mute in the core of the Sun.
I barter nothing with time and deeds;
My cosmic play is done.”
– Sri Chinmoy
In meditation, it is best to keep out ALL thoughts. Imagine you have posted a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on the door of your mind, or that your forehead is surrounded by an impenetrable titanium shield, and all approaching thoughts literally bounce off that shield. There is no way they can enter.
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“The moment we can stop paying attention to wrong thoughts, the wrong thoughts have no power. But what happens is that we are terribly afraid of them. We dwell in them and think they are going to ruin us. Just by thinking about them, just by being afraid of them, we give them power. So do not be afraid. You are the lord in your house. You are meditating inside your own consciousness, and somebody is knocking at your door. If you do not pay any attention, how will he dare to come in? When you are meditating you simply must not open the door to these wrong thoughts. And in case they have entered before you were aware, what do you do? Again, you do not pay any attention to them.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Another pathway to controlling the mind is simply to convince yourself you have no mind at all. Identify with something which has no mind – such as a candle flame, a flower or a pool of water. If you have no mind, you will not be disturbed by thoughts, for thoughts cannot exist without a mind to house, nourish and entertain them.
Never fear that by clearing the mind or imagining you have no mind, that your mind will leave you! When you have finished your meditation, your mind will be waiting for you like a faithful dog, better, fresher, clearer, purer, sharper, more eager, more reliable – and happier.
When asked how to keep out extraneous thoughts during meditation, Sri Chinmoy answered:
“There are two kinds of thoughts: good thoughts and bad thoughts. One kind is healthy and one kind is unhealthy. Unhealthy thoughts, undivine thoughts, are our enemies, whereas good thoughts, divine thoughts, are our friends. We are standing at the door to our house and somebody is knocking at the door. If it is a friend, then we will allow him to enter. If it is an enemy, we will not allow him in. But the difficulty is that we don’t know who are our friends and who are our enemies. If we open the door just a little to see who is there, immediately the enemies may force their way in. So what should we do? We shouldn’t open the door at all. We should keep the door bolted from the inside. Our real friends will not go away. They will think, ‘There must be some special reason why he is not opening the door. Since we need him and he needs us, we will wait indefinitely for him.’ They have sympathetic oneness, so they will wait indefinitely.
“But our enemies want only to bother us, to torture and destroy us. They will wait just for a few minutes, and then they will lose all patience. These enemies have not conquered pride. They will say, ‘It is beneath our dignity to waste our time here. Who needs him? Let us go and attack somebody else.’ If we pay no attention to a monkey, the monkey will eventually go away and bite somebody else. Similarly, after a few minutes our enemies will go away. Then we can open the door and welcome our dearest friends, who will be there waiting for us.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When Sri Chinmoy was asked how to still the mind in meditation, he answered:
“Imagine something very vast, and calm and quiet. When you start meditating, feel that inside you is a vast ocean and that you have dived deep within. There at the bottom it is all tranquillity, tranquillity’s flood.
“The most important thing is practice. Today your mind acts like a monkey. This restless mind is knocking all the time at your heart’s door and disturbing the poise of the heart. In this world everybody has pride, vanity and self-esteem. So if you keep your heart’s door closed each time the mind comes, if you do not pay any attention to the mind, then after some time the mind will find it beneath its dignity to bother you. The heart will open its door wide only to the soul’s Light, and listen only to the dictates of the soul.
“Thought is from the mental world. But you also have the heart, the identification-world. When you remain in the heart, that means that you are identifying yourself with the soul. The soul is beyond ideas, beyond thought. Instead of concentrating on the mind proper, if you can focus all your concentration on the heart, then the reality that looms large inside the heart automatically gives you an access to the soul. If you concentrate and meditate on the reality that is inside the heart, this reality comes forward.
“If you concentrate in the mind, naturally thought will come and bother you. But if you concentrate on the heart, then the problem is solved. So always try to meditate on the heart and try to bring the soul to the fore. The soul, which is a direct representative of God, is the eternal reality in us.”
– Sri Chinmoy
After some time, start chanting “I am the heart, I am the heart” and eventually “I am the soul, I am the soul.”
When we can identify with our heart and soul, when we are swimming in the sea of peace, love and light, we see and feel our identity is much vaster than our mind with its ant-thought parade. When we are detached from our mind, it is much easier to control the mind and its contents.
Our busy mind acts as dense fog obscuring the landscape of our self. Just as sunlight reveals a landscape once the fog is cleared, so to see our inner reality in our soul’s light, we must clear our minds’ fog.
To clear the mind requires concentration. Concentrate exclusively on one thing, such as a black dot on the wall, a candle flame or a flower, or a chanted mantra. The goal is to keep thoughts at bay, by focusing all the mind’s energy elsewhere. Then when thoughts arise, simply keep the mind’s focus away from those thoughts – starve them of attention – remaining fixed in your concentration.
You can focus your imagination on anything which is completely still, blank or silent.
Focus on a white screen. Any thought which comes is a smudge on that screen and must immediately be removed. Imagine a still pond. Any thought is a pebble tossed into the pond, sending ripples through your mind and emotions. Adamantly and calmly return the pond to its stillness. Behold the vast empty blue sky. Any thought is a cloud or a bird intruding into your clear sky – let that bird fly right past; let each cloud evaporate into thin air so you are left always with only the embrace of the sky’s blue vastness.
“There can be
No world of beauty,
No world of perfection,
No world of satisfaction,
Unless we go beyond the mind-horizons.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our mind is the greatest obstacle in meditation. Every meditator faces this challenge: how to deal with the wandering, doubting, fearful, confused, resentful, outraged, insecure, arrogant mind with its parade of useless, destructive thoughts, worries, conspiracies, delusions, desires and distractions?
To claim and identify with our deeper self, our infinite heart and soul, we must learn to transcend the boundaries of our limited, finite self, in particular the limiting thoughts, beliefs and prejudices that constitute our perception of our mind.
Our biggest challenge in transcending the mind, is that our mind has captured our sense of identity. We think and act as though we are the mind, rather than we have the mind. So often when we say “I”, we are really referring not to our deeper, spiritual self but to our little, finite mind. We say, “I think this” and “I believe that” when really it is our mind which thinks and believes these things – and there’s a good chance it will think and believe something different tomorrow.
When we identify as our mind, we are attaching ourselves to a temporary unreality and pretending to be something we are not – something much weaker, smaller, fleeting, far less significant, beautiful and powerful than our real self.
We cannot hope to control the thoughts of our mind until we overcome the notion that we are our mind, for we cannot detach ourselves from our own identity.
Before launching into any method or means of controlling our thoughts, we must first
learn to detach our conscious awareness from our mind. Repeat the mantra: “I am not the mind, I am not the mind.”
Especially when we are new to meditation, this question constantly arises. Here is Sri Chinmoy’s answer:
“We can easily know whether we are meditating well or not just by the way we feel and see and think. Right after our meditation, if we have a good feeling for the world, then we know our meditation was good. If we see the world in a loving way in spite of its imperfections, if we can love the world even while seeing its teeming imperfections, then we know that our meditation was good. And if we have a dynamic feeling right after meditation, if we feel that we came into the world to do something, to become something, this indicates that we have done a good meditation.
“But the easiest way to know if we have had a good meditation is to feel whether Peace, Light, Love and Delight are coming to the fore from within. Each time Light comes forward, or Love comes forward, or Peace or Delight comes forward, the whole body will be surcharged with that divine quality. When we have this experience, we know that we have done a very good meditation. Each time they come to the fore, we are bound to feel that we are remembering a forgotten story. It is only through meditation that we can remember our forgotten story. This story was written by the seeker himself, by the seeker in us. The story was not written by somebody else. It is our own creation, but we have forgotten it, and it is meditation that brings it back. When we remember this story we are overjoyed that we have created such a beautiful story and that this is our life story.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We know that early morning is the best time to meditate. We also know that when we do NOT meditate in the morning, our day never flows as smoothly or happily.
Never mind the obstacles and challenges of meditation itself – battling with the mind’s fears, doubts, distractions – for some, the greatest difficulty is just making it to the starting line. Sleep is a gargantuan force of nature and the delicious comfort of a warm bed can easily mesmerise our will.
Getting out of bed in the morning starts the previous night. Before you go to bed, at the close of your evening meditation, consciously visualise and eagerly anticipate your next morning’s blissful meditation. Keep this thought in mind as you go to sleep, that you are only pausing your meditation journey and will resume soon.
Keep a loud alarm on the other side of the room from your bed, so you are forced to get up when it sounds. Shake off sleep, or toss it aside. Water awakens our consciousness – take a shower or wash your face with cold water. Change your clothes before meditating, as your nightwear carries a strong vibration of sleep. Keep moving with some walking, stretching or simple calisthenics. Physical movement is like a spark plug to ignite our dynamic will. Recite aloud or sing some simple aphorism or song which gives you joy. Never meditate in, on or facing your bed.
Sri Chinmoy suggests imagining that you have already slept for 24 hours, to convince the mind that more sleep is completely unnecessary.
Imagine that the being you love more than anyone in the world is calling you urgently to be with them, and you must hurry there. This being is your soul and to heed this call, your only necessity.
In ancient times, Spiritual Masters encouraged their disciples to meditate in the early hours of the morning, at 3am, 4am or even 2am. From Vedic times, this early hour was called “Brahma Muhurta” – the Hour of God, as it was believed to be the most propitious hour to silence the mind and enter into the deepest meditation.
Most people nowadays find it impractical or impossible to meditate at what ironically, is referred to as an “ungodly hour”. Just because we do not routinely meditate at the Brahma Muhurta does not disqualify us from leading a spiritual life: whatever time we are able to get up in the morning, that is the time to meditate. Nevertheless, it is well worth experiencing the palpable benefits of a very early morning meditation whenever the opportunity arises.
Sri Chinmoy explained the practical reason why early morning is the most effective time to meditate:
“Once the day dawns, Mother Earth becomes divinely energetic or undivinely restless. Especially in the West, because of its present dynamic nature, there is some feeling of irritation in the cosmos, or in the outer nature. These restless qualities of the world do not have to enter into you, but usually they do. When people move around, immediately their vibration enters into you, no matter where you are. The air, the light, has already been corrupted by human toil, human anxieties. The world is standing in front of you like a roaring lion. How can you enter into your highest meditation in front of a roaring lion? But, if you can meditate before nature starts functioning, when the cosmos is still and the entire universe is taking rest, then you will be able to get a more powerful concentration and a deeper meditation.”
– Sri Chinmoy
