Meditative vs Meditation

Uni-tasking: Mental hygiene, possibly

I walked straight into the Long Island Sound this week, in my hiking sneakers, unintentionally. With a brief show of higher temps, a beach walk called, and I answered. I got low, saw a captivating junction of shore and sea, shot a mesmerizing video. I stood up, walked while shooting another angle and was ankle deep before I knew it.

Meditation is classically a calm mind choosing a benefical focal point and holding itself there. Was that what I was doing? Noooo. Although it may check some boxes, it was meditative, not meditation. My mind was calm. It chose a beneficial focal point. It held itself there. And then, nature seduced me, it chose me, and it won me over. I had a device. And I was posting an IG story.

Fortunately, I wasn’t in a precarious situation like some highly unfortunate ones. One can fall off a cliff doing such things. Become overtaken by a wave. Walk into traffic. Cause a fire. Neglect parental duties. A meditation prerequisite we teach in our Yoga Teacher Training program is that you having no pressing or pending issues active while you are meditating. No pot of water boiling on the stove, parking meters to be fed, children waiting to be picked up at school, impending deadlines. It all counts as distractions to be warded off during meditation, so carve out the safe space.

In a society that encourages multitasking, as well as uses it at a gauge for your capability and worth, be a unitasker, whenever dharma-appropriate, safe and possible. Yoga is a unitask. While it may feel like engaging jalamdhara bandha, utilizing ujjayi, inhaling from the chest to the abdomen, pausing, exhaling from the abdomen to the chest, pausing all the while focusing on the sun and chant om suryaya namah is multitasking, Yoga assures us, it’s citta vrtti nirodha. And it’s great for your holistic health, from mental, to immunological, to gastro-intestinal, to behavioral and beyond.

Differences between meditative and meditation are only subtle when we aren’t privy to Yoga’s teachings about Meditation. Once we study and practice, it’s clear. While a multitude of common activities can be meditative, stand alone practices in-and-of-themselves and even mesmerizing, few are meditation.

Take grocery shopping for example. Preparing and cooking a meal. Kissing a lover. Driving through an Autumn landscape. Swimming. A de-accelerated asana practice. Playing golf. Dancing to music. Studying for an exam. Fixing a flat. Eating a meal. In each of these cases, instruments are required and/or movement is involved. Although the mind is unidirectional, foremost is it a sattvic mind? Secondarily, is the mind the medium we are using, or are we using the body and/or an instrument?

These are clues to help us determine. When the object is pulling us, as in a video game, and we are on a roller coaster of desire driving us, as in a substance, activity or even person we are addicted to, that disqualifies the experience. Anything we are doing to streamline our attention can be meditative, not meditation. The very process via which we refine our minds is meditation, channelling the deeper, stiller mind in one direction and keeping it there.