Dharana
Mental concentration
The mind can choose
The human mind continuously receives information about the outer world through the five "gates" of the senses: smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. Among the data received through a certain sense, the mind can select only those that are of interest at a given time. This selection is realized through focusing the attention upon that particular data and ignoring the other unimportant data.
The more the attention is focused upon a certain sense, the more the amount of information received through that sense increases and the information coming from other senses becomes ‘less important’ and can even be completely ignored by the mind.
A special characteristic of the human mind is the capacity of focusing the attention toward the inner world of feelings, thoughts and ideas. More than that, the human mind can be focused even upon itself -- this fact is of paramount importance, because it creates the possibility of controlling the mind.
This faculty of the human mind to modify at will the orientation of the conscious attention is the basic mechanism of mental concentration (dharana).
Defining the concept
"To concentrate" means to reunite into a center, to gather, to focus. Mental concentration (dharana) means to focus the mind upon a unique object without allowing it (the mind) to jump to another object for a determined period of time. The opposite of concentration is dispersion, scattering. In this case, the mind jumps uncontrolled from one object to another fixing itself to nothing. Unfortunately, this is the mental condition of most people nowadays.
The yoga theory of perception
When an outer object (artha) is perceived, the mind ‘takes the shape’ of that object. This is called a vritti.
The mind as vritti is thus an inner representation of the outer object. The initial object is called the ‘gross object’ and the mental impression is the ‘subtle object’. But besides the object, there is an aspect of the mind which perceives.
It follows that the mind has two aspects: vritti (the cognized) and the perceiver (the cognizer).
Because the mind is thus ‘transformed’ into the shape of the object perceived, the mind which meditates on a Deity, for example, is, at length, through continued concentration, transformed into the likeness of that Deity, becomes as pure and powerful as the Deity. This is a fundamental principle of worship.
Mind is movement
"Dharana" means "holding the mind." The Ageless Wisdom considers that "the mind", as we know it, is just a perpetual flow, according to definite laws, of psychic patterns (vritti-s). The train of psychic patterns has an undercurrent of emotions, doubled by a consequent physiological responses.
Actually, the mind is movement. Mind is like the wind: the wind is air movement; when this movement stops, the air is still there, but the wind disappeared. The mental-stuff that remains after the psychic patterns (vritti-s) have been stopped is called citta. When the mental patterns (vritti-s) are stopped, the mind disappears: we enter the no-mind state. No-Mind (which actually means ‘beyond the mind’) is the state of highest creativity and spiritual intuition.
Patanjali defined yoga as follows: yoga [is] citta vritti nirodha.
Yoga Sutra, I, 1
That is, yoga is the gradual stoppage (nirodha) of the vritti-s (mental patterns) of citta.
This sutra contains the essence of the whole yoga Science and the secret of mental concentration.
Maybe ignorance and prejudices make you believe that you cannot concentrate your mind. This is not true! Everybody can concentrate, even deeply, upon an object that is highly interesting for that person. The question is: is this type of concentration the yoga concentration? Even though it can give you helpful hints about the real state of dharana (mental concentration), this is not what yoga understands by concentration.
Intentional focusing
Dharana means to be able to focus at will the mind and to maintain it focused for long periods of time upon any object, even if this object does not spontaneously catch our curiosity.
Don't force it!
For training yourself in dharana, the most important rule is: do not force the mind to stay focused. The mind is like a crazy monkey: the more you try to calm it by force and to make it stay on a definite place, the more it will refuse to do that, doing exactly the opposite: jumping even more crazily form one place to another. Therefore start focusing the mind very softly upon the chosen object and when it jumps to another object just bring it back calmly and patiently, with humor and compassion at your lack of discipline. If you get angry about this continuous mental jumping, this will only increase the mind's tendency to disperse.
The ideal state
Perfect mental concentration implies to focus completely the whole potential of attention -- without using any force or mental / nervous tension -- upon the chosen object for a definite period of time, allowing no dispersion at all. This state is analogous to the phenomenon of focusing sunlight through a lens: the light rays are gathered in a small point, thus enormously increasing their power. Here, the time element is very important: if the light is perfectly concentrated but this state lasts a very short time, nothing can happen. The point of focused light must be maintained continuously a certain time - only after that the effects can appear (for instance, the lighting of a piece of wood). In a similar way, dharana must be maintained a certain period of time: only after that concentration starts the process of resonance with the corresponding cosmic energy and the consequent transfer of that energy into your being. The energy carries feelings and information related to the object of concentration.
How to start
Sit in a comfortable posture with the spine and neck kept straight and vertical. Close your eyes and pass through the following steps:
Relax quickly and deeply from bottom to top. Let your attention swiftly scan your body and release all tensions.
Let your breathing become calm and peaceful.
Turn the attention inward (introversive gaze) and disconnect yourself from the outer disturbing factors (noises, etc.); begin to withdraw the mind from any thoughts that arise (as a result of the activity of the senses) by making a brief but detetrmined effort to stop the discursive thinking;
Concentrate the mind (dharana) upon the object of your choice.
Let's examine in greater detail dharana. Empty your mind of all thoughts. Then bring the chosen object before your inner mind's eye. Don't allow the mind to jump to another object or thought. If this happens, calmly and patiently bring your mind back to your object. This is the only thing you are supposed to do during dharana: to keep the mind focused upon the object. Beware of force or tension! Be calm, open and favorably inclined to concentrate.
Doing nothing
Mental concentration is a static process: during concentration the mind is ‘frozen’, the thinking is stopped, the mental activity is suspended. The only mental movement should be to bring gently the mind back to the chosen object when it jumps away. Mental concentration can be described as "doing nothing". You understand now that it is not laziness, but "just sitting" with a purpose. During dharana, the mind is like a mirror: the only activity is to reflect the object.
"During Concentration (dharana), the mind is like a pure crystal that takes the color of the object upon which it is placed."
Yoga Sutra
Learn to perceive
Consider carefully the object of concentration: approach it with astonishment and childlike curiosity as if you don't know anything about it (do we really know something important about the objects of the outer world?). Do NOT approach the object rationally and/or intellectually, but grasp its essence with your feelings alone or even solely by instinct. Explore the object non-verbally, in a state of alert passivity, purposeless and unconcerned waiting, child-like curiosity and sheer astonishment. There is only you and the object: nothing is expected from you, everything is expected from the object. Therefore sit in a state of continuously euphoric expectation, in the highest state of readiness. This is very important. Let yourself be absorbed into, and by, the object. Do not try to define, to judge or to understand, just consider the object with curiosity as if you see it for the very first time. The very fact that you cannot define exactly the object and do not understand it rationally, opens you toward the object and creates the state of mental receptivity in which intuition ("no-mind" or "superconsciousness", as it is also called) can start to function. By doing so, you will soon discover that the objects of the surrounding world have thousand meanings (that come in flashes). We normally overlook these meanings. Every thing is thus full of a sheer wonder and fascinating mystery that you will start to grasp gradually, everything is sustained by an invisible energy that you will start to feel and effortlessly control.
Mental concentration (dharana) is a modality of starting a process of resonance and attuning with the subtle cosmic energies of which the object of concentration is just a visible manifestation. Don't try to speed up this process: let it start by itself when the time comes.
In this approach, knowledge comes from the object, NOT from the subject (the practitioner). Concentration is lying in wait, watching hyperattentively, like a cat that waits for the mouse to get out from its hiding place: the unforeseen can happen any split second.
Every beginning is difficult
At the beginning, you probably will discover that this exercise fails lamentably. Accept this fact as being perfectly normal. Keep in mind that in yoga there is no lost effort, in other words every effort will bring a result eventually. None of your failed efforts is wasted labor. As the wise saying goes: "The mud is as valuable as the lotus flower that it nourishes."
Every failed try is in fact a step toward success because mental concentration, the same as meditation, has a cumulative effect that comes not only from doing it "well," but also from working consistently on it.
Taming the mind
At the beginning, the mind has very little stability; you find the object and then very swiftly you lose it. The mind wanders elsewhere. After a certain period of practice, sufficient stability arise in mind so that the attention will remain uninterruptedly focused on the object for short periods of time (ten-fifteen seconds, maybe more). Further on, the degree of mental stability becomes even greater than before; the mind can stay constantly focused upon the object with a reasonably good degree of stability and yet, occasionally, it will wander off. Then it will come a stage in which the mind no longer loses the object, because the power of concentration has come to completion. Now, a sustained effort to increase the clarity of mind has to be done. After this, the mind will have a tremendous power. With just the slightest bit of effort, it becomes focused upon the object and continues to abide effortlessly in it for as long as you want. Once you have attained this state, the mind has become an extremely fine instrument for any type of meditation you want to engage in.
It is like you want to ride a wild horse. The first attempts will certainly throw you down. If you persevere enough, you will succeed eventually, and after some time the horse will became a close friend and will obey even your unspoken orders. In this analogy, the wild horse is your mind and concentration is like taming and training the horse. In this respect, continuity is important.
The Mystery of Meditation
The steps of meditation:
• Dharana
• Dhyana
• Samadhi
Samyama - the absorptive meditation
Meditation in Relationship to everyday Life
The mind can choose
The human mind continuously receives information about the outer world through the five "gates" of the senses: smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. Among the data received through a certain sense, the mind can select only those that are of interest at a given time. This selection is realized through focusing the attention upon that particular data and ignoring the other unimportant data.
The more the attention is focused upon a certain sense, the more the amount of information received through that sense increases and the information coming from other senses becomes ‘less important’ and can even be completely ignored by the mind.
A special characteristic of the human mind is the capacity of focusing the attention toward the inner world of feelings, thoughts and ideas. More than that, the human mind can be focused even upon itself -- this fact is of paramount importance, because it creates the possibility of controlling the mind.
This faculty of the human mind to modify at will the orientation of the conscious attention is the basic mechanism of mental concentration (dharana).
Defining the concept
"To concentrate" means to reunite into a center, to gather, to focus. Mental concentration (dharana) means to focus the mind upon a unique object without allowing it (the mind) to jump to another object for a determined period of time. The opposite of concentration is dispersion, scattering. In this case, the mind jumps uncontrolled from one object to another fixing itself to nothing. Unfortunately, this is the mental condition of most people nowadays.
The yoga theory of perception
When an outer object (artha) is perceived, the mind ‘takes the shape’ of that object. This is called a vritti.
The mind as vritti is thus an inner representation of the outer object. The initial object is called the ‘gross object’ and the mental impression is the ‘subtle object’. But besides the object, there is an aspect of the mind which perceives.
It follows that the mind has two aspects: vritti (the cognized) and the perceiver (the cognizer).
Because the mind is thus ‘transformed’ into the shape of the object perceived, the mind which meditates on a Deity, for example, is, at length, through continued concentration, transformed into the likeness of that Deity, becomes as pure and powerful as the Deity. This is a fundamental principle of worship.
Mind is movement
"Dharana" means "holding the mind." The Ageless Wisdom considers that "the mind", as we know it, is just a perpetual flow, according to definite laws, of psychic patterns (vritti-s). The train of psychic patterns has an undercurrent of emotions, doubled by a consequent physiological responses.
Actually, the mind is movement. Mind is like the wind: the wind is air movement; when this movement stops, the air is still there, but the wind disappeared. The mental-stuff that remains after the psychic patterns (vritti-s) have been stopped is called citta. When the mental patterns (vritti-s) are stopped, the mind disappears: we enter the no-mind state. No-Mind (which actually means ‘beyond the mind’) is the state of highest creativity and spiritual intuition.
Patanjali defined yoga as follows: yoga [is] citta vritti nirodha.
Yoga Sutra, I, 1
That is, yoga is the gradual stoppage (nirodha) of the vritti-s (mental patterns) of citta.
This sutra contains the essence of the whole yoga Science and the secret of mental concentration.
Maybe ignorance and prejudices make you believe that you cannot concentrate your mind. This is not true! Everybody can concentrate, even deeply, upon an object that is highly interesting for that person. The question is: is this type of concentration the yoga concentration? Even though it can give you helpful hints about the real state of dharana (mental concentration), this is not what yoga understands by concentration.
Intentional focusing
Dharana means to be able to focus at will the mind and to maintain it focused for long periods of time upon any object, even if this object does not spontaneously catch our curiosity.
Don't force it!
For training yourself in dharana, the most important rule is: do not force the mind to stay focused. The mind is like a crazy monkey: the more you try to calm it by force and to make it stay on a definite place, the more it will refuse to do that, doing exactly the opposite: jumping even more crazily form one place to another. Therefore start focusing the mind very softly upon the chosen object and when it jumps to another object just bring it back calmly and patiently, with humor and compassion at your lack of discipline. If you get angry about this continuous mental jumping, this will only increase the mind's tendency to disperse.
The ideal state
Perfect mental concentration implies to focus completely the whole potential of attention -- without using any force or mental / nervous tension -- upon the chosen object for a definite period of time, allowing no dispersion at all. This state is analogous to the phenomenon of focusing sunlight through a lens: the light rays are gathered in a small point, thus enormously increasing their power. Here, the time element is very important: if the light is perfectly concentrated but this state lasts a very short time, nothing can happen. The point of focused light must be maintained continuously a certain time - only after that the effects can appear (for instance, the lighting of a piece of wood). In a similar way, dharana must be maintained a certain period of time: only after that concentration starts the process of resonance with the corresponding cosmic energy and the consequent transfer of that energy into your being. The energy carries feelings and information related to the object of concentration.
How to start
Sit in a comfortable posture with the spine and neck kept straight and vertical. Close your eyes and pass through the following steps:
Relax quickly and deeply from bottom to top. Let your attention swiftly scan your body and release all tensions.
Let your breathing become calm and peaceful.
Turn the attention inward (introversive gaze) and disconnect yourself from the outer disturbing factors (noises, etc.); begin to withdraw the mind from any thoughts that arise (as a result of the activity of the senses) by making a brief but detetrmined effort to stop the discursive thinking;
Concentrate the mind (dharana) upon the object of your choice.
Let's examine in greater detail dharana. Empty your mind of all thoughts. Then bring the chosen object before your inner mind's eye. Don't allow the mind to jump to another object or thought. If this happens, calmly and patiently bring your mind back to your object. This is the only thing you are supposed to do during dharana: to keep the mind focused upon the object. Beware of force or tension! Be calm, open and favorably inclined to concentrate.
Doing nothing
Mental concentration is a static process: during concentration the mind is ‘frozen’, the thinking is stopped, the mental activity is suspended. The only mental movement should be to bring gently the mind back to the chosen object when it jumps away. Mental concentration can be described as "doing nothing". You understand now that it is not laziness, but "just sitting" with a purpose. During dharana, the mind is like a mirror: the only activity is to reflect the object.
"During Concentration (dharana), the mind is like a pure crystal that takes the color of the object upon which it is placed."
Yoga Sutra
Learn to perceive
Consider carefully the object of concentration: approach it with astonishment and childlike curiosity as if you don't know anything about it (do we really know something important about the objects of the outer world?). Do NOT approach the object rationally and/or intellectually, but grasp its essence with your feelings alone or even solely by instinct. Explore the object non-verbally, in a state of alert passivity, purposeless and unconcerned waiting, child-like curiosity and sheer astonishment. There is only you and the object: nothing is expected from you, everything is expected from the object. Therefore sit in a state of continuously euphoric expectation, in the highest state of readiness. This is very important. Let yourself be absorbed into, and by, the object. Do not try to define, to judge or to understand, just consider the object with curiosity as if you see it for the very first time. The very fact that you cannot define exactly the object and do not understand it rationally, opens you toward the object and creates the state of mental receptivity in which intuition ("no-mind" or "superconsciousness", as it is also called) can start to function. By doing so, you will soon discover that the objects of the surrounding world have thousand meanings (that come in flashes). We normally overlook these meanings. Every thing is thus full of a sheer wonder and fascinating mystery that you will start to grasp gradually, everything is sustained by an invisible energy that you will start to feel and effortlessly control.
Mental concentration (dharana) is a modality of starting a process of resonance and attuning with the subtle cosmic energies of which the object of concentration is just a visible manifestation. Don't try to speed up this process: let it start by itself when the time comes.
In this approach, knowledge comes from the object, NOT from the subject (the practitioner). Concentration is lying in wait, watching hyperattentively, like a cat that waits for the mouse to get out from its hiding place: the unforeseen can happen any split second.
Every beginning is difficult
At the beginning, you probably will discover that this exercise fails lamentably. Accept this fact as being perfectly normal. Keep in mind that in yoga there is no lost effort, in other words every effort will bring a result eventually. None of your failed efforts is wasted labor. As the wise saying goes: "The mud is as valuable as the lotus flower that it nourishes."
Every failed try is in fact a step toward success because mental concentration, the same as meditation, has a cumulative effect that comes not only from doing it "well," but also from working consistently on it.
Taming the mind
At the beginning, the mind has very little stability; you find the object and then very swiftly you lose it. The mind wanders elsewhere. After a certain period of practice, sufficient stability arise in mind so that the attention will remain uninterruptedly focused on the object for short periods of time (ten-fifteen seconds, maybe more). Further on, the degree of mental stability becomes even greater than before; the mind can stay constantly focused upon the object with a reasonably good degree of stability and yet, occasionally, it will wander off. Then it will come a stage in which the mind no longer loses the object, because the power of concentration has come to completion. Now, a sustained effort to increase the clarity of mind has to be done. After this, the mind will have a tremendous power. With just the slightest bit of effort, it becomes focused upon the object and continues to abide effortlessly in it for as long as you want. Once you have attained this state, the mind has become an extremely fine instrument for any type of meditation you want to engage in.
It is like you want to ride a wild horse. The first attempts will certainly throw you down. If you persevere enough, you will succeed eventually, and after some time the horse will became a close friend and will obey even your unspoken orders. In this analogy, the wild horse is your mind and concentration is like taming and training the horse. In this respect, continuity is important.
The Mystery of Meditation
The steps of meditation:
• Dharana
• Dhyana
• Samadhi
Samyama - the absorptive meditation
Meditation in Relationship to everyday Life