Dear Friends,
I just came back from learning three ways to meditate. It was at the library in Davis, that little college town 20 minutes from here. I didn’t want to get into a religious thing, just to learn more about meditating. You know I’ve been meditating off and on since I was 17, so it’s a part of me. It’s one of those back burner things that I want to bring to the forefront of my life.
There were eight of us sitting around a table in the dimly-lit library meeting room. With the lights on low it felt intimate. A woman and her husband (I’ve forgotten their names.) organized this. She gave a brief introduction of each method, and then led us in practicing it. We each had some wooden beads and a card with words on it -- each of them a Sanskrit way to say God.
So, three ways to meditate:
1. Breathing
You sit down and relax and then you say the word (Gauranga was ours) silently to yourself when you breathe in and then say it out loud when you breathe out.
2. Beads (also called Japa)
On each bead you say your mantra out loud. I lost count on the beads, but it doesn’t take long — maybe three minutes. *
3. Group meditation (Kirtan)
You sing or chant the mantra. First the leaders sing it, then the group sings it, over and over. This was beautiful. Her booklet says you can sing mantras to any tune you like, with or without musical instruments. Maybe I can work my ukulele in somehow …
Love,
k
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