A yogi practicing meditation moves from the state of anxiety about his work, his life, and his situations to a state where he starts realizing the futility of nurturing these disturbing, negative emotions.

With the negativity and such distractions out of the way, the person can now concentrate and solely focus on the positive sides to his life - his work, his goals, etc. Meditation trains the yogi's mind to remain calm in the face of both negative as well as positive situations.

The objectivity that meditation helps achieve brings about a sense of equanimity to the yogi's view of life.

Taken one step further, this means that meditation could, as the ancient scriptures say, enable a person to answer the fundamental introspective questions about his being, something that has intrigued sages and men of wisdom through ages - Who am I and why am I here in the world?

Meditation is about Bringing Out the Best in a Person

Meditation brings out the best of a person's being. How does it do this? In a state of deep meditation, a person's mind is cleansed, and empty. That empty state is the ideal space for new ideas and initiatives. Thus meditation enables a person to live at his full potential, making use of his physical and mental faculties in the best possible way.

It enables him to discover his position, his standing, in his world. It also gives him a sharper awareness of his duties and responsibilities. His goals and aims in life, the very purpose of his life, become crystal clear. As the sages said in their writings thousands of years ago, the discovery of one's purpose of life is the first step to self-knowledge and enlightenment.

A yogi indulging in meditation rises over the feelings of success and failure, gain and loss, and all else that requires his direct or indirect involvement. Through yoga, he emerges as a karmayogi, the yogi who devotes his life to work without looking forward to rewards or being anxious about the future.

He starts living by the principle - if pleasure is short lived so is pain. For a karmayogi his work and duty are supreme.

Meditation is about Bliss

Meditation is the art of prolonging the vacuum between pleasure and the pain. For instance, if one looks forward to own a brand new car there builds up an excitement in him which pushes him to work and save more.

The day he is able to buy the car of his choice is also the day when the excitement in him is the highest. The degree of joy starts tapering from the moment he gets behind the steering wheel. The joy of owning the new car is, for all intents and purposes, momentary. Not very long after that moment when he feels the pleasure of owning the new car, he is back to the same level of 'delight' or 'no delight' he felt when he was driving his old car.

All the effort put in with the object of deriving the pleasure is a waste once that moment of pleasure is past. The moment when the pleasure of ownership ends, and when one it is not attached or involved with the object, is the precise moment one is in meditation as far as the object is concerned, according to the scriptures.

So the ideal thing to do would be to prolong that moment of pleasure so that it is present every day of the person's life. Translated to higher things than a car, this would be what is called a state of bliss. It is quite unlike the excitement about the new and the unknown, which builds up only to come to an inevitable end.

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