Every Hindu child has seen the picture: a sage seated cross-legged under a tree, back straight, eyes half closed, utterly still. It is the oldest image of our religion, older than the temples, and it is a picture of someone doing nothing at all. The tradition calls what that sage is doing dhyana, and it has spent three thousand years describing what it is, how to do it, and what gets in the way.
That matters, because meditation has become a word that means almost anything. In the Hindu understanding it means something particular: a mind brought to rest on a single object until the mind and the object are all that remain. It is a skill, taught in steps, and the steps are not secret.
Where dhyana sits among the eight limbs
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the tradition's handbook of the mind, describe eight limbs (ashtanga) of yoga. The first five are preparation: yama and niyama (ethical restraints and observances), asana (a steady seat), pranayama (regulation of the breath) and pratyahara (drawing the senses inward). The last three are the inner work, and they are not three practices but three depths of one.
Dharana is concentration: fixing the mind on one place, whether a point in the body, an image or a sound. Dhyana is meditation: when that fixing no longer needs effort and attention flows toward the object without a break, as oil pours in a continuous stream. Samadhi is absorption: when the sense of "I am meditating on this" drops away and only the object shines. Patanjali gives all three in a handful of words:
Concentration is binding the mind to one place. Meditation is the unbroken flow of awareness toward that place. Absorption is when only the object shines forth, as if the mind were empty of its own form. (Yoga Sutras 3.1 to 3.3)
The practical point is that nobody starts with dhyana. One starts with dharana, which is effortful and keeps failing, and dhyana is what dharana becomes with time.
The Gita's instructions
The sixth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is the oldest plain-language guide to meditation most Hindus will ever read, and it is strikingly concrete. Krishna tells Arjuna to find a clean, quiet place and a seat neither too high nor too low, covered in the traditional way with kusha grass, a deerskin and a cloth (a folded blanket does the same job today). He is to hold body, head and neck erect and still, and to keep his gaze steady rather than letting the eyes wander.
Then come two verses every beginner should take to heart. Yoga is not for one who eats too much or too little, Krishna says, nor for one who sleeps too much or stays awake too much; it is for the person who is moderate in food and recreation, in effort, in sleep and waking (6.16 and 6.17). The body is the instrument, and an instrument that is stuffed, starved or exhausted will not hold a note.
And then the image the whole chapter is remembered for:
As a lamp in a windless place does not flicker, so is the likeness given of the yogi whose mind is controlled, practising union with the Self. (Bhagavad Gita 6.19)
Arjuna answers for every practitioner. The mind, he says, is restless, turbulent, strong and obstinate; holding it is as hard as holding the wind (6.34). Krishna does not disagree. It is hard to restrain, he says, but it can be done by abhyasa (practice) and vairagya (dispassion), and whenever the mind wanders off, one simply brings it back (6.26, 6.35). That one instruction, repeated for a lifetime, is the whole method.
What to meditate on
The tradition is generous about objects. Patanjali himself says the mind may be steadied by meditation on anything one finds agreeable (1.39). Three objects are the most common.
- A form. Build the image of one's ishta devata, the chosen deity, in the mind's eye: Krishna with the flute, Shiva on Kailasa, the Devi on her lion. Start at the feet and move upward, feature by feature, then hold the whole. When the image fades, rebuild it.
- A mantra. Repeat a mantra silently, letting the sound rather than its meaning carry the mind. Om is the universal choice; Patanjali calls it the expression of Ishvara and says its repetition, with reflection on its meaning, turns the awareness inward (1.27 to 1.29). A guru mantra received at initiation is used the same way.
- The breath. Watch the breath enter and leave at the nostrils without changing it. Patanjali lists attention to the exhalation and the pause after it among his methods for calming the mind (1.34). This is the object most newcomers find easiest.
Two further practices deserve mention. Trataka, described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika among the cleansing practices, is steady gazing at a single point, usually the flame of a ghee lamp, until the eyes water; the eyes are then closed and the after-image held in the mind. It is a bridge between the outer lamp of the puja and the inner lamp of 6.19.
And there is the Upanishadic way of neti neti, "not this, not this". Here the object is approached by subtraction. One asks what the Self is and sets aside, one by one, everything it is not: not the body, which is observed; not the breath, which is observed; not the thoughts, which come and go while something watches them. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad describes the Self this way, as what remains when every description has been refused. It suits those drawn to jnana, the path of knowledge, though most teachers advise learning to hold a form first.
The obstacles, and the traditional answers
Patanjali is frank that it goes wrong. In Yoga Sutra 1.30 he lists nine obstacles that scatter the mind: illness, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, craving, mistaken perception, failure to reach a stage, and inability to stay in a stage once reached.
His answers in the following sutras are practical rather than mystical. Practise one thing and keep to it rather than changing objects (1.32). Cultivate friendliness toward the happy, compassion toward the suffering, gladness toward the virtuous and equanimity toward the wicked, because a mind at war with other people cannot be at rest (1.33). Work with the breath (1.34). And underneath all of these, practice done for a long time, without interruption and with sincere care becomes firmly grounded (1.14). To this the tradition adds the same place and hour each day, a light stomach, and the dawn and dusk sandhya times when the household is quiet.
Dhyana and mindfulness
Modern mindfulness grew out of Buddhist meditation and was deliberately made secular; it teaches a non-judging attention to the present moment, and it is used in hospitals and schools for stress and attention. Hindus can practise it without conflict, and many of its techniques are the same as ours.
The difference is in the aim. Dhyana is not meant to make one a calmer version of oneself; it is meant to reveal what the self is. It is directed toward an object, and ultimately toward the Self or toward God. The open-awareness style of mindfulness has a cousin in what the tradition calls sakshi bhava, the attitude of the witness; but the witness in our texts is not a technique, it is the Atman, and recognising it is the goal of the whole journey. Mindfulness, one might say, is dharana offered to the world. Dhyana is dharana offered to God.
A ten-minute routine to begin
- Prepare (one minute). Wash hands and face. Sit facing east or north on a folded blanket, cross-legged, or on a chair with the feet flat. Spine upright, hands on the knees or in the lap, eyes closed or softly lowered.
- Settle (two minutes). Take five slow breaths, letting the exhale be a little longer than the inhale. Say Om once, aloud, and listen to it fade.
- Hold the object (six minutes). Choose one object for the month: the breath at the nostrils, the silent repetition of Om or your family's mantra, or the form of your ishta devata. When the mind wanders, and it will, notice without irritation and return. The return is the practice.
- Close (one minute). Let the object go. Sit for a few breaths in the quiet that is left. Offer the sitting to your deity, bow, and get up slowly.
Do this daily at the same hour, and lengthen it by a minute a week when that feels natural. Krishna's promise is modest and reliable: the mind that is brought back each time it wanders does at last come to rest.