What Is Meditation? Presence and Awareness

What is meditation, and how is it different from concentration? Umesh Guruji gives a simple answer: meditation is being in the present. It is not a technique kept for a cushion, but a state of mind that can grow slowly through the whole of life.

Meditation is not concentration

In Hindi meditation is called dhyaan, and Umesh Guruji keeps it distinct from ekagrata, concentration. Concentration fixes the mind on one point. Meditation goes the other way: every sense is open, you feel everything, and you feel connected with yourself, with others and with the universe. In that state, he says, the separation between "I and you" fades, and so does the line between past and future: "all is there in the present."

Being in the present

For Umesh, "life is the present". The past cannot be changed and the future cannot be touched directly; both are shaped by what you do now. So meditation is not only sitting still. Drinking water and feeling it, eating and tasting the food, breathing, walking, looking at nature: each becomes meditation when done fully. He speaks of living with less tension and anger.

Do you need a teacher?

Asked whether a beginner needs someone to teach them, Umesh answers that no physical guru is required: a teacher can only show a way into the present. Painting, music, swimming or sports can be your meditation, if they bring you into the present. He rules out one shortcut, drugs, which he says harm the mind. The lesson on yoga follows the same thread of connection.