Meditation minimizes inner friction and maximizes outer contribution

Transcript

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Hare Krishna. Meditation minimizes inner friction and maximizes outer contribution. Many times people ask, why do you spend so much time on meditation? What is it practically contributing to your life and to the world? Actually, the contribution of meditation in our life cannot be seen immediately at a physical gross level.
We know if we work with machines that if there is internal friction in its parts, then that friction saps away its energy internally. And because of that, the external productivity of that machine decreases. That’s why any intelligent machine operator will use lubrication so as to remove the friction and thereby increase the output of the machine.
So we also have a machine. The machine is not just the body that we use for a functioning. The machine is also the mind.
The mind is often subject to friction due to various desires, anxieties and distractions. So, for example, I want to do one thing, but my mind is worried about something which I have done and whether it will come out right or not. Or the mind is craving for something which I want to look forward to.
And thus, our energy is a friction between the present, the past and the future. And like that, there can be many forms of friction in our mind between, OK, I want to do this, I want to do this also. A student wants to study, but at the same time, there is also the desire, I want to watch a movie.
And this friction, it saps the energy internally. And when this sort of friction is there, then the outer contribution decreases. Although the student may study for three hours, but the mind is internally, there is a friction between study or to watch a movie.
Then the effective output may not even be worth 30 minutes of actual serious study. But if we do meditation, then that meditation enables us to focus on one thing. So especially among different forms of meditation, mantra meditation is especially powerful because it helps us to focus not just on any one thing, but on God manifesting in a very accessible way through empowered packets of sound vibration that are called as mantras.
Now, when we focus the mind on the holy name during mantra meditation, then that not only concentrates the mind, giving it a habit of concentration, but it also purifies the mind by which the lower distracting forces within the mind get suppressed. So anxiety about the, so lamenting grief about the past, anxiety about the future, craving because of various stray desires, all these get suppressed, all these get controlled, eventually eliminated. And that’s how whatever time we invest in chanting, in mantra meditation, that actually helps us later on to maximize our contribution.
So a student instead of struggling to study for three hours, if the 20 minutes of meditation, then even a reduced two hours of study will give far greater output. Because the quality of concentration will be much more and therefore, the quality of the output will be far greater. And even more importantly, the meditation in the form of chanting the holy names of God gives us eternal benefit also.
It purifies us and helps us to attain the eternal happiness in loving relationship with God, the eternal happiness that we are constantly craving for. And that eternal happiness is life’s ultimate achievement. So in this way, meditation by decreasing inner friction maximizes outer contribution.
Thank you.