A Lecture on Meditation with Swami Sitaramananda

In my life I have received so many blessings, not least of which has been learning Vedantic Philosophy and the deeper practices of Yoga from Swami Sitaramananda, or Swami Sita.  A few weeks ago I was in Los Angeles taking another course in Touch for Health, and by divine intervention Swami Sita was visiting the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Los Angeles for the weekend.  Most of the year she lives at the Sivananda Yoga Farm in Grass Valley and she is director of the Sivananda Organization on the West Coast.  She is a fascinating character, a Vietnamese refugee who moved to Canada with her family as a teenager.  As a young adult working as a social worker she discovered Swami Vishnudevananda and the Sivananda Organization.  She know dedicates her life to teaching others about meditation, the nature of the mind, Vedic Astrology and other yoga topics.  Recently she has begun to travel back to Vietnam to teach yoga there.  I would like to share with you some of the insights from the question and answer session on the topic of meditation at the Los Angeles Center.

For me, the most important statement of the evening was, "Self acceptance is the basis of all yoga practice."  Often when we practice meditation, our expectations of the experience are very lofty and our judgements of ourselves are very harsh.  She talked about releasing our expectations of the experience of meditation, in a sense lowering this concept we have set up in the clouds.  There is no particular experience we should be having in meditation, instead she recommends being open to outcome and experiencing meditation (and life) as a wonderful journey and to be happy to be on this adventure.  Having expectations is filling the mind with thoughts about who we think we are and what we think we should be doing.  But Meditation is the opposite of thinking through your problems and your life.  Swami Sita says "You cannot find solutions for your life from your mind...Mediation is the journey of letting go and opening up to grace..the continuous flow of the presence of god. You cannot open to god if you are too full, full of yourself."  We cleanse this fullness of thought and expectation through devotion and love, love of everything and everyone.   This includes loving ourselves, and she talked about treating our own selves like a young child that needs encouragement and compassion, elevating our concept of our own selves.  In this way we begin to bring these two things, our concept of meditation and our concept of our selves, on a more even level.  

Someone asked a question about detachment versus indifference.  She described detachment as coming from deep understanding and indifference as coming from ignorance and fear.  Equanimity, or detachment, means to remain in yourself no matter what, to not get distracted by the variety of names and forms and experiences, to remain grounded in your spirit and detached from the cycles of pain and pleasure constantly present in this life.  In detachment, half of the problem is letting go, the other half is moving towards the right thing.  As she often does, Swami Sita used a metaphor to illustrate the concept.  She spoke of a hot air balloon rising up, it must throw weight overboard in order to rise. 

So too we must detach from what holds us back if we wish to elevate ourselves through yoga. 

In a line of conversation that felt directed at me and my own experimental yogic journey, Swami Sita urged us to remain diligent with a single practice.  She explained that we must follow the instructions for our meditation exactly each time,  giving our mind specific instructions, like training dog.  Repeat the simple steps, don't worry about where it takes you. Give clear instruction and be very simple.   Yoga is not about choices or varieties of experiences, but instead you must develop a single practice, one path, one method, one teacher.  Don't mix it up with different practices.  And again a great metaphor, You can't be married to ten men...you have to choose one!  Transcend your likes and dislikes so you can go to the core.  And she gave a great technique to develop your will power, do something you don't like and refrain from something you do like. 

I wish my summary could have the power and organization of Swami Sitas talk, but hopefully from my attempt you can recover some gem to help you in your practice.

Namaste!