Breathing Meditation VS Mantra Meditation What type of meditation is good for me and how to meditate? These are fundamental questions that almost everyone has. What I am going to do in this short video clip is to give you the different possibilities. First I will give a description of the theories behind meditation. For instance, there is a breathing technique, which is considered to be one of the very powerful techniques. Breathing techniques are known by different names, like breath awareness or looking at the flow of the breath in and out, counting the breath. Or taking into consideration the different types of breath, like prana, apana, dyana, udhana ~ there are 10 kinds of breath and Patanjali talks about the prana and udhana and what kind of power you will get by observing on this breath. The Buddha is reported to have told his so Just watch your breath. Just put your full attention on the breath -- how it goes in and how it goes out. This is all you have to do for one hour a day. And if you lose the attention within that one hour period, then you will have to start again. You can see how hard it i o be conscious of every breath that goes in and out in one hour. Of course, one would certainly be enlightened if one can do that but it is almost impossible to be aware of the breath all the time. But the breathing technique is a profound technique because what is happening in the breathing technique is you are trying to understand the mind and the soul principles. First of all, the soul is pure consciousness; the mind is impure consciousness. So the mind comes out of the soul. So, they are vibration he soul is a vibration and the mind is a vibration. Focusing attention on the breath has relationship with the soul's vibration and the mind's vibration because the mind and the breath are related to one another. Either you can put your attention on your mind or on the breath. This is what happens when you are doing a breathing technique. When you are doing a breathing technique, what happens i he mind goes away; it goes to somewhere thinking another thought or to multiple thoughts. So as soon as mind awareness comes, breath awareness goes away. And it would be a great thing if you can have control of the breath and breath awareness; and then you can be like a Swara Yogi. Swara is the life principle. Because breath is really the life principle or it is also the mind principle. In Swara yoga, if you read the Swara Yoga, which is a conversation between Siva and Parvati, you can even understand the future, not only about you but about other people who come to you. So by just looking at the Swara that runs through either the left or right nostril, the Swara Yogi will be able to predict the mind of the person who has come to see you. So that is how powerful is Swara yoga. But then the difficulty is how can anyone who has a lot of other obligations in life, be able to be a Swara Yogi or even, for that matter, be able to focus attention on the breath. Just think about the prana and we do not even know the distinction betweeen prana and oxygen. So these are complications. So at least prana has part of the oxygen. That we can accept reasonably, but prana is simply not oxygen. So you are not watching the flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide. That is not pranyama. It is, partly, but it is more than that. Then what is prana? So, In order to understand the breathing technique, you have to ask the fundamental question. Not many people have asked this question, so if you want to really properly understand this question, 'what is Prana?' The Prana comes from Pranava. Pranava is the soun m So it is from the Om Sound, life energy starts. so when you are able to go to the very fundamental vibration, and able to perceive it, experience it, when the mind has disappeared, then you have access to the experience of the Pranava. Pranava is the fundamental vibration of the world. It is a sound vibration of Ah, Ooh, Ma, otherwise called in Samasti form as OM. And from that OM, which is very unmanifest, you have the sound, origin of Prana. It all takes place at a very subtle level. So, Prana starts from Pranava. Pranava is the sound vibration of OM or 'Ah, Oo, Ma'. When you are able to focus on this Pranava, then you will understand the entire Cosmos, because the entire cosmos is only the expression of Pranava. So there is only, on the one hand the Pranava and on the other hand, the Prana. It is easier to go to the Pranava rather than to Prana, for most people. Unless you have in a previous lifetime, you have mastered the Pranyama or sometimes called Swara Yoga or Vasi Yoga. That's another matter, because of the old background from another lifetime that you will be able to appreciate this Pranyama, breath Kriya, Swara Yoga, Vasi Yoga, or Sudharsana Kriya; all these are different names of the breath awareness within the Zen and Buddhist traditions; they all belong to understanding the breathing. It's fantastic but then again, complications are very involved. How are you going to differentiate prana from apana, from udhana and samana, and the vasavayus, the ten different vayus that are involved in doing different jobs within the body and mind. So people who simply talk about Pranyama do not address the complications or the complexity involved in the Pranyama.1 Now to go back to the relationship between Prana and from Pranava, which is Om or the1 sound vibrations come the Pranava which is the life breath. So, instead of working on1 the breath which is very hard to focus and remember and hold the mind on to it, why don't1 you go to the sound vibration itself which is the Pranav M. Because Pantajali, himself,1 although he was mostly an atheist, accepts God in terms of OM. He says Om is God. He1 can accept that; the Pantajali of the Yoga Sutras. He won't be able to accept different1 Gods like Vishnu, Ganesha or Siva. But he would accept, yes, I can accept OM as God1 because Everything starts with the sound vibrations of OM.1 So why not go to the sound meditation? Not necessarily Om, but there are also meditations1 on different sound patterns that carry different effects on the mind and the body and also1 creating certain events. The vowels all have certain inbuilt energy that create a certain1 affect. "Ah", for instance, is pure consciousness. "Aah", for instance, is a creative principle.1 "Ee" is Icha Shakti, Ooh is Gnana Shakti, etc. So you can see the sounds are involved1 in creating certain impact and involved in creating certain energies within the body1 and mind. That is why I basically prefer doing sound meditation, even if it is a Japa like1 saying God's name, "Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama -- Hari Bol, Hari Bol, Hari Bol", a million1 times, will be a lot easier, let's say if you say it 1008 times, and a lot easier, a1 lot more profitable then watching your breath.1 Higher Vibrations That is why all my meditations are focused1 on using sound waves because you are also, by chanting a sound, you are calling on God.1 Then through the practice of the sound meditations, calling on different Gods, like "Aim" for1 Saraswati or "Shreem" for Lakshmi, you are getting a lot of these sound waves. And, there1 are, of course, many subtilites involved in using the sound waves, and in many sophisticated1 ways. And as I said, even if you are not using the sophisticated ways, just do a Japa. Japa1 just repeating the name of the go Ram Ram Ram" or "Krishna Krishna Krishna." Do it a1 1000 times or 1008 times.1 To me, I think it is much easier to do Japa. I will have another video made on other forms1 of meditations. The other meditations are also very complex and not as easy as the mantra1 meditation, but for the sake of giving you theories I will make another video for you.