Health & Vitality

Once, while working on a deadline, my computer caught a small persistent virus. The same alert kept reappearing, no matter how many times I dismissed it. Eventually a friend who knew the system walked me through running the right cleanup program, and the machine returned to itself.

The Yoga Sutras describe the mind in terms not so different from those a computer engineer might use. The impressions we absorb through our senses — the vrittis — settle in the mind the way small viruses settle in software. Left alone, they begin to disturb the system. We call the result anxiety.

The mantra as a clearing program

Mantra meditation, in this image, is the cleanup. The holy name, repeated patiently, does not so much wrestle the mind into stillness as gently sweep its accumulated noise. What remains is the calmer field that was always underneath.

"We are not upset about what happens to us; rather, we are upset about what we think is happening to us."

— Epictetus

Studies suggest that nearly half of adults in the West live with high levels of stress, much of it tied to work and money — and stress, untreated, gradually unravels both health and the simple ability to enjoy a day. Mantra meditation will not change the conditions of one's life overnight. But it will, slowly, change the room from which those conditions are met. That is its first quiet gift.

Adapted from a reflection by Vaisesika Dasa.

All our food, in the end, is sunlight that has been gathered up by the green leaves of plants and rearranged into something a body can take in. If the system had been built only for survival, one fruit and one vegetable would have been enough.

Instead, the world hands us thousands. Avocados, figs, mangoes, kale, peas, pomegranates, the whole long catalogue — each with its own taste, its own colour, its own season. None of this was strictly necessary. It was given, it seems, simply as a kindness.

To notice this, even briefly, is itself a small spiritual act. Gratitude, the bhakti tradition suggests, begins right here, at the table, with whatever is in the bowl in front of us.

Om Tat Sat. Adapted from a reflection by Vaisesika Dasa.