I see so many advertisements on “mindfulness” meditation. No offense to its promoters, but it always sounds so strange to me. To think that I would sit down in meditation, only to be filled by, surrounded by, comforted by, the mind?

Of all things?

Can I really depend on my mind to fill me with peace? Is it not it itself that is causing a lack of peace? The last thing I want to do when I go into a serious meditation time is to be mind-full. The mind is what I am trying to get away from, to become less full of, less influenced by.

It is a different matter if one needs to sit and contemplate. This is a different sort of meditation that could more accurately be called, contemplation. Sitting down to think on something, sort out a personal issue, is one thing. Disciplines of introspective study can help with meditation in the long run, but there is a clear difference between the two activities.

As for actual meditation, yogic style, we are left without the mind to be full of. Instead we become full of a self-awareness beyond the constant urges of the mind. We begin to have an inkling of ourselves without the mind.

Patanjali’s meditation requires mindLESSness. The mind is required to sit down and shut up. Like an ornery student in a classroom.

I am mindFULL when I am working. I am mindfull when I am driving, speaking, acting. The mind is always on call, always on duty. It’s how we live in this world.

However, it is within Patanjali’s samyam meditation, limbs 6, 7 &8, where I finally force the mind off-duty and into a state of quiescence. Then, I, myself, can actually sense myself and not just more stuff that fills the mind space.

In mindful meditation one would sit in the midst of the overwhelming influence of mind, become the mind, contemplate and examine the mind and ultimately remain identified as the mind.

In mindless meditation, the core-self (atma) is separated (kaivalyam) from the mind stuff and given the opportunity to sense itself as a singularity, without the mind, memories or intellect.

Mindless meditation is exactly what Patanjali was talking about: a mindless journey to the bare self and its life beyond birth and death.