By Diana Diaz
Have you ever turned down the music so that you can concentrate on the road? Closed your eyes so you can hear something better?
From right where you are, take a moment and look around you. Mentally list five things you can see. Then, list four things you can hear. Three things you can touch. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste.
Notice that when you were focusing your attention on the single sense, the other ones faded into the background. What you just did is called Pratyahara, a Sanskrit word meaning “withdrawal of the senses.”
What does this have to do with our meditation practice? It’s a common belief that in order to meditate, you must empty your mind of all thought. However, the brain thinks and the mind is full of thoughts. That’s just how it is. Trying – and failing – to force emptiness has made many think they cannot meditate.
Let’s go back to the senses. According to Rev Jaganath Carrera, the senses are portals through which input reaches the mind. They are like super-excited children on a candy-shopping spree, with an unlimited budget. They’re grabbing and demanding and pulling the parent, our MIND, in all sorts of directions: I smell cookies! Oh, it’s cold! I love that song! This is delicious! Squirrel! Not the ideal state for meditation.
Pratyahara brings attention within by withdrawing attention from ambient sound, aromas, and other external distractions. Pratyahara’s primary importance lies in freeing up the mind from sensory stimuli so that it can move within. And that’s necessary groundwork for meditation. Trying to practice meditation without pratyahara is like trying to hold water in a leaky vessel. No matter how much we bring in, it flows out again. Unless we seal off the holes, the mind cannot be still.
The trouble is: the mind resists blocking out all sensory input, the very skill we need in order to achieve deeper states of meditation. This is why pratyahara is practiced. It brings the senses back to their source: the still nature of the mind. Like a turtle withdrawing its head and limbs into its shell, we return to peace and tranquility. After successfully practicing pratyahara, what remains are subconscious impressions arising as memories that don’t require ANY input from the outside world. And that lays a perfect foundation for meditation.
So if you find yourself alternating between periods of meditation and periods of sensory indulgence, you likely need to practice pratyahara.
Okay, cool, but how do we practice pratyahara?
Vyasa’s commentary on the Yoga Sutras uses another analogy: the mind is like the queen bee, and the senses are like worker bees. Wherever the queen bee goes, all the other bees must follow.
Most of us suffer from sensory overload and don’t even know it. We are constantly bombarded with bright colors, loud noises, and dramatic sensations. And we have been raised to indulge our senses. We are so accustomed to continual sensory activity that we don’t know how to quiet our minds.
In preparation for mediation, one of the simplest ways to control our impressions is to remove distractors. This can be as simple as sitting to meditate with our eyes closed. We do this in life outside of meditation – for instance, when we’re driving at dusk and really need to pay attention, we might instinctively turn down the radio.
Another method of sense withdrawal is to keep our sense organs open but withdraw our attention from them. This way, the mind can stop engaging with these impressions without actually closing off. One way we can do this is by creating positive, neutral impressions to control the senses. Meditate upon aspects of nature, such as trees, flowers, or rocks.
Positive impressions can also be created by using incense, flames, altars, or statues. Or by gazing upon unchanging, undisturbing things, such as the ocean or a blue sky. Just like we can calm digestive distress by choosing to eat the same foods for a week, we can bring our mind back from sensory bombardment by giving the senses something homogeneous – a color, a sound, a scent.
We can create inner impressions through imagination, imagining the breath as it travels through the lungs, circulates the body, and leaves on an exhale. We can also choose to focus the mind with visualization. Many meditation practices begin with visualizing a deity, a guru, or a setting in nature. These are all forms of pratyahara because they clear away external impressions, and create positive inner impressions as the foundation of meditation. When our physical senses are quiet, we can connect with the subtle, internal rhythms of the body.
Out in the world, pratyahara is about allowing ourselves to take in the right impressions and rejecting the ones that don’t serve us. Many of us are careful about the food we eat and the company we keep, but don’t exercise the same discrimination about the impressions we take in through the senses. We allow things to come to us through mass media that we would never accept in our personal lives. It may seem like just entertainment, but Ayurveda teaches us that sensory impressions are the main food for the mind, and we cannot ignore the role they play in shaping us.
The good news, according to the Yoga Sutras, is the great reward in pratyahara: “through that turning inward of the organs of senses and actions also comes a supreme ability, controllability, or mastery over those senses.”
Pratyahara is actually an education in the proper use of the senses. It isn’t deprivation, but a way to joy, and the ENJOYMENT of sensory pleasures without feeling as though we’re under their control. You master your senses, your meditation, and your life.
