A Million Thoughts

A wonderful book for anyone who wants to learn how to meditate.

I think that Om Swami is one of the best people to learn meditation from. His insights and realizations are coming from the direct experience and the skillset that he developed during his sadhana. He spent thousands of hours meditating, alone in the Himalayan wilderness, among the wild animals and insects.

He became one with the divine, and in this book, he tells us what he did to accomplish that, including his 18 to 22 hours of deep intense meditation every single day for 7 months, eating snow in the middle of the night when there was nothing else to eat, living in a small rotten wooden shack, where there was only a little bed, a tiny mirror and after a while the only nice thing among the rats, spiders, scorpions and those extreme conditions in the winter, was his empty and peaceful mind, which, as a matter of fact, was enough to recontextualize everything in his experience.

He tells us a couple of types of meditation, including concentrative meditation, contemplative meditation, mantra meditation, etc. He talks about the posture, environment, correct mindset and many obstacles that come in the way of the meditator, especially the beginner one, and gives us instructions on how to overcome them, especially restlessness and dullness.

Also, he emphasizes the concentration aspect. Concentration is the most important part of walking the meditation path. If one has a poor concentration ability, meditation will be a weak one. A strong concentration is the foundation of good meditation, thats why it is suggested that we should exercise our concentrating abilities separately and he tells us exactly how to do that.

He also touches upon the topics of being alone, silence, listening and gives us examples from his own life.

Om swami has a wonderful sense of humor too, so the book is full of amusing stories, and jokes that make this book very fun to read.

In short, I think this is a must-read for everyone who tries to learn how to meditate.