Independent Perspective News

Translation by Carolina Friszman.

Coming to the point of silencing the mind takes effort, but for those who practice it, it is worth it: they all asure they have enhanced their relationships with others, they sleep better, they are alert to the truly important things. In times of crisis, attaining universal conscience seems to be a way out.

Not every Argentinian dreams of emigrating, in these times of collapse and confusion. There is a growing group who chooses to go to the inside, that zone of themselves where everything is silence, peace and quiet, where it is possible to assimilate, at least for a moment, to that what spiritual masters call "universal" conscience.

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The Eastern meditation techniques have a few decades of history in the country, but now the depth of the crisis puts them on the spot as an ideal way to cope with conflicts calmly and increment the opportunities of understanding.

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Being able to silence our mind and become a witness of our thoughts and feelings to identify up to what extent they condition us: such is the challenge implied in meditation. "The aim of the practice is to gradually free oneself from the chains of worldly experience", says Shambu, a yoga instructor at the Sivananda Center.

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"There are four basic activities all human being does: eating, sleeping, working and having fun. There is a fifth - meditation, and it can make the other four's quality change radically, since it is a way to find the balance", explains Jorge Bustamante, founder of the first dojo zen in Argentina.

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What is essential is to be present in every level of life, accepting things the way they are. When meditating one seats in front of oneself, and faces issues one cannot or does not want to face".

Among all meditation practices, the zen path is known for being the most severe: "There is no way to attain the collective subconscious and going through the dark corner of personal subconscious without firmness and determination", argues Bustamante.

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Since 1968, when the first transcendental meditation center in the country was opened, some twenty thousand Argentinian people have been trained in this technique, developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. "In practice, it constits of tracing the development of a thought to its source, achieving a state of mental silence, which can't be done forcing the mind or imagining things, but only through a mechanical procedure -explains Germán Martina, a homeopath doctor and the president of the Argentinian Association of Transcendental Meditation-. It is a technique to develop the human potential that is neither concentration nor contemplation, two large areas to which all the rest belong."

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The art of not doing

Simply sitting with crossed legs and a straight back, finding an equilibrium between abandonment and alert, with closed or half closed eyes, staying still to notice that we are included in a much larger activity: the activity of Cosmos. It seems easy, but generally it is not.

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"Little by little, meditation left its closure in the field of spirituality, and today it is already taught in other contexts. Anyway, as a person meditates they go deeper and deeper in the disciplines of conscience and so begins their transformation: they start being more patient and capacity to love, and a greater understanding of the world", states Avruj -Ana Inés Avruj, director of the Conscience Without Barriers Center.

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In 1993 a research was carried out in Washington. Scientist John Hagelin linked the intelligence in the basis of all phenomena of the physical world to the intelligence that lies in pure conscience, and compared them. His hypothesis was that when a person tunes in with this essential level of existence, there is an automatic order in tension, stress, chaos and entropy, and that all that emerges through their own physiology. "That was how four thousand people got together to practice transcendental meditation (23 of us were Argentinian) in the same environment, and it resulted in 23% reduction in the crime rate of the city during the two months of the study -recounts Martina- .

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"I began my practice when I was broke -says Jorge Bustamante-, just like Argentina today, after hopes and disappointments" (...)
Jorge was tired of running away: many people were leaving the country then. (...) "Then I realized that instead of going out I had to get in, in myself (...). Meditation is crucial now. If you meditate, you can't fool yourself for too long. And we've lived cheated by our fantasies (the 'I'll take two' in Miami, the 'one peso = one dollar'). We got depressed during the last few months, but now we can find the balance and know ourselves as we really are; accept ourselves as Argentinian and as persons; see our faults and talents, and start working from there."