What Is Dhyanam? My Understanding of Meditation

For a long time, I thought meditation meant sitting somewhere quietly, closing your eyes, and trying not to think.

Over time, I realised that meditation is much more interesting than that.

For me, meditation is not about following a particular god, religion, belief system, or spiritual authority. I don’t meditate upon a deity. In fact, I would describe myself as somewhere between an atheist and an agnostic. My understanding of meditation has come less from belief and more from attention, observation, experience, and self-realisation.

And interestingly, this relationship with meditation started very early in my life.

My First Introduction to Meditation

My first sense of meditation came from my first school, Saraswathi Vidyanikethan.

At that age, I obviously didn’t have the vocabulary to understand what meditation was or what it could eventually mean to me. I simply experienced certain practices that encouraged silence, attention, discipline, and inward observation.

Later, when I was young, my family also took me to an Asaram. That experience became another early exposure to the idea of meditation and spiritual practices.

But as I grew older, my understanding slowly separated from the religious or spiritual context in which I had first encountered these practices.

I began asking my own questions.

What exactly happens when we pay attention?

Why does the mind constantly jump from one thought to another?

Can we observe a thought without immediately following it?

Can attention itself be trained?

And perhaps most importantly:

Do I need to believe in something supernatural to experience meditation?

For me, the answer became no.

Two Ways of Looking at Meditation

There are at least two very different ways we can understand meditation.

The first is the traditional Indian understanding.

The second is the modern psychological and practical understanding.

They overlap, but they aren’t exactly the same.

The Traditional Perspective

In the Indian contemplative traditions, dhyāna is much deeper than simply relaxing.

The Sanskrit word dhyāna is generally associated with deep contemplation or sustained attention.

In classical Yoga, meditation appears as part of a progression involving dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi.

Dhāraṇā can be understood as concentration: deliberately holding attention on something.

Dhyāna is the continuation and deepening of that attention, where the mind becomes less fragmented and attention flows more continuously toward its object.

Samādhi describes an even deeper state of absorption.

This traditional framework is connected to questions about consciousness, the nature of the self, and reality.

Different Indian traditions interpret these ideas differently, so there isn’t one single definition of meditation across all of Indian philosophy.

For some people, meditation is inseparable from spirituality.

For others, it is a path toward understanding the self.

And for some, it is a religious practice.

The Modern Perspective

Modern meditation is often approached differently.

Today, people may meditate to develop:

better attention
emotional awareness
stress management
relaxation
greater self-awareness
better control over their reactions

Here, you don’t necessarily need to accept any particular spiritual philosophy.

You can simply observe your breathing.

You can observe your thoughts.

You can listen carefully to sounds.

You can notice bodily sensations.

You can practise bringing your attention back whenever it wanders.

From this perspective, meditation becomes a kind of training for attention.

And this is much closer to how I personally understand it.

My Meditation Doesn’t Depend on a Deity

I don’t meditate upon a particular deity.

I don’t need to imagine a god in front of me.

I don’t need to repeat a religious prayer.

My practice is more about attention itself.

Sometimes that attention is directed toward breathing.

Sometimes toward sound.

Sometimes toward the body.

Sometimes toward the environment around me.

One of the practices I particularly enjoy is meditating on the seven swaras — Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa, Da, Ni.

Sound becomes the object of attention.

Instead of trying to create silence, I use sound itself as a doorway into concentration.

You listen.

You notice the differences.

You notice the transition between sounds.

You notice when your mind wanders.

And you return.

There is something fascinating about using sound this way because music already contains rhythm, frequency, repetition, expectation, and attention.

For me, meditation through the swaras feels less like escaping from the world and more like paying extremely close attention to one part of it.

Meditation Is Not About Having No Thoughts

One of the biggest misconceptions I had to overcome was the idea that meditation means having a completely empty mind.

It doesn’t.

Thoughts will appear.

Memories will appear.

Plans will appear.

Random nonsense will appear.

Sometimes your brain will remind you of something embarrassing from five years ago for absolutely no reason.

That’s normal.

The practice isn’t necessarily:

“Stop thinking.”

It is:

“Notice that you’re thinking.”

And then, if you want to return to your object of attention, return.

That tiny moment between having a thought and following the thought became extremely important to me.

Because once you notice that gap, you start understanding attention differently.

You realise that a thought can exist without requiring an immediate reaction.

An emotion can exist without requiring immediate action.

An urge can exist without requiring immediate obedience.

That realisation has helped me a lot.

Kanyakumari: Realising That I Still Had It

One of my most memorable experiences with meditation happened in Kanyakumari.

The first time I went there, I was with my friend Aswin.

We sat inside Vivekananda rock meditation room

After years without really practising meditation in the way I had when I was younger, I decided to sit there and meditate.

Something surprising happened.

I realised:

I still had it.

The ability to sit.

The ability to observe.

The ability to stay with attention.

It didn’t feel like I was learning something completely new.

It felt more like I was rediscovering something that had been dormant for years.

Later, Aswin told me that we had a really good time there.

That experience stayed with me.

Two years later, I went back to Kanyakumari — but this time, alone.

And I sat beside the sea and meditated this time i decided I don’t need to go inside the room to meditate, miracles happened with that concentration

For hours.

Somewhere between three and six hours, I remained there in meditation.

There was no elaborate setup.

No particular deity.

No audience.

No need to prove anything.

Just me, the sea, the sound, the breath, and attention.

The experience reinforced something I had slowly begun to understand:

Meditation doesn’t always need a special place. But sometimes a special place helps you remember how to be present.

The Sea as a Meditation Teacher

There is something unique about sitting beside the sea.

The waves don’t ask you to concentrate.

They don’t tell you what to think.

They simply continue.

Wave after wave.

Sound after sound.

Movement after movement.

You can listen to them without trying to control them.

And perhaps that’s one of the simplest ways to understand meditation.

You don’t have to control every experience.

You can observe it.

The wave comes.

The wave goes.

A thought comes.

A thought goes.

A breath comes.

A breath goes.

And you remain aware.

I use the setting sun as an observant tool to meditate will write on that later

just a point sun is the source of energy in earth

Meditation During Morning Walks

My meditation practice also became less dependent on sitting still.

During my morning walks, I started experimenting with different forms of breath-control meditation.

I later shared some of these practices with my friend Sourav.

He also found them fun and useful.

That experience reminded me of another important thing:

Meditation doesn’t necessarily have to look like meditation.

You don’t always need a cushion.

You don’t always need incense.

You don’t always need complete silence.

Attention can be practised while walking.

Breathing can become an anchor.

Listening can become an anchor.

Movement can become an anchor.

Even ordinary activities can become opportunities to practise being completely present.

What Meditation Has Given Me

I wouldn’t say meditation has transformed me into someone who is always calm, peaceful, or perfectly disciplined.

Definitely not.

I’m still a human being with an extremely active mind.

But meditation has given me something more practical:

the ability to notice.

To notice when my attention is wandering.

To notice when I’m reacting automatically.

To notice when I’m caught inside a thought.

To notice my breathing.

To notice my surroundings.

And sometimes, simply to sit with an experience instead of immediately trying to escape from it.

For me, that is valuable.

Meditation Without Belief

Perhaps the most interesting part of my relationship with meditation is that I don’t think I need to resolve every philosophical question before I practise it.

I can be uncertain about God.

I can question religion.

I can be agnostic about consciousness.

I can be sceptical about spiritual claims.

And I can still sit down and observe my breath.

I can listen to the seven swaras.

I can walk and pay attention to my breathing.

I can sit beside the sea and listen to the waves.

I can observe my thoughts.

I can study my own attention.

None of these require me to first adopt a particular belief system.

And that is perhaps what makes meditation meaningful to me.

So, What Is Dhyanam?

If I had to explain it in my own words today, I would say:

Dhyanam is the practice of giving attention deliberately and continuously, while becoming aware of what happens inside and around you without being completely carried away by it.

Traditional Indian philosophy may take that practice much further — toward questions of consciousness, self, and reality.

Modern psychology may approach it as attention training, awareness, and mental well-being.

My own experience sits somewhere between these perspectives.

I don’t meditate because someone told me what I must believe.

I meditate because I have experienced what happens when I pay attention.

From my childhood in Saraswathi Vidyanikethan, through the early experiences my family exposed me to, through years of forgetting the practice, to rediscovering it beside the sea in Kanyakumari, and eventually bringing aspects of it into my morning walks and conversations with friends — meditation has remained less of a belief for me and more of an experiment.

An experiment with attention.

An experiment with awareness.

An experiment with the mind.

And perhaps that is what I like most about it.

You don’t have to believe everything to observe something.

Sometimes, you can simply sit down, breathe, listen, and pay attention.

And see what you discover.