Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 576

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MEDITATION ENJOINED IN SCRIPTURE
body, makes a passage for itself through the top of the head
and flies off to reunite itself to Parabrahma.
But let no one carry away the idea that the majority of
modern recluses feel any inclination to subject their bodies
Most of them rest content with
to such rough usage.
sitting motionless, their eyes closed and their heads bent,
spending their whole time and energy in thinking of nothing,
and keeping their minds an utter blank. Others remain
squatting imperturbably in the attitude which the minister
Appaji recommended to his shepherd, as already described K
One of these meditative devotees, who lived near me,
had a mania for imagining that he saw an image of Vishnu
always before him, to which he offered, still in imagination,
garments, jewels, and all sorts of food, the god in exchange
He used to spend two
giving him all that he asked for.
hours every day in this occupation, but at the end of it
all he invariably found himself, as before, with empty
hands and an equally empty stomach.
No doubt there were men after the Flood who still
retained the precious gift of a knowledge of the true God,
and gave themselves up to the contemplation of His
infinite perfections as a means of keeping alive in their
hearts a proper sense of the worship that it was their duty
Isaac most probably was only continuing
to pay Him.
the custom of his father Abraham in going out, at the
close of the day, to meditate in the fields (Genesis xxiv. 63).
Moses also commanded the children of Israel to meditate
continually on the duty of loving God with all their hearts
and he enjoined them to meditate on this when in their
;
houses, or when travelling, so that God might be always
present to their minds. David, who had himself experienced
the benefit of meditation, recommends the practice in
and this advice his son Solomon
all his Psalms
The pious habit has thus descended from genera-
repeats.
tion to generation from the time of the Flood to the estab-
lishment of Christianity, and the religion of Christ likewise
regards meditation on the precepts of God as an indis-
almost
;
pensable duty.
The
first
Hindu
1
lawgivers, who, though separating them-
See Part
II,
Chapter XXVII.