Meditation as a Tool For Deconstructing the Phenomenal World

Historians of Indian religion agree that in the time between the seventh and fifth centuries BC a fundamental change in the orientation of religious life occurred. among various groups of religious thinkers, both orthodox and unorthodox, new theories developed about human action and its role in relation to repeated births and deaths. These thinkers’ theories on how the world is constructed and kept in motion and the practical strategies they devised for deconstructing and immobilizing worldly activity have influenced all subsequent Indian religious thought. Some of these strategies rely upon a theoretical analysis of the psychological forces at work in the mind’s development and expansion of its ideas about the world. One technique devised for calming the mind’s frantic activity involves a type of meditative practice designed to curb the impact of sensory stimulation. In theory, control over the activity of the senses should lead to a meditative experience divested of all disruptive emotional content. This experience becomes central to religious practice, since such negative emotions as desire and hatred motivate the type of mental and physical actions that keep the cycle of birth, death and rebirth in motion.