Swami Vivekananda and meditation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meditation played a very important role in the life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda. He was interested in meditation from his childhood. His master Ramakrishna found him a dhyana - siddha (expert in meditation). On 24 December 1892, Vivekananda reached Kanyakumari and meditated for three days on a large rock and took the resolution to dedicate his life to serve humanity. The event is known as the Kanyakumari resolve of 1892. He reportedly also meditated for a long time on the day of his death (4 July 1902).
Vivekananda is considered as the introducer of meditation to the Western countries. In his book Raja Yoga and lectures, he widely discussed meditation, its purpose and procedure. He described "meditation" as a bridge that connects human soul to the God. He defined "meditation" as a state "when the mind has been trained to remain fixed on a certain internal or external location, there comes to it the power of flowing in an unbroken current, as it were, towards that point."[1]