How dhyan leads to jnan

We normally use the words such as 'information' or 'knowledge' to explain the word 'jnan'. What if ajnan, ignorance, and jnan indicate an absence or presence of awareness of the mind? Our minds are in a continuous state of thought, almost as if they are involuntarily scrolling through video reels of our thoughts. One thought follows another, and then another, trapping our intelligence in a whirlwind of positive, negative or wasteful thoughts.

Many of these thoughts are about either some past event or some future uncertainty, both of which are nothing but a waste of mental capability. Our intelligence, on the other hand, is like a precision tool, which can be used to solve problems, plan and create, if it is unshackled from this trap of useless thoughts.

Our scriptures convey the word jnan to mean our ability to free ourselves from this tornado of useless thoughts and to either stay in a state of blissful, thoughtless awareness or to apply our intelligence to learn from the past, solve problems, be creative and constructively plan our future. The ancient seers also understood the colossal difficulty of bringing jnan, awareness, under continuous control; hence, they provided us with a technique to improve the strength of the mind to unshackle it from thoughts. This technique is dhyan, using which we can train the mind to stay in the present moment and ward off the trap of useless thinking.