Hanuman is the typical example of one who has control over the breath, the one who has obtained all the Siddhi powers after mastering the mind using the breath control. Therefore, he was called as the ‘son of the wind’.
Monkey represents a wandering animal and symbolizes thoughts of the mind, which are wavering or ‘chanchal’.
When the monkey army under the control of Sugriva (intellect) was in trouble and did not know how to look for Sita, Jambvan reminded Hanuman about his hidden spiritual powers at that time. And then Hanuman traveled the ocean and reached Lanka.
The whole process represents the process and the steps of breathing pranayama and breathing meditation.
The Ocean represents the ‘wavering mind’. The reminder to Hanuman represents the INTENTION to meditate. Using Hanuman (breathing) makes it easier to cross the Ocean and attain a controlled state of mind.
While doing breathing pranayama in the initial process, one is bound to face obstruction or obstacles to the breathing sadhna. The same is represented by hanuman encounters with Mainaka Mountain, Sarasa or ‘sursa’ the mother of snakes, and Singhika or Simhika the demon.
The spiritual obstacles are the tendencies to rest (tamas), the ego and the desires. ‘MainakaMountain’ represents the tamas, ‘Sursa’ the ego and ‘Simhika’ the desires.
Initially, Hanuman is obstructed by theMainakaMountainand asked to rest. But Hanuman willfully avoids it and continues the journey, signifying that tamas has to be willfully controlled by the mind during Sadhna.
Next, the mother of the snake ‘the Sursa’ obstructed him. Snake in Vedantic language represents the uncontrolled mind or the ego. Ego becomes bigger and bigger if you try to defend it and can only be controlled by humility. This is what Hanuman did. Till he was trying to fight ‘sursa’ by expanding his size, she was reciprocating by increasing her size. But when Hanuman became small (humility) and came out of her mouth, she lost the battle.
The last obstacle was ‘Simhika’ the demon. She had the power of catching flying creatures’ by holding their shadows in the water. Desires have to be killed and this is what Hanuman did to her.
While meditating on the breath one gets tendencies to sleep (tamas), and gets disturbed with the ego or desires (rajas). The same should be tackled before one attains control of the mind. The process involves concentrating on the breath and giving preference to the breath over the disturbing thoughts.
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