Merta Ada, A meditation teacher and healer
 “Achieve health and happiness through meditation”

 Anybody can get sick and carry scars in their heart, this is what they believe, hence it disturbs their health and agitates their happiness. The medicine is a harmonious mind.
 

Sunday 8 am, in the mezzanine in a quite large house in Jakarta, there is a crowd of 30 people sitting down on cushions . A man sits facing toward these people. His face is clean, he has neat hair and he is wearing a white suit. With a medium volume voice and Balinese accent, he opened the meeting with the greetings “ Let us start meditating” All the audience closed their eyes and put their hands in their lap.
Through the meditation process, he guided us , in the same even tone. The time passes by, until at the end of the session he said “ May all beings be happy”

 Meditation and yoga, are popular in western countries . It seems that they have spread out to the East, including our country. Although it is not a new thing to our society, but to the people living in big cities such as Jakarta, this activity is just like splashing fresh water on a stress-full life. Nonetheless, Merta Ada, as he is known , who was born on May 1957 is the founder of Bali Usada health meditation and flies regularly from Bali to other big Indonesian cities to lecture and to teach his knowledge.

 Recovered due to meditation
 “Everybody has experienced “being hurt” he said to Fit, after the practice finished. I also experienced that. When I was a boy, I got polio, I could not move freely like other boys. Hence, I had to withhold all my dreams. After that, I experienced deep grief when my brother died due to a motor bike accident. Throughout the years I felt uncomfortable whenever I saw people dressed in white, I always remembered my brother. Moreover, there was a time when I felt scared whenever I faced people who were tall in posture and had creepy faces. Merta Ada was not only sick from polio , but he also has suffered gastric and heart disease for years.
As the story goes, he needed time to find a great medicine for his various diseases. “ I have been meditating since I was young. As I got older, I tried to find the most suitable meditation technique for me. Throughout the years I did it carefully and regularly, hence my thinking has become harmonious gradually.

I concluded that the meditation had provided me with a lot of benefits, in strengthening my mind, I have also added sensitivity to myself. Just as the body needs exercise, so to does our thinking need to be practised to become stronger.
Nowadays, meditation is a part of his daily life.. He meditates at least a few hours every day “My sleeping time is lesser now, because it’s the way it should be for the people who meditate regularly. The more you meditate the more time you have to build a harmonious mind.
In 1993 Merta Ada was inspired to teach meditation of which he had become a masteri off. He also felt that he needed to introduce a general meditation technique that can help everybody to look after their body and mind simply , and one which would not contradict with their own religion and beliefs.. This is what he then called Usada Meditation.”Before this , since 1992 I have healed people with the vibration technique and the herbs. Because of my persistence in meditation, through the evolution of mind I can feel the vibration in a human body as well as in plant life. . I match the vibration of the human body that suffers specific disease with the vibration in the plant life which can be used for the cure.”
This effort has achieved some lasting results, his house has been visited by many people who use his herbs as the cure. He said that the ingredients of the herbs are simple and registered in the Medicine Supervisory Body and Food in the Ministry of Health as herbal medicine.
One day, the a patient came to his house. Using his hand Merta Ada detected the vibration of that man, and then he thought “This man can be cured if he also tried to cure himself.This can be done by teaching meditation. That’s how Bali Usada Meditation Center was founded.

Four years later he expanded it to Jakarta. Henceforth it has become very popular so much so that he has to schedule his time to teach meditation to people in Medan, Surabaya, Lombok, Palembang and Jogjakarta, as well as Singapore and Malaysia.

It is very interesting to know that the will to cure people has been Merta Ada’s obsession since he was young. Growing up in his hometown, of Baturiti, Tabanan Regency , his neighbour was a traditional healer. His impression of life when he was a child, was that the healer was needed by everyone. The healer’s house was never empty of visitors. Surprisingly after moving to Denpasar, then to Lombok, one of his neighbours has always been a healer.
Merta Ada’s healing capabilities have increased due to his diligent study in reading various health books, ancient Balinese texts , learning from meditation teachers, doctors and traditional healers in Bali throughout Indonesia as well as from abroad. “Life is strange, when I was eight years, I was only an observer when my neighbour taught Kungfu. The Kungfu teacher said, “ You just sit down, you will master it like the others”, he was referring to meditation.


When he grew up he becomes a clothing business man. He admitted that it was not his choice, hence it made his mind and body tired. One night in 1990, he was in Long Island, New York USA , on a business trip, an old woman who was the landlady of the apartment in which he stayed came over for a chit chat. The old Indian woman explained about ayurveda, which is a system of Indian traditional medicine. Although Merta Ada was already sleepy, for the sake of respecting this old woman, he kept listening until 4 am. Surprisingly, two years later , this knowledge enriched him in his profession as a healer.
According to this man who always dresses in a white suit ( he believes meditation is not had related with magic) he teaches that in meditation, a human being consists of three parts: physical body (body and all the organs), soft body (meridian and chakra ), that now can be detected with electronic devices a nd photo imagery hence a person’s aura can be seen, and a mental body. The last one only can be detected by mind. The state of anxiety existing in these three parts of the body is detected by Merta Ada through his vibrational sense. “The examination takes a long time and is tiring hence my energy is drained,” he said .
However, initially it was s not easy for him to develop the practice of health meditation in Bali. He could be easily condemned for commercialising the meditation technique which is normally conducted for religious and spiritual needs. Yet, according to Merta Ada, meditation can be used for curing the illness in the body and release the trauma from the mind, which is very much needed in this modern century., Originally, there were only 8 students at his first course , then the numbers grew into 24, 50 and so on. “It began from the patients themselves, friends and the society, gradually to overseas, from those that know me it has spread from mouth to mouth.
 “Due to Bali Usada ‘s development, I have become more confident and right now, there are more than 64 thousand people who have participated in these courses, some of them were from abroad such as Europe, USA , Japan, etc”’ Merta Ada explained . He refuses to believe that his health meditation program was just following the trend which is now expanding into the East.
In Bali, this man whose full name is Panya Sagara Merta Ada, has established a booming meditation centre. His meditation centres are not only for the public, but these places are also aimed at the foreign tourist. “Hopefully all those meditation centres will exist for the long term, not only as a hot trend but they will become a continuous conciousness” he said optimistically.
 A Long Way to Go ;At first his participants were all sick people. Nonetheless slowly people realise that learning meditation means that they do not have to wait until they are getting sick to start practicing it. All the participants in the Jakarta centre seem to be all healthy people. According to the instructor, all the participants are elderly .. For the beginners, they are guided by an instructor. Merta Ada only visits Jakarta once a month.
The meditation guidelines are simple, according to the instructor a person progresses gradually hence learning to develop a system. After finishing meditating with his students , Merta Ada always make himself available to talk with the participants. The topic is about meditation, and it seems that all the people are comfortable listening to the way he presents it.
In the future, he hopes that meditation will become popular and it becomes something normal to be practiced in general society. At the moment Merta Ada is working on expanding his meditation centre in Bali. The centre will be a place to conduct all of his activities, including the regular exercise, Tapa Brata, and the trainings for all his instructors. All of the Asisstants/Instructors are considered the ‘foundation’ of Bali Usada activities. Merta Ada who travels a lot can count on his Assistants to teach the students just as he would.
He, chose to become a vegetarian for a healthy life and thinks that his meditation becomes weightless by being a vegetarian, he said that Bali Usada also has to be well managed. Not by a strict management style like a business entity, but the management should not have to be dependent just with donations. “Maybe someday if we do not get enough donations then this knowledge will only become available to the biggest donor”. Pak Merta says ”My friends and I are trying to develop Bali Usada foundation to be an ongoing concern like self sufficient entity” said the man who has studied two years of civil engineering.
He admits that he has learnt a lot about life from this activities. “ A Long time ago I would want the people that I helped heal to keep remembering my help. One day I realised that a person’s mind and body belongs to themselves. I have no right to rule them. My job is only to do good work. Right now I only want that meditation can touch our lives, to heal and to generate happiness”, as he told me.
Nowadays, he is always busy. From 4.30 am he wakes up and teaches meditation through the radio Global FM, broadcasted at 8am for the Four Seasons guests, Grand Bali Beach and Club Med by request in Bali. Amongst all those activities, he also teaches I on BaliTV. On certain afternoons until 6pm he consults with his patients. After that until 8pm, he is back to teach meditation. He also travels to teach Tapa Brata Meditation to many cities in Indonesia or overseas with his assistants. “However I always manage my time for my family, my wife, Dhammadina and my children, Nago Tejena, Natassa Tejena and Naradogosa Tejena, said this smiling humble man.
Sourced from FIT Magazine by Web Admin,
Besides being reported by the TV and Radio in Indonesia, Merta Ada and Bali Usada Meditation is also published in the many printed media such as Gatra, Kompas, Nirmala, Intisari, Fit, Bali Post, Tokoh, Senior, Citra and Femina, etc
translated to English by Novianti