A Reapproach to the Art of Meditation
November 23, 2009
Meditation is one of the most important parts of Buddhism. The Buddha himself expressed the vitalities of the art because it is one of the few, if not only, ways to really bring one down to a completely undisturbed level. Every day our minds fill with clutter from everyday trouble and “Dukka” as the Buddha stated. Dukka, which is basically all the negativity we experience in our day to day lives that keeps us from true happiness, is easily avoided if we can sit ourselves down and think about two things: does what we are doing truly make us happy, and how can I let go of these past problems that are holding me down. One of the biggest occurrences of negative Karma is Dukka created by our regrets and feelings of disgrace. Though the Karma of regret and disgrace is in no way completely unavoidable, we can shorten the length that we feel these feelings and prevent them from effecting our day to day lives longer than they have to. This is done through meditation. When we practice meditation we are practicing mindfulness, and mindfulness in lameness terms is being aware of your thoughts, your surroundings, and your actions, so if we are aware of the feelings then we can easily put an end to them.
Over the past couple of months since school began again I started from not being able to follow a regular meditation schedule to really not even meditating at all. I think that a big part of it was the fact that I was afraid to even start due to the fear of being distracted during mid-meditation. The biggest problem is that I have not really been aware that meditation can be done anywhere in any situation. Meditation is simply mindfulness. Though it is good to sit down in our meditative posture and send out good energy through prayer every day, I have found that there are multiple levels of meditation. If we are mindful of all the clutter running through our heads when we are walking, working, and partaking in our everyday lives, then we can easily filter and and get rid of those bad feelings, thoughts, and emotions that we start to experience. After we do this then everything we do becomes smoother and more efficient due to the lack of distractions holding us back, and with efficiency we learn to work at a much quicker pace as well, allowing us more time to actually sit down and go into our deepest forms of meditation. After I started doing this again I felt the world lift off of my shoulders.
I guess this is just my advice through experience to those who practice the Buddhist walk without meditation. Many of those people are still pulled into the negativity and distraction of everyday life and find it hard to be truly happy. Enlightenment is a step by step process, and if we don’t take every step and skip one, then we will eventually be exhausted by taking large quick steps and stumble to a stop. If we keep stopping over and over and time keeps catching up with us, then we will simply have to start over and over and Nirvana will seems like nothing more than an inaccessible goal. Buddhism is made of pieces, and if we are missing pieces, then the puzzle will never be complete. We wouldn’t want pages to be missing from the book we are reading, or nails to be missing from the house in which we live in would we? The book would make no since and wouldn’t be entertaining nor enlightening, and the house we are living in would fall to the ground much quicker than that with all of it parts. So I ask you: think about the importance of meditation, and ask yourself, why am I struggling and rushing up a stair set skipping multiple steps, when smoothly taking one step at a time would making my life experience so much easier?
