What is meditation?
Let's start from the beginning. In its broadest sense, any type of sustained focus or concentrated form of mental energy may be classified as a type of, or form of meditation.This definition should therefore bring a sense of familiarity for anyone who has focused their attention for any specific reason for a given outcome—and we all have. Therefore the familiarity with at least the basic principles of practice is set for each individual.
Generally speaking, basic meditation practices involve a training of the mind via sustained focus of attention, internal or external, upon a chosen object, for a specific purpose. This induces a desired mental state, or in practices utilizing the transcendental aspects of meditation, the absence of all mind-created states.
Many Methods
We should understand that meditation is not any one specific method or technique but the name for a large toolbox that contains many tools, each for a different purpose. Different practices give different results and we need to employ the right practice for the results we seek.Manual methods require a clear understanding of what the method is, what it is designed to do, the reason for practice, how it should be applied and what outcome should be expected. If this is not undertaken results will be either different from expected, diminished or not there at all.
What is meditation used for?
The countless methods of practice generally revolve around a few specific themes e.g. basic practices, spiritual development, transcendental liberation practices and living the ‘dharma life’. I recommend specific practices to attain one's desired goal. The right practice for the right outcome.Different practices are undertaken for different outcomes, from learning to relax and rebuild a distressed immune system to find peace, calm, happiness and contentment in our lives, to exploring the spiritual or transcendental nature of our being. All are good reasons to practice and meditation applied properly will give the results we seek, but we need to apply the right practice for the right goal or confusion will arise and failure may be the outcome.
Where Problems Arise?
The general current approach to meditation usually focuses on the practice and disregards the rationale behind it, or what Hindus and Buddhists call ‘hearing’ (shravana) and ‘reflection’ on the heard (manana) which are generally ignored or bypassed. These are critical for a successful outcome in whatever meditative goal we seek. The web is teeming with sites that offer methods of practice without a clear grasp of what those practices do. It seems that (to them) it doesn’t really matter what practice is employed so long as you are doing something—it is OK—it isn’t!Meditation is like medication, both are designed for a specific purpose. No one in their right mind would take somebody else's red pill because it supposedly cures headaches or the green pill because it is said to remedy infections, without consulting a physician and obtaining the medicine from an authorized chemist or dispenser, reading the labels and taking the required dosage for the desired outcome. The application of meditation practices is similar in effect. The right practice produces the right result—first time, every time. The wrong practice, or the wrong application of practice, produces results that may well be unexpected or unintended. Or if you are lucky, it produces no effect at all.
The common ‘Do It Yourself’ attitude of most practitioners has a poor success rate. These practitioners practice first and perhaps read the instructions later, if ever. They pick up a practice from something they read or someone they talked to and use it for a result that the practice may not have been intended to achieve. In turn this may well create dissatisfaction in meditation per-se simply because the understanding wasn’t there in the first place. So we need to be familiar not only with the practice itself but the rationale that created the practice before we start, not after.
Formal and Informal Practice
Meditation practice is often understood to be used when sitting on a cushion, hidden away in a room, cave or some private place—just like the Buddha statues sold in shops. There are common tales of practitioners giving away their wealth and wanting to run off to the Himalayas to focus on sustained practice—which could easily be incorporated into one's ordinary daily life if one only knew how. Of course there are times when we need to find somewhere quiet to practice, this is called 'Formal Practice', but doing only this limits practice only to those times when one can find the privacy to do so. Practitioners that limit themselves to only formal practice waste the greater part of their day locked in the very delusion they had previously sought to escape from for a single hour or two out of twenty-four.Informal practice is the intelligent application of one’s practice when one is doing the many tasks of daily life. Wherever one is, the serious practitioner will be able to weave practice into one’s busy and not-so-busy lives. Buddhist teaching states that practice should be done when ‘walking, standing, sitting or lying’. In other words, daily life becomes one’s meditation. The right practice and complementary practices can be employed under almost every circumstance of one’s life. This is called ‘informal’ practice.
Crossed Paths
Meditation practices are often confusing to the beginner as methods given for one desired result can also be given for deeper, more profound practices. For example, watching the breathing and using visualization are two practices that are ideal for relaxation, however they can also be used for both spiritual and transcendental practices too.Zen is a path of transcendence and sees subtle visions as 'makyo’ or illusion and insists that they should be avoided by all means, whilst those on the spiritual path would welcome subtle visions as definite signs of progress. So the same practice of, say watching the rise and fall of the breathing, can give two distinct outcomes. The transcendentalist needs to ignore the subtle visions, while the spiritualist needs to follow them—this way the same method can be used for one's chosen purpose.
The depth of practice is also important. Those wishing to learn to relax would not be interested in seeking the ‘voidness’ (Skt: Shunyata) a transcendentalist seeks. It could be likened to boarding a train that travels many miles from ‘a’ to ‘z’. Some passengers only need to go to ‘c’ while others wish to travel to ‘t’, some others stay for the whole trip to ‘z’. All may need to use the same ‘train’ (vehicle) or practice, yet they know when it has taken them to their chosen destination so they may discontinue their journey and not venture further into unrequired territory.
Impressions and Tendencies (Samskaras and Vasanas)
One of the main mistakes a practitioner makes and often leads to failure in their practice is from their expectations and the hype surrounding meditation as a calming and relaxing process. It is of course, but sometimes there is work to be done before that can happen. As soon as one is seated to try to practice, thoughts and feelings from seemingly nowhere rush up to seek attention. These mental phenomena may be from recent daily activities or from the past, embedded deep within the subconscious mind.The superficial thoughts soon subside by turning to the focus point of meditation, but the subconscious content, old mental programming that conditions the mind to further karma-creating activity will continue to arise whenever the mind begins to calm because normal daily life has repressed those thoughts and feelings that may well be decades old. It is at this point the novice believes their practice has failed, because as soon as they sit to 'meditate' they are barraged by this untreated mental programming that has yet to be resolved by the practice of meditation. The only way to overcome them is to allow them to arise and let them express themselves. When dispassionate attention is applied to them and they cease one can then turn back to the object of meditation.
It is little understood that it is not failure to go through this process but success, at least in a way that one is undergoing a natural and expected course of events that will eventually rectify themselves if one is encouraged to continue their practice in this right way. This mindful awareness is known as Sakshi or 'The Witness' in Hinduism and is the fundamental practice of Buddhist Mindfulness or 'Sati' in the Pali language.
Our fundamental makeup of who we are and how we act are due to subconscious mental programs, impressions or conditions which act on the mind. These are called ‘samskaras’ in Sanskrit. They are the leftover impressions or feelings of our past encounters with life and all that was and is in it. They are buried deep in the subconscious mind controlling it from within by influencing us into activities that would otherwise have no conscious rationale, or reason for feeling.
These impressions manifest themselves as tendencies (Skt: vasanas) or those perspectives through which we view the world with, understand it and act upon it. These tendencies create further actions, perpetuating the notion of a conditioned 'self' with its needs, hopes and aspirations therefore creating further karma.
The meditation practitioner who dissolves the old mental programming gains a sense of lightness and freedom. Practice gives the feeling of freshness and clarity, a feeling of being free and unburdened by the things of the past that created these hidden motivators in the first place. Dissolving the samskaras by the practice of meditation creates a profound sense of freedom both from the conditioning and the feeling of a 'self' that is conditioned.
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