Guest guest Posted July 28, 2006 Report Share Posted July 28, 2006 Message-ID: <eads4o+ngq7 (AT) eGroups (DOT) com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Mailer: Message Poster X--Post-IP: 209.240.206.203 X--Newman-Property: groups-compose Sender: notify X--GPoster: 18bnCdgZviS27EK0 What is Meditation ? Meditation is at the core of all Buddhist practice. But what is meditation?= It is not just thinking about something. Rather, it is something we do, no= t only with our minds, but also done with our body position and our breathi= ng. In general, our normal condition in every day life is that of being dis= tracted. The practice of meditation, by removing these distractions, enable= s us to focus on our immediate experience here and now. What is the purpose of meditation? To put it simply, it is to discover who = we really are. We do not know this at the moment because we are distracted = and our minds are obscured like the sky filled with clouds. When this is th= e case, we do not see the face of the sun. This knowledge of who we really = are is called gnosis. It is the knowledge that liberates us. It is the know= ledge of who we really are, where we have come from and where we are going.= Realizing this knowledge is the whole purpose of Buddhist practice. It is = this self-knowledge that will set us free. But to obtain this knowledge, we must discover it within ourselves. We will= not find it written in books. Therefore, we begin with discovering our rea= l situation and condition in our life here and now. We do not begin with so= me old story about the creation of the world long ago or with some notion o= f a transcendent God outside of ourselves. Such notions are only ideas in o= ur minds, not experience. Rather, we begin with our immediate experience in= this present life, where we find ourselves here and now at this very momen= t. Meditation provides us with a method whereby we can access our immediate ex= perience. Why do we need to do this? Because we are at present not really aware of our immediate experience. And= we are not aware of it because we are distracted and not present in the mo= ment. And being distracted, we are off-center and ungrounded. Normally, we live n= ot in our immediate experience, but in our thought constructions about expe= rience and reality. We continually impose our desires and preconceptions up= on what we actually perceive. And these thoughts and thought constructions = take time to form. Therefore, we live in the past and not in the present of= our immediate experiences, whether external or internal. But through medit= ation we can discover and access the present moment. We can discover what i= s our immediate experience and discover what is the center of our being. We can access the base or the primary level of our conscious existence. Med= itation thus represents a crucial part of the spiritual path and our person= al development. However, in Buddhist terms, the ultimate goal of this path = is not just happiness and fulfillment of our desires in this present life, = but liberation and enlightenment. But what does this mean? Liberation from what? Enlightenment in terms of wh= at? Liberation means freedom from the suffering we experience within cyclic= al existence or Samsara that is brought about by our ignorance or lack of s= elf-knowledge, which leads to our being under the sway of our negative self= ish emotions. Enlightenment means discovering who we really are, our inhere= nt Buddha-nature. It represents the full realization of our spiritual poten= tial. By John Myrdhin Reynolds <http://www.vajranatha.com/teaching/BuddhaMeditation.htm> "Love itself is the actual form of God" ~Sri Ramana ..... Era Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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