English 200
Success in Meditation
Meditation is the mind training, developing the strengths and skills that are needed to solve mind problems. Such as there are many different medicaments for the various illnesses, there are different types of meditation for the different mind problems. Alhough the mind desires happiness, it still controls to weigh itself down with mental depression. As the matter of fact, that depression comes from the mind’s attempts to search out for happiness. Meditation helps to understand the causes for why the mind “acts” like this and, in revealing them, helps you to treat them. In treating them, it gives the possibility of true happiness, a happiness you can count on, a happiness that will never dissapear or upset you. Good news of meditation are that real happiness is possible, and you can reach it through your own strivings. It is that one shouldn`t be contented only with pleasures that will eventually disappear. The person shouldn`t resigned himself to the idea that temporal happiness is the best life offers. And, of course, one shouldn`t pin the hopes for happiness on any person or power outside himself. To access a totally reliable happiness that causes no harm to anyone, one can train the mind. The goal of meditation is good as well as the means for achieving that goal. They can be named as activities and mental features you can be elate to develop. They include honesty, fullness, sympathy, insight and mindfulness. The true happiness comes from within, so it doesn’t mean to take anything from anyone. The real happiness doesn’t contradict with the happiness of anyone else. When one finds true happiness inside, he has more to share with others. In such a case, the practice of meditation is an act of favor for others as well. When the problem of stress and suffering is solved, the person who will most directly benefit, is the person who does the meditation. However, he is not the only one. This is because when the person creates stressful situation for himself, he weakens himself. The place loads not only on him but also on the people around: by having to depend on them for assistance and support, and also by troubling them with the foolish things he might do or say out of disability and anxiety. With that, he prevented from helping them with their problems, as his hands are filled with his own. However, if the mind can learn how to stop causing itself stress and suffering, the person is less of a burden on others and even is eager to help them. Successful meditation can depend on the question of what the images are. Things that we imagine during the day, thoughts that we have reflect our future. There are the images that will have a great influence on our life in a positive or negative way. For example, if somebody believes that he is going to get more money every day and he really believes in that, then his actions will differ from month to month. The person will make afforts that can increase the income. However, if somebody believes he will get the same salary, then the actions will be the same. In such a case the actions are always a measure of one`s faith. People should talk to themselves, they should meditate on what they want to have. They need to assert what they really want from life, and do it regurlaly. If they do, they will start believing and will take actions to change their lives.
Very often the question “Why Mediate” takes place among people. When you are overtake in the emotional overturn of avarice, anger and fallacy, you can find yourself yielding to some real physical diseases and when you are sick the world seems a very somber place. However, all of our illnesses are due to deep emotions. This can cause strong mood wobbles, melancholia, hallucinations and even different sorts of physical attempts, including serious health damage. Diseases are mostly accompanied by a selection of subversive emotions. Programs that have therapeutic combination of relaxation methods and meditation are effective in holding both the physical effects and the emotions that follow them. So far, as beneficial as they can become, such methods may take one. As it is stated by Ting Cheng, “meditation is used to defuse the source of all the trouble-the illusion of self and other in the Buddhist tradition” (10). The aim of Ch`an (or Zen) is to get over thought and desecration. By doing this, the substance of mind becomes obvious. Without anxiety and without the wraith of self and other, avarice and hatred don`t arise and the energy that was bounded by those illusions becomes accessible, providing an improvement in health. That is why Ting Cheng claims that meditation can be called The Fundamental Practice (10).
There is a notion of the highly-integrated mind. Connections between various regions of the brain in the highly-integrated mind are strong. So, the attention is acute, the brain is in a close connection with the action if it deals with a question. The results of high level integration can be shown by top managers, world-class sportsmen and other successful people. All of them appear to spark the creativity that is an absolute key to success. From the TMhome site it was extracted that Dr Travis, the leading scientist in studying the effects of Transcendental Meditation on brain Functioning, assured that people who want to surpass in any field should consider transcendental meditation as it helps them to be focused on the mind. It has an active surface somehow. While transcendental meditation we can posess. “When we begin to meditate we can say that we transcend to locate the transcendental inner infinity and we act to bring it out”( Dr Travis). As far as transcendental meditation is easy, we are starting to clear our consciousness in the very short period of time of meditation and the marker of durable practice is how much we have brought out to the action. We reach the goal in every step of the route. We can sit at the beginning of meditation practice, close the eyes, experience the aim. The difference between eyes open and transcendental meditation in the beginning of the practice is huge. Later on we find out that the difference between the eyes open and meditation is less. That is very important for people who meditate for 20 or 30 years. Meditation can be stressful at first, but later it becomes a challenge and an opportunity to see how effective things can be. There’s a difference between challenge and stress in the brain. With challenge the brain activates itself, as we see clearly, hear distinctly and the brain processes experience really quickly. Meditation brings us lots of creative ideas, lots of mental and physical energy.
People are so specified and the habits become so automatic that even when there is no deal to be done, our minds are managing. Thus, when no reduction is needed, they are still contracted. Osho thinks that even when we are playing, we are not playing, we are not enjoying it and even when we are simply playing cards, we are not enjoying it (4). As he states, people play for the victory and then the play itself becomes a work, the only important thing is the result. However, the joy is in the moment, not in the troubling about the results, not in achieving things. It is stated by Osho that there is nothing to be achieved, so one can enjoy that which is here and now (5). If somebody is talking to somebody and if he is concerned about the result, then the talk becomes businesslike, it becomes just a work. But if he talks to someone without expectations, without wish about the result, then the talk becomes a kind of a play. According to Osho, “the very act, in itself, is the end”(8). In such a case, narrowing is not needed. Any moment can be a matter moment and any moment can be a kind of meditative moment. If it is nonpermissive, if you are playing somehow, it can be called as meditative. Osho`s definition of meditation is that it is an effort “to jump into the unconscious”(10). One cannot jump by estimation because all estimation is of the conscious and the conscious mind does not allow it. It can claim not to do this or that, because it can cause troubles. The conscious is always scared of the unconscious because if the unconscious appears, everything that is clear in the conscious will become not clear. It is interesting that Zen teachers used the koan method. Koans can be called ‘puzzles absurd’ by their nature. One cannot imagine about them and they cannot be solved by reason. Apparently, it is as if something can be thought about them; that is the capture. And it appears as if something can be thought about koans, so you begin to imagine. One cannot but agree with Osho that the very nature of it is such that it cannot be decided cause the nature of it is absurd (13). Meditation, and all its devices, can push the person away from the negative obstacles. It can bring him out of the bonds that is the mind and when he has come out he will be glad. It can become so easy to find out, that it has been nearby all the time. So, the only one step was demanded is to reach that state of mind. All in all, people go on in a circle and the one step is always left, the step that can bring us to the center.
As states Geoffrey de Graff, the purpose of meditation is to end the ignorance, and to root out ‘the questions of hunger that keep driving it’(6). The very important aspect of such ignorance is blindness of the mind to its own inner tryings in the present moment, as the present moment is the place where choices are made. Though the mind often works under the influence of habit, it doesn’t have to. It has the variant of making new options with every moment. Thus, the more clearly you see what’s happening now, the more likely you are to make clever choices, ones that will lead to true happiness and will bring you closer to total freedom from suffering and stressful situations now and into the future. Meditation focuses our attention on the present moment because the present moment is where we can watch the activity of the mind and direct more skillfully. True is the opinion of Geoffrey de Graff that the present is the moment in time where you can act and bring about change (11). One of the first things we learn about the mind as we start in meditation is that it has a lot of minds. This is because we have a great number of different ideas about how to satisfy our thirst and search for well-being, and many more desires based on such ideas. Such ideas can be boiled down to different notions about what forms happiness, where it can be found, and what you are as a personality, your needs for definite kinds of delight, and abilities to provide those delights. In such a way, each wish acts as “a seed for a particular sense of who you are and the world you live in” (Geoffrey de Graff 10). Buddha had a special term for such sense of self-identity in a specific world of experience. He identified it as becoming. This term appears to become central to understanding why a person cause himself stress and suffering and what’s engaged in learning how to stop. For example, if we drifting off to sleep and image of a place appears in the mind, we enter into the image, lose touch with the outside world, and, in such a case, we are entered the world of a dream. Such dream world, plus the sense of having entered into it, can be called a form of becoming. Once we become sensitive to this process, we can notice that we engage in it even when we are not sleeping, even many times of a day. We are going to have to examine the many becomings we create in our search to gain freedom from the stress and suffering it can cause, we are the selves generated by our desires, and the worlds they inhabit. Only when we have examined these things thoroughly we gain exemption from their limitations. There is a lot of different ideas in the mind, each with its own item. Most of them is a partner of the standing commision of the mind. So, the mind is minor and mostly like a rebelious crowd of people with a great number of voices, opinions on what to do. Sometimes partners are revealed as fair as for the suppositions that are in the basis of their main wishes and sometimes they are more bleary and tricky. This happens, as Geoffrey de Graff claims, that “each committee member is like a politician, with its own supporters and strategies for satisfying their desires and some committee members are idealistic and honorable, but others are not” (11). Thus, the mind’s committee is less like a association of saints planning a charity occasion, and more like a pervert council, with the balance of power moving inside different factions, and many deals being made somewhere at the back. To dwell upon the idea it can be add that one of the aims of the meditation is to reveal everything, so that one can bring less chaos to the standing comission in such a way that his wishes for fortune work not as much at some goals, but more in concensus as he realizes that they should not be always in contradiction. Intellection of the desires is needed and in this case the standing comission helps to realize the fact that the practice of meditation doesn’t go against all of them when the practice of meditation goes against some of our believes., As we have more skillful wishes to identify with, we don’t have to identify with the desires being destroyed through meditation. That is the choice that is in our own hands. So, to stop damage our efforts to find a true happiness, we can use the more proficient members of the standing comission and to train the less proficient ones. The great is the idea of Geoffrey de Graff about the thing that we should always remember that real happiness is probable; the mind can find itself that happiness (11).
In search of the own freedom, the mind should firstly accept featureless attitude that makes it free to study, detect, and experience. Many of us begin with a direct need to find an internal freedom. In such a way it is to some extend hard to guess the featureless approach. So is the paradox of the inner route. We become judgmental and opinionated as soon as we become more personal. Out of an intellectual and conditioned mind there appear judgments and discriminations. Once we make judgments, the intellect starts its work. It is always hinder the ability to experience fully the inner depth and entity as long as the intellect is at the front line of the mind. That is the cause why all the ways to liberation exceed the intellect and change into the intuitive or the spiritual, because only the intuitive part can experience and understand the truth of freedom in its entirety. Religious organizations have already developed methods and styles according to their own cultural, somehow historical and even emotional states. In the work of Dr. Thynn, we can be assured that each of us is left to find the right path for ourselves. To the people who ask the professor questions about the use of meditation and its successful influence, the people who meditate but don`t have any results yet, he answers that in this fast-moving world, meditation is regarded as an instant remedy for life`s ills (17). If somebody looks at it as a tranquilizer, he can possess its value. Relaxation itself occurs through meditation However, it is the only one of its results. Thus, Buddhist meditation is neither an instant remedy nor a simply stress-relieving thing. According to Dr. Thynn, meditation is a cultivation of one`s mind for achieving insight wisdom or paññā, leading to liberation or nirvāna (17). Paññā is translated as “wisdom” although it is closer in meaning to “insight” (Keown, p.218). In the 5th-century, one of the most revered books in Theravada Buddhism “Visuddhimagga” claims that the function of paññā is “to abolish the darkness of delusion” (Buddhaghosa & Ñāṇamoli 437). In Mahayana Buddhism, the importance of paññā was stressed in combination with karuna, that means compassion. Through paññā`s revelation of its true nature of all things as emptiness, it is spoken of as the principal means of attaining nirvāna. As it can be mentioned about nirvāna, this term has commonly been interpreted as the extinction of the “three fires”, passion, (raga), aversion (dvesha) and ignorance within the Buddhist tradition (Gombrich 65). Thus, if all these are extinguished, release from the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra) is attained.
A very important fact is that people who want to start meditation cannot find the time and it is a strong put-aside task for them. When we speak about meditation, we think of types of meditation. Nowadays there are a lot of popular types and forms. One of them is the sitting form. However, it is just an aid to develop a mental discipline. The form should not be mistaken for the path (Thynn 17). It is a very popular delusion that we need to put aside a special time or place for meditation. Actually, if meditation should help us get peace of mind in your life, then it needs to be a dynamic activity, part of our daily experience. If we want to understand ourselves, we need to watch it while there is anger, depression and conflict. One should pay attention to the mind as all thoughts and emotions get up and down. It will be found out that emotions lose their strength and eventually will disappear at the moment we pay attention to them. However, when we are lack of attention, we see that such emotions even become stronger. When the anger has faded, one can understand that he has been angry. In such a way, he either has made some unwanted mistakes or drained up emotionally.
The question on how to handle the emotions very often appears in the minds of people who want to start their way of successful meditation. Dr. Thynn explains that the natural inclination is to try to control the emotions (19). When they are kept, they try to output. In such a way they either burst out with an emotive splash or soak out as illnesses and neuroses. It is very important in the state of successful meditation neither control nor non-control our emotions. In both cases we are creating our wish for control. Both situations are secure. When such desire blocks the mind, it is not free to view the state of anger in the whole. Thus, the paradox of the more we want to leave anger, the more we become not free of it. We should pay attention to a not lumbered mind to better understand it. At the time our mind is twittering, asking questions all the time, then we lack the capacity to look. The mind is busy asking questions and answering. The advice is we should to experience watching ourselves in silence of the mind free from different circumstances, from what we like and dislike, free from adjoining. So, as it is viewed by Dr. Thynn “thoughts and emotions by themselves are just momentary and possess no life of their own” (18). Thus by adjoining to them, we somehow prolong their stay. To have a successful meditation experience, we should understand that it doesn`t have to be separated from daily life and its vicissitudes of life. There is the need to observe, understand and deal with the anger, emotions and lack of knowledge as they happen if we want to experience peace in this everyday world. However, if we stop to be involved with the emotions, the peaceful nature of mind can appear. Such state of peaceful nature gives the chance to live every moment of the life fully. We can become complete individuals with greater sensitivity with such understanding and perception. We will see life with new and fresh feelings. It can be oddly enough, because things that were problems before disappear.
The thought that people are circumstance dependable can be supported by Allen who dwells upon the idea that we are measured by circumstances such as we believe ourselves to be dependable of outside conditions (8). However, if we realize our power of creativity, so that we may command the hidden part of our being, then we become real masters of ourselves. The circumstances can grow out of thought that every man knows who has tried self-controlling; as he will have understood that the changes in his circumstances has been in ratio with his changed mental state. We pass fast through a continuity of changes, when we seriously apply ourselves to remove the drawbacks in our characters, and make swift and progress. “Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him to himself” ( James Allen 10). It is known that the soul comes of its own at birth and during the way of its earthy trip, it draws those combinations of conditions that are the gleams of its own cleanness and dirtiness, its power and fragility. Thus, people do not attract everything that they want, but they can attract something what they are. For example, their fancies, desires, and aspirations are destroyed step by step, but their inner thoughts and wishes are watered with their own liquid, be it dirty or pure. Man is grabbed by himself only, thoughts and actions are captive by the fate, being base, they lie also in the background of freedom – they release.
When we are meditating, we are giving the body the space to transform. The body is in state in which he cannot but grow and transform. Dhyan Vimal claims on one very important point to know who supposes that whenever we embody something and it’s grows, the body has to grow too, if it is not, it just becomes the mind (117). Thus, some people realise things and fail for the body to grow into it, but then all is gone. “With this the body becomes the one that holds the old and all the habits, and make the old reality and fact relived” (Dhyan Vimal 117).
We cannot see ourselves differently because we don`t go in for meditation every day. We can read about this, talk with somebody about meditation, but we are not meditating ourselves. In such a way, we do not change anything. It can be said that nothing is really changeable until we change ourselves. We should rebuild our minds from by talking to ourselves. The main thing for the success in meditation is that we must do it every day. The imagination creates the future. It depends on images too. Thus, through the successful meditation we can even make our own future. In such a way, the meditation teaches person to value the things within you that are dignified of respect: the wish for a real happiness, reliable and innocuous and the ability to find that happiness in an individual way.
Works Cited
Buddhaghosa, Bhikkhu Ñ. The Path of Purification: Visuddhimagga, Buddhist Publication Society, 1999. Print.
Dhyan Vimal. The 7 stages of Simirthi: Zazen Publishing House, Datarun Sunway, Kota Damansara, 47810 PJ, Selangor, 2012. Print
Geoffrey de Graff. With Each and Every Breath: The Abbot Meta Forest Monastery, Valley Center, CA 92082 USA, 2012. Print.
Gombrich R. How Buddhism Began. The conditioned genesis of the early teachings. Second edition, Routledge. 2006. Print.
“Interview: Dr. Fred Travis, neuroscientist. Transcendental Meditation”. TMhome. 2015. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
James A. The Timeless Classic: St. Augustine, FL 32085 USA, 2001. Print.
Keown D. A Dictionary of Buddhism: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.
Osho. Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy: Tao Publishing, 2006. Print.
Thynn Thynn. Living Meditation, Living Insight: The Dharma Dana Publication Fund. Lockwood Road Barre, Massachusets 01005 USA, 1995. Print.
Ting Chen. The Fundamentals of Meditation Practice: Young Men`s Buddhist Assosiation of America, NY, 1999.
