Introduction to Meditation

Honour to the Lord, Arahat, perfectly and completely Enlightened one!

Meditation open doors to Wisdom. once wisdom is achieved you can see through things like you have not observed before. Meditation is an important phenomena in Buddhism. Nibbana cannot be achieved without practicing meditation. Meditation calms the mind and a calm mind can do miracles.

‘Meditation is the way to letting go’(Ven. Ajahn Brahmavamso). Therefore meditation teachers us to practise letting go. So what is this letting go?

It is a human’s quality that we have attachments. We are attached to our past, and to our un-arrived future. We always live with our past thinking of good memories and bad experiences. Then we make plans for future and live in them till they fade away. Past always beings us frustration and sad and so does our un-arrived future. We are always worried about out future. What am I going to do next year? Is my relationship going well? What happen if I am to leave him or her? Will I be in trouble? When will I get the job I want? So on and so forth. But we will not consider that the future has not yet arrived. And neither we will see the fact that we might not have control on the future. So why do we even bother about future?

Did you have control over your past activities? No. If yes, how comes things went wrong? And things did not work according to your plan? There you go. So truly speaking there is no need to worry about your past because you did not have control over them and you should not be worried about your future because you cannot have control over circumstances. Therefore lets concentrate to your present.

Concentrating to present moment will bring your attention to what you are doing and through that you can achieve success in whatever you are doing. This is a basic fact in Buddhist meditation.

Undivided attention to present moment will open path to successful meditation. In order to start meditation the basic practise is to pay attention to the present moment. Ven Ajahn Brahmavamso calls it the ‘Sustained attention on the present moment’ (The basic method of meditation, 2004).

I will illustrate on this in my next article. Be well!

Simplicity for life

Honor to the Lord Arahat, perfectly and completely enlightened One!

When we live in developed countries, though you agree or not we are complete with all the necessary components of our basic life. Most of us have jobs that give us an income to live and we have a good education so that we can stand in the society as independent individuals. But are we really happy of what we have in our life. Most of the people are not sure about their religion or what they really want to achieve in their life. All in all what we really do not need is suffering in our daily life. What we don’t like at work is stress, and what we don’t want from a family is sadness and frustration. So how do we overcome this problem. Whether you believe this or not this is the basics of all economies. How to get rid of suffering.

Buddhism is probably the only religion or teaching that introduces a clear answer for this question. A stress life will not get what you want from that life. Simplicity is a basic component in Buddhism. Having a simple lifestyle is a key to eradicate suffering. What is this simple life?

Simple life is having very minimum things to your life. If you only have what you really want in your life for usage, your life will be very peaceful. For an example what is the need for a mobile phone? Is that for watching TV? No. The need for a mobile phone is to talk and text. Well someone might use it for email and may be to go on facebook. Technology has become a easy access thing in modern day but have you realized that it has taken all your free time. If you only used to check your Email when you are at work or at a dedicative time at home after dinner, now you can check it every second. Isn’t this bit annoying? Imaging responding to facebook comments in the middle of the night. You might probably say that it is interesting. It is because that you do not understand the value of freedom.

How many of us keep quiet or appreciate silence in our daily life. Simplicity is something like that. When you go to adopt a busy lifestyle, you will lose yourself. You are just running behind something that you even do not know. If you only have what you really want in your life you will not be frustrated.

Meditation is a key function in Buddhism. But you cannot achieve goals in meditation without having your preliminaries sorted. Meditation is the only answer for suffering in life. My next article will introduced into meditation for lay practitioners. But in order to turn yourself to meditation you must practice simplicity in your life.

Be well!