the why of meditation

8/9/2019 The Why of Meditation

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Enlightened Life Productions ©

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EDITATION

A Guide for Beginners


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BEFORE WE GET STARTED, LET'S ANSWER SOME BASIC, FREQUENTLYASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT MEDITATION

Is meditation the same as yoga?

No. Meditation is a mental discipline where oneattempts to get beyond the conditioned,"thinking" mind and into a deeper state of

relaxed awareness. Yoga, on the other hand, isan exercise in moral and mental cultivation thatis designed to generate good health, contribute

to longevity, and culminate into positive and perennialhappiness and peace.

Is meditation a religious exercise?

No. Not, that is, unless you want it to be. There areChristian meditations, and meditations related to otherreligions, but the vast majority of meditation is non-religiousin nature.


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Is there such a thing as b d“ or “h rmful” medit tion?

No. Meditation takes the practitioner to a more relaxed stateof awareness. It is healthful and has no ill side effects.

Isn't it all just Far Eastern mumbo-jumbo?

No. While meditation has been practiced and written about

for a longer period of time in India, China, and other parts ofAsia, it is sometimes thought to be somehow a "foreign"discipline to the West. However, the ancient Greek andRoman civilizations, as well as all Western cultures, utilizemeditation.

Now that we've answered a few of the negative misconceptionsabout meditation, let's talk about what meditation is, why somany people practice it, and how to practice it yourself.


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RELAXATION AND MEDITATION

So why have billions of our fellow human beings decided to

attempt to resolve these questions with meditation?

The answer lies, in part, in ourinherent susceptibility to so very manytypes of stimuli ~ physical, intellectual,emotional, and spiritual. Examining an

average morning illustrates thissusceptibility. We wake. We may dragourselves out of bed, often from a

vague feeling of "obligation" to do one thing or another, oftengrumbling. We brush our teeth, perhaps remembering ourmother's warning that our teeth will fall out if we don't. Orperhaps remembering that toothpaste commercial that showsthe hottie falling all over the guy who has clean teeth and freshbreath ~ that is, after all, why we use THIS brand of toothpasteand THIS brand of mouthwash. We bathe or shower, again


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remembering the urgings of our parents, the fear of"offending," perhaps reliving (for the thousandth time) thehumiliating memory of the boy in seventh grade who said you

"smelled funny." The products we use reflect the hopes anddreams created by the ad agency which handles the account ofthe company producing the soap and shampoo we use. We fixour hair in the style that we consider most attractive to othersin relation to the effort it takes. We use that special deodorantwe like (we may not even remember the original motivation for

our buying it, but at some point we started using it and nowit's habit). We may apply a scent we saw advertized in thecommercial where the guy sweeps up the woman and ridesaway with her on his white horse - just the way we think loveshould be. We choose our clothes carefully, aware of theeffect our appearance has on others. Often our dress reflects

our momentary desires ~ to be respected, to be noticed (orinvisible), to be thought of as "fun," to make the most of whatwe were told by our girlfriend are our best sexual assets.

Can you see where I'm going with this?


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We haven't even made it out of the bedroom andbathroom and already we've reacted to dozens ofstimuli, many of which we are not consciouslyaware. Our brains are working all the time,processing all of the information poured into it bythe world, trying to make ourselves as "comfortable"as possible. We've yet to have a single thoughtworth of the name. The rest of the day is nodifferent. We are annoyed by the jerk in traffic, bythe news reports on the radio telling us about thelatest political outrage, the latest unspeakable and seeminglymeaningless crime, the latest bad news about the ozone layer,the latest Hollywood star who got caught in someone else'sbed, or ingesting something illegal, or just appearing in publiclooking awful. We spend our time worrying about these things.

Plus, we may have "deeper" worries running in the background:our shaky love life, our enemy at work who keeps talkingbehind our back, our fear of the economy, the safety of our job,the credit card bills that are getting out of hand, the teenageson who is getting out of control, the way our belly is not as flatas it used to be, we have a recurring pain in our knee, and there

seems to be more hair in our hairbrush each morning.


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We work all day, worrying and thinking about relativelyinconsequential things in the background, then we go homeand try to "relax" by watching television, and being inundatedby commercials, all telling us how much better our lives will beif we just do this or that. Or we go to a movie or a ballgame,or SOMETHING, ANYTHING, to take our minds off all of our

troubles. But of course, the troubles are still playing in thebackground, and we find we need louder and louder"entertainment" to try to drown out all of that noise. And this

just adds to the stimulation and makes our world that muchnoisier.

We live in a world of endless stimuli. We have literallythousands of television stations to provide passiveentertainment, allowing us to stimulate our brains (more orless) without involving our bodies at all. We have thousands

of radio stations, bombarding us with music or, worse, tellingus what we should think about the latest happenings in theworld. We have 24 hour news channels which inundate uswith information about the hotel that was bombed in Sri Lankaand that horrific car accident in Michigan last night and that


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adorable lost puppy that found its way home to its owner inMaine. We can be instantly connected with almost everyoneon earth through the Internet, and we spend that time playinggames, chatting, watching videos, etc. The point is, we never,

ever, get time to be alone with ourselves. We have become soused to the constant stimulation from outside that many of usare AFRAID to be alone with ourselves, afraid of what we'll find

there, afraid that perhaps we may findnothing at all.

Remember that part of the essentialnature of man is his effort to understandhis true nature and his purpose in theuniverse ~ to figure out why he's here.It is impossible to address suchimportant questions in any meaningful

way with the tv or radio chattering in the background. In aworld characterized by the billions of "distractions" availableto us, it becomes more and more important for us to find away to turn off all of the channels and relax our minds. Toturn off the noise and spend some time with ourselves,without any distractions. To get in touch with our reasons

for living and to assess how we're fulfilling those purposes.


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UNINTENTIONAL MEDITATION

It may surprise you to know that we all meditate in one way oranother, regardless of whether we know anything about“meditation” or are even familiar with the concept. We engage inone form of meditation or another without knowing that's whatwe're doing. Any activity that calms the noise in your head can bethought of as meditation. A couple of examples:

HOW WE MEDITATE WHEN WE DON’T KNOW HOW

One of my first loves was golf. I had theopportunity to work at a golf course when I wasin college and found the sense of peace I felt onthe course irresistible. So much so that when Iproposed to my wife I explained to her that

there were very few "deal breakers," but that onething I simply HAD to do was spend a few hourseach and every weekend playing golf.


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It wasn't because I had any illusions about actually gettingGOOD at it. It was because, for me, golf made the world go awayfor a few hours. Golf is really a very zen activity ~ it can consist

of nothing but a little white ball on a field of green. Yourconcentration stays on that white ball and getting it into thehole.

It is very difficult to play golf if you are preoccupied withsomething else ~ playing golf well takes a lot of concentration.And that concentration crowds out the mundane concerns of the

world. Even playing golf badly can be a very peacefulexperience, because even after an annoyingly bad shot theimportant thing is to put it out of your mind and go back to yourconcentration (just like in intentional meditation!). Golf is such apeaceful game because the concentration it requires drowns outall of the mental noise that our daily concerns and worries cause.I felt GOOD on the golf course. I felt at peace. In fact, I felt so

much at peace that I dreaded getting in the car to come homefrom a game, because it seemed that as soon as I got into thecar the world came flooding back upon me, and I feltoverwhelmed.

Of course, this was before I discovered INTENTIONALmeditation, and gained a great deal of power over my thoughts.


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Golf is part of a “subset” of unintentional meditation ~hobbies. We may paint, we may garden, we may sew or pursuesome other hobby. What we are doing often has less to do withour fascination for the subject of the hobby and more to do withthe sense of peacefulness that comes from quieting the noise inour heads so we are able to pursue the hobby. This is why you’llhear people say they pursue a hobby because “It relaxes me.”

Another example of unintentional meditation is watching asunset. Beautiful sunsets are so precious we don't want to missa moment of them. We want to drink them in and enjoy all thepeace and joy they have to offer. Therefore, when we watch thebeauty we are beholding, sunset (or the surf coming in on the

beach) or puffy, animal-shapedclouds passing slowly overhead,we tend to concentrate upon them,to the exclusion of everything else.We notice that the noise in ourhead fades away as we concentrate


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upon the present moment.

You see, all of us meditate. It's just that some of us do it in a

more intentional, mindful way than others. We don’t have towait for Saturday’s golf game or the beautiful sunset. The peacethat one can feel in the above "unintentional" situations iswaiting for us right now, and all the time; all we have to do istake the time (make appointments with ourselves) to experienceit.

In fact, the peace of mind and relaxation areso much more profound and long-lasting withpracticed “intentional” meditation that we findourselves wasting less time “relaxing” and moretime being productive. We’ll discuss various

forms of intentional meditation in another e-book.

the why of meditation

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