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Rooting back to its’ ancient times, meditation has been around for thousands of years, especially in the Eastern part of the world and has spread to the Western countries in early 1970s.
Contrary to what I initially believe meditation is, prior to taking this course, which is the mental concentration on something, meditation is actually a thoughtless awareness of an individual’s surroundings.
Dhyana, the generic Sanskrit term for meditation is so much more than being alone with one’s thoughts, it is about the state of mind being calm but alert.
Sogyal Rinpoche in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying said that it is through meditation that you are able to go on a journey to discover yourself, paving the way to enlightenment.1
Why do I want to meditate?
Spiritually, I would like to understand myself better and reach a state of calmness by spending more time with myself. I would also want to feel good about myself and to be more mindful, which is why I want to meditate.
According to Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh2, the body is connected to the mind through our breath and it reconciles them together. When aligned, it could bring peace and calmness during meditation. Buddha has also taught that one should use one’s own breath to achieve concentration in his Sutras in order to maintain mindfulness2.
Besides that, I would want to meditate because of the various benefits that it would bring me as shown in various studies such as an increased focus3.
I believe that this is the most essential benefit to me as an undergraduate student in order for effective revision to take place. It would make me be more aware when my mind drifts away in class or during ...
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...ive Jhana Factors of Concentration/Absorption.” Buddha Dharma Education Association Incorporated. Accessed April 3. http://www.buddhanet.net/mettab3.htm
9. Thera, Nyanaponika. The Power of Mindfulness. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc, 2001. http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/powermindfulness.pdf
10. Analayo. Satipatthana The Direct Path to Realization. Birmingham:Windhorse Publications, 2006. http://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/pdf/analayo/DirectPath.pdf
11. Dhammananda, K Sri. Meditation: The Only Way. Malaysia: Buddhist Missionary Society, 1996. http://www.ksridhammananda.com/pdf/sale/MEDITATION%20THE%20ONLY%20WAY%20-%20edited.pdf
12. Stein, Joel "Just Say O," Time 162, no. 5 (August 4, 2003): 48-56
13. Mazumdar, Sudip. "Nirvana Behind Bars," Newsweek (Atlantic Edition) 136, no. 12 (Sept.18, 2000): 49
However, meditation is not as common within Buddhism as most believe. There is a large assumption “that Buddhism and meditation go hand in hand”, but the majority of Buddhists have focused on “cultivating moral behavior, preserving the Buddha’s teachings (dharma), and acquiring good karma”(Braun 2014, p.1). Meditation and Buddhism are often assumed to be one and same, but this is also not true. As Buddhism has gained popularity among lay people it’s practices have changed Buddha’s teaching of the middle path has adapted to meditation being “possible in the city” rather than with monks in jungles and caves (p.4). As seen in Burma, in less than 75 years Buddhism and meditation were able to grow “from a pursuit of the barest sliver of the population to a duty of the ideal citizen” (p.5). While meditation is not the core of Buddhism it has encouraged the growth of Buddhism as it’s practice of mindfulness has been inspiring an approachable model (p.6). Meditation and mindfulness are easily manipulated to secularization, but still have significance in Buddhism and following the patterns of your
Mindfulness meditation is a growth of person`s perception at the present time and some people think is a unique way to overcome anxiety and discover greater wisdom in our minds. A person who practices this meditation tries to get rid of any unwanted thoughts, concentrate on present ones, focus on attention and breathing. Some contemporary psychotherapists suggest that we can train our mind by practicing mindfulness meditation. Often almost all people catch themselves on thoughts that transfers from the present to the past and future. This is called mind wandering. This can be very distracting when a person tries to focus on certain task. Naturally, people who experience less mind wandering demonstrated greater mindfulness, and previous studies showed that practicing mindfulness meditation even for eight minutes can increase and mind wandering will decrease (Hafenbrack, 2013).
From personal experience, mindfulness meditation gives me a feeling of obtaining a healthy mind and body from the attention and peace I obtained. Such feelings resulting from proper practice of mindfulness meditation is not limited to my own testimony though. According to the Satipatthana Sutra, those who practice such in-and-out breathing become “ardent, aware, and mindful” (“Satipatthana Sutra,” Accessed on 2010). However, it is unclear whether such reported experience is genuine or has effect, or if such mindfulness meditation is similar to a placebo effect.
Sharon Salzberg provides different kinds of meditation in her book on real happiness in order to help people transform their lives through this practice. Some of the various kinds of meditation in her book include concentration, mindfulness and the body, mindfulness and emotions, and cultivating compassion and true happiness. One of these meditations that I pursued as outlined in Salzberg’s 28-day program is concentration through breathing and the art of starting over. The main elements of this kind of meditation include breathing, hearing, and letting go of thoughts. However, it requires the selection of an appropriate time, place, and posture before commencing with the meditation process. In essence, the ...
Meditation allows for you to relax, slow down, and become more aware of yourself and your environment. By meditating in a quiet place with no distraction, you are able to greatly limit the information that is constantly entering into our brains. This information gives us a train of thought that is very difficult to be halted, because it is in the nature of our brains to analyze any information that we have coming in from our senses like what things we are seeing with our eyes and what we are hearing with our ears. By limiting the amount of information that is entering into the brain, we are able to separate ourselves from the mind that is analyzing all of that information and to become aware of it.
Without practicing meditation, we do not reflect on or pay attention to our everyday actions, mostly acting on habit. The world is full of defilements and everyday we are infatuated by them, sensual desires, and delusion, although we often do not know it. Meditation weakens these unwholesome temptations and desires by making us aware that they are arising, and by revealing that they are truly unwholesome. The temptation only ceases when the concentration we obtain from meditation results in greater happiness than sensual pleasures can ever provide. While the satisfaction gained from sensual pleasures is fleeting, the clarified, focused state of mind of the meditator accumulates into a constant tranquil state. Only when we have stilled the mind’s incessant wandering and momentarily abandon the attraction to sensory experiences can we become truly aware of our hidden motivations and unconscious feelings that shape our thoughts and behavior. It is also necessary for changing our views of the world and ourselves. Through confronting these delusions, desires, and feelings we are able to renounce them. “During meditation we learn to drop from the mind what we don’t want to keep. We only want to keep in mind the meditation subject. As we get more and more skilled at it, we start to use the same faculty in our daily lives to help us drop thoughts that are
This type of mindfulness meditation is known as shamatha in Buddhism. It basically forces you to focus on the present because you have to continue to follow the inhale and exhale of your breath. You can be mindful of the way you eat, taking a shower, driving to work or enjoying quiet time with your spouse. Every moment in every day is an opportunity to practice mindfulness. In Buddhism, the Buddha realized that focusing on just his breath allowed him to accurately perceive reality and attain enlightenment.
Meditation is logical in not only the minds of Buddhist practitioners, but also in those of scientific standpoints. Meditation, however, is not exclusive to Buddhism alone. These brain scan studies showed that Franciscan nuns that spend tim...
Though Buddhism has long been a disciplined and strict religion since its’ beginning in the 3rd Century, it has recently gained positive utilitarian use within the psychological and neurological fields of science. Programs dedicated to improving and helping the lives of those who suffer from mental illness have started to incorporate the use of meditation as a form of treatment. Meditation is enforced in many schools of Buddhism as a method, or a way of life, to becoming enlightened. With growing qualitative and quantitative research on meditation, it becomes more evidential of the positive and life changing impact meditation serves in improving overall health of the mentally ill. Additionally, meditation can be implemented as a preventative
Meditation is an age-old practice that has renewed itself in many different cultures and times. Despite its age, however, there remains a mystery and some ambiguity as to what it is, or even how one performs it. The practice and tradition of meditation dates back thousands of years having appeared in many eastern traditions. Meditation’s ancient roots cloud its origins from being attributed to a sole inventor or religion, though Bon, Hindu, Shinto, Dao, and later, Buddhism are responsible for its development. Its practice has permeated almost all major world religions, but under different names. It has become a practice without borders, influencing millions with its tranquil and healing effects.
Whenever you concentrate the mind, you will begin to feel the health advantages of meditation work their way through into whichever part of the body you're focusing on. Amazing as it might seem, simply focusing on a single part of the body will raise the flow of bloodstream (and for that reason oxygen along with other vital nutrition) to that particular part of the body.
Story, Francis. "Buddhist Meditation." Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). (2010). Health info. Meditation: An introduction. Retrieved from http://nccam.nih.gov/health/meditation/overview.htm
It is well known and proven that over time the benefits of meditating on a regular basis promotes the development of inner calmness, connectedness, focus, flow, a clear clarity of mind, a focused and more stable grounded concentration, along with coherency of thought, increased creativity, being more open and receptive to receive insights, solutions to problems and new ideas, a balanced and harmonious centred inner equilibrium, a relaxed happy body, mind and spirit, which in turn assists as a preventative tool that creates and maintains positive overall vibrant health and wellbeing.
In the past two decades, many philosophers, spiritual leaders, and psychological transitions have accentuated the importance of the quality of consciousness for the maintenance and enhancement of well-being. One of the characteristics of consciousness that has been discussed in relation to well-being is mindfulness. In concentration with the psychology discipline, mindfulness meditation practices have been increasingly used to treat a majority of pain, stress and anxiety-related conditions and also, increasing well-being. The ideology of mindfulness meditation has core roots in Buddhist philosophy and other pensive traditions where awareness and conscious attention are actively cultured (Brown, Kirk Warren,2003).