All throughout history Buddhist monks and the eastern religion have been performing meditation, but recently anyone has been trying it. Meditation is a practice that someone may train their mind to be in a state of consciousness that benefits their mind and body. Meditation is about paying attention, focusing and being very calm. It sharpens creativity and performance while enhancing relationships. Meditators find when they stop taking things in life so seriously, the self drops away. They are more direct and absorb life easier. (Ellison 3&6)
Meditation has been around for thousands of years. In every religion, the instructions for meditating are the same, only the words differ. There are two major types of meditation that may benefit the user. By meditating the human mind may find peace and enhancement of mental activity and awareness. It's very simple to do, and only takes a small amount of your time a day. (Roach 3)
Meditation originated in the eastern religion with Buddhism and Hinduism. Monks have meditated their whole life, through time, helping them become better people. Tibetans and the Dalai Lama have been performing meditation intensely for centuries. These Buddhist followers train using the Tibetan Nyingmapa and Kagyupa traditions for about 10,000 to 50,000 hours over 15-40 years. At one time meditation was part of the basic training for the entire Mozambique military. (Kaufman 2)(Roach 2)
Thinking and other mental activity produce short bursts of electrical activity in the brain called gamma waves. In studies monks, who have been training the longest, have higher levels of gamma waves. Gamma waves are some of the highest-frequency brain impulses; they are also the most important electrical brain impulses. G...
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... and let your mind be vigilant.
If you hear distractions or have thoughts, let them go. Be happy you noticed them; don't feel as if they interrupted your meditation. Continue doing this daily for 10-20 minutes and notice the effects it may have on you. Continue this practice until it gets easier and use whenever needed.
Scientific data shows it has its benefits, as I listed most. Most doctor visits are from stress, so by meditating once or twice daily the visits to the doctor will be less. I actually am thinking about trying it out myself. If the benefits sounded as great to you, as they did to me, I hope you'll try it yourself. Meditation can help balance out your life, why not try it? It's fairly simple and fast. In the future, I predict meditation will be a major part of any person’s life to help deal with everyday frustrations a little easier. (Roach 3)
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).
Toneatto, T. (2010, March). Lecture 21: Cognitive Therapies with Buddhism. Lecture for Buddhism and Psychology (NEW232Y1Y) Course presented at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.
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
Meditation is a way to open up all areas of the body and release anything that may be toxic to the spirit. Channeling the spirit through meditation is another familiar practice due to the fact that is believed that the spirit is never dead, only the shell. Through meditation, people believe that they are able to channel their minds so that they might have a more intimate experience with God. People who practice the religion believe that there are more ways to reach God than through Jesus alone. Yes, Jesus is the central avenue but when a soul sees God in all things then they are able to experience the euphoria that comes with being one with
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
Sitting with on a cushion seemed easy, so you were sitting as they told you to do, your hands rest in your lap, and your eyes are closed. Listened the speaker: that you should pay attention to your breath and exclude your thoughts. But after a couple of minutes, you were thinking about your next project at work, about colleagues. A few minutes later about what to cook for dinner, and about the mountain of housework waiting for you. You still keep on. The stream of thoughts that flow thorough your mind doesn’t seem to stop. Therefore you try to keep them away and turn back your attention to your breath. It seems OK. Breath in, breath out. Again. Inhale, exhale. OK, nice. So far so good. Finally, you think you are successful
Western medicine has recently discovered the powerful affects of meditation, by allowing doctors to treat the body and the mind. In reality, the mind is a very misunderstood and unexplored region of the human existence. Modern science knows more about the composition of the earth than it does about the mechanics of the human brain. Yet, meditation thwarts all notions of modern medicine with its shocking ability to to take obscure visualizations and create physical responses in the body. Mahayana Buddhism, found mainly in the autonomous region of Tibet, has become the main reference and standard for meditation practices in the west. Tibetans have used meditation for centuries as treatment for illness, and now, modern medicine of the western world is just beginning to reap the benefits of this unique and unconventional treatment for a variety of physical and mental ailments. Once a practice reserved strictly for Buddhist monks, meditation has become a worldwide phenomenon. Simply enter “Buddhist meditation” into the any Inter...
Research of brainwaves implies that meditation can definitely improve health insurance and wellness of the person. Neuroscientists discovered that individuals who meditate can change the mind activity to various regions of the mind. This type of change lessens the results of anxiety and stress. For this reason this type of person more happy and calmer than ever before.
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.
Meditation is not a time devoted to thinking or reflecting about oneself, but a time to redirect one’s thoughts and emotions away from the outside world and onto something simple, such as the wind or one’s own breathe. By learning how to meditate, an individual can learn how to react appropriately to “the circumstances one finds oneself in, i...