Our present way of thinking; our perceptions, desires, feelings, and reactions control how we experience the world. Our minds are the core of our existence, everything we have thought is everything that we are, for everything is mind-made. If we are experiencing suffering, it is because our minds created it, and only our minds have the power of relieving it. Buddhist meditation is the practice of transforming the mind through the cultivation of mindfulness, concentration, detachment, insight, and objectivity. My background in psychology made me interested in discussing the concept of Buddhist mediation due its immense focus on mastering the mind. It has the crucial transformative effect on the mind that leads to new perspectives of oneself, …show more content…
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
What is Buddhism? What do we understand by Buddhism? It can be comprehended differently and can mean a variety of things to many people. For one it can be only an explanation of the life of the Buddha. To another, Buddhism means the massive doctrine recorded in the Buddhist literature, which is voluminous and comprise of several thousand pages recording the words of the Buddha. Moreover it is described as a very lofty, abstruse, complex and learned philosophy of life. However based on whatever the Buddha taught, there has grown a very rich culture, a culture which has extended to all parts of Asia for over 2500 years, and to which people from various walks of life with various backgrounds from all these countries have made a lasting contribution. Another definition of Buddhism is the kind of ritual that has grown around the doctrine of the Buddha, as a result of his teachings and the way of life preached by him. But to me Buddhism is the perfect combination of all these definitions. Buddhism has influenced my life by making me adopt the Eightfold Path known as the “Middle Path”, increased the practice of spirituality, comprehend law of impermanence and thus lead a righteous life. It’s mainly thought that Buddhism is a teaching for monks only, as it is sometimes wrongly conceived.
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).
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.
Mindfulness is a concept or practice that was founded nearly 2600 years ago. It is a very integral component of the Buddhist faith and is believed to be associated with many benefits including self-control, tolerance, flexibility, objectivity, concentration, mental clarity, emotional intelligence, kindness, compassion, acceptance, and equanimity.
Meditation is a private devotion or mental exercise consisting of a number of techniques of concentration, contemplation, and abstraction to heighten spiritual awareness. It has also been defined as, “Consciously directing your attention to alter your state of consciousness.” Meditation has been practiced around the world since the ancient times. It was used back then and still used today for spiritual growth (becoming more conscious). Meditation is mostly concerned about your attention, where it is directed to, and how it alters or changes a person’s consciousness.
People with GAD dwell on their worries excessively, give to much attention to their fearful thoughts, and respond emotionally to negative images. Meditation can help the person to step back from these thoughts, emotions and images and view them as an observer watching from the outside this helps to reduce the stress response and put negative thinking into perspective. Meditation helps control of physical tension by inducing the relaxation response (Wilson, 2009).
For thousands of years people have practiced mediation for spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being. Albeit there are many mediation types, in this paper I will be discussing and focusing on mindfulness mediation. Before further exploring mindfulness mediation, it is crucial to define mediation as a whole. Tang, Holzel, & Posner, 2016 state “Meditation can be defined as a form of mental training that aims to improve an individual’s core psychological capacities, such as attentional and emotional capacities” (p.213). Having that in mind, we can dive into mindfulness mediation. Mindfulness meditation is defined as “nonjudgmental attention to present-moment experiences (Tang, Holzel, & Posner, 2016).” A useful analogy to consider is going to the gym, going to the gym allows one to enhance the body, well similarly, practicing mindfulness is akin to taking the mind to the psychic gym, it enhances it. Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on your breathing and then bringing your mind’s attention to the present all while dismissing discursive thoughts and maintaining a special focus on breathing.
The purpose of meditation, and mindfulness meditation as mentioned in this course, is to increase awareness while calming the normal thought processes that often overcrowd the mind with ideas that are deemed not-true by Buddhism. These brain scans clearly show that the purpose of meditation is achieved in doing so.
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.
Impulse control and decision-making, both executive functions, are believed to center in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994). Damage to this area increases deficits in decision making (Bechara et. al.,1994). Research has shown that chronic heroin use negatively impacts an individual’s ability to restrain impulses, leading to lack of planning and decreased adaptive and social cognition (Pau, Lee, & Chan, 2001). Heroin is a powerful opiate that crosses the blood-brain barrier and produces potent euphoria (Pau, Lee, & Chan, 2001). Impulse control is defined as an individual’s tendency to act on arising wishes or urges (Murphy & Mackillop, 2012). Greater mindfulness has been shown to decrease substance dependent individuals’ urge to use substances (Murphy & Mackillop, 2012). Mindfulness focuses on the emphasis on staying in the present moment, the natural impermanence of things in an individual’s environment, and the awareness of actions such as noticing what is experienced without judgment or reactive behavior (Murphy & Mackillop, 2012). Research on the implementation of mindfulness techniques and their ability to decrease impulsivity is necessary in order to examine the ways heroin-dependent adults react cognitively, behaviorally, and physiologically to external stimuli.
Understanding the brain and the different signs will help acknowledge the issues within a person to help them cope with the issue. It is important for one to be aware of their selves and their reactions/behaviors. On the other hand, the studies address the different types of mediation and possible consequences. When introducing a specific technique, there are always pros and cons, and people that are for or against the matter. Meditation is known as healing of the body and/or mind and can be religious. Those different types were address and justified for the understanding of the use for the
10-Minute Mindfulness appeals to me because I am at a time in my life where peace and
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).
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...
Buddhism is the philosophy of being awake and conscious in life. Siddhartha Gautama, or Buddha, shared his wisdom with the world and believed that the path to enlightenment was a process of elimination. These eliminations can be conquered through a process called Zen. He believe it was the only way to get rid of the burdens human’s carry of, ignorance, desire and suffering. Buddhism is almost the complete opposite of our western world because our society requires us to act a certain way in order to thrive or even survive.