What is meditation?
Meditation is the practice of training the mind to bring a concentrated, yet gentle awareness to the present moment. Through meditation, we can investigate what thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations are arising in any given moment and by paying attention, turn toward our experience. It is a practice that benefits all aspects of one's life as indeed, life is one's meditation.
Meditation can be practised in all postures (sitting, standing, walking, lying down) and in all activities of daily life by bringing awareness to what one is doing. It will become apparent, however, that we easily slip into habitual patterns of behaviour and have endless ways of distracting ourselves from feeling what we are feeling in the moment.
In sitting or "formal" meditation we reduce outer distractions by stilling the body, drawing the senses inward, and focusing on the breath. This is easier said than done, especially in the beginning stages, as the body will feel certain discomfort and the chatter of the mind will become more apparent. However, through regular practice, the body and mind will more easily settle and appreciate this time of slowing down internally.
Why meditate?
The Buddha outlined Four Noble Truths: 1. There is suffering (unsatisfactoriness). 2. There are causes of suffering (desire, craving, clinging) 3. There is an end to suffering. 4. There is a path that leads to the end of suffering (The Eightfold Path)
Most of us wish to be happy. We constantly try to create conditions in our lives that will bring about a reliable source of happiness and avoid those which do not. Yet no matter how hard we try, there is no person, possession, experience, or circumstance that brings lasting satisfaction because all of those things are impermanent, always changing.
We become conditioned to an endless cycle of desire; wanting that which is favourable or enjoyable and pushing away that which is painful. Even in the happiest of times, there is an underlying feeling of unsatisfactoriness, the possibility that "I" might lose that which makes me happy, or worse, get something I don't want. By training the mind to let go of its tendency to cling, we develop a capacity to meet our entire experience without pushing it away. read more...
All are welcome to join in the group meditations held every Monday evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Moon Studio.
Related links: (The Birken site contains a suggested reading list as well as over 3000 Dhamma talks. A good book for beginning meditators to read is Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana).
http://birken.ca/
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe1-4.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc&feature=relmfu
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_chodron.html
