What is Meditation?
Meditation is a method for calming the mind and developing a positive approach to life. It has numerous benefits for the health of both your body and mind, is easy to do, and something everyone can learn. Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years, with the first documented evidence of the practice dating back to approximately 5,000 BCE! Through meditation, we can truly relax, control our feelings and emotions, gain inner strength, and let go of negative states of mind such as stress and anxiety.
More technically, meditation could be defined as the act of directing our awareness to an object (such as the breath, or a mental state like loving kindness), and familiarising our mind with it. The Tibetan word for meditation, “gom” can be translated as familiarising or habituating. The Pali word, “bhavana” means cultivation. In short, it means to cultivate the mind in meaningful ways, to familiarise it with positive states. This actually refers to a training of the mind.
Meditation is not just for relaxation. One of the ways we can utilise meditation is to train our attention and develop deep states of concentration (samadhi). Eventually, we may achieve a state which is blissful, luminous, and nonconceptual. This blissful state is called “shamatha” in Sanskrit. Once we have reached this very advanced concentrated state of mind, our mind is very balanced, flexible and serviceable, and when combined with vipassana practice, can bring about radical and irreversible transformation.
Whether we wish to experience some temporary peace and calm, or become a happier and more positive person by training to remove bad habits of mind and cultivate positive ones, or find deeper meaning by exploring the depths of our mind and discovering the true nature of reality, meditation can be practised by everyone!
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Why Meditate?
To develop the wish to meditate, and the motivation to practice, we first need to understand why we need to meditate. When we first try to meditate, we may notice that our mind is all over the place. This experience shows us how little control we have over our minds. Having so little control over our minds is one of the reasons why we experience so much stress and anxiety in daily life in response to our difficult situations. Meditation is not only a way to gain some sense of peace and calm but also to train our minds to be more positive and constructive in responding to daily challenges. If we wish to experience greater wellbeing, peace of mind, and happiness in daily life, training the mind is essential.
All ‘positive’ feelings such as happiness, joy, and love, just like all ‘negative’ ones like jealousy, worry, and hatred – are states of mind. Because they are states of mind, their causes and remedies are also primarily to be found inside the mind. If we want to be genuinely happy, content, and comfortable in ourselves, and free from stress and anxiety, we must learn how to control our minds. Meditation is a method of controlling the mind.
