Meditation

We are living in a world community. They also seek to get happiness through family, relationship, sensual pleasure. People waste their much energy when they don’t know how to get happiness. The Buddhist way to get happiness is practicing meditation. The Buddhist way to meditation is through morality, concentration and wisdom. Morality is prevention the bad behavior at moment. The concentration is reducing the arising of mental impurities a long time. Wisdom is eliminating the defilements completely. So also morality is behavioral training. Concentration is mental training. And wisdom is cognitive training.

Ven.Buddhaghosa had divided the meditation into two groups: concentration-Samatha and insight knowledge- Vipassanā. Concentration and insight knowledge should go together because while we are developing concentration, we are getting insight knowledge also.

In Satipatthāna Sutta, the Buddha clearly points out that meditation is one way for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for destruction of suffering and grief, for entry into the Noble Path and for the realization of Nibbāna. Having chosen our time and place, having adopted the posture most suitable, if we are ready to begin breathe and naturally. While we are breathing, we must be fully aware of our breath. Also be aware of ourselves when the body walks, sits, stands and lies. We observe the movements of the body where in the act of looking at or looking around, etc. We review this very body from the soles of feet upwards and from the scalp downwards, enclosed by the skin and full of manifold impurities. We review this body; however it may be placed or disposed, in terms of the elements. We have to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, one, two, three days dead, etc.

Try to see the feelings; whether they are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral sensual or non-sensual as they arise in the course of daily life. We observe the changing conditions of the mind as lustful mind or as free from lust, etc. Do not fight with the mind, or don’t try to control it. Simply look at the mind objectively as it is.

Here, the various aspects of the Dhamma-mental objects are mindfully observed as they arise within. For those who are beginning meditation, the mental objects can be taken as the thoughts that arise within the mind as mind objects in respect of the five hindrances, of the five aggregates of grasping, of the six internal and external sense-bases, of the seven factors of enlightenment, of the Four Noble Truths as they really are. In the course of our working days, try to observe our thinking process.

By observe our bodies, feelings, minds and thoughts as they arise within daily routine, we can slowly probe into the inner meaning of things. We can find strength and peace within. If we can practice meditation in our daily life, then we are fully alive and living in the present. We are completely aware of what is happening within us and around us. In a restless world, we live with an inner peace and calm.