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What is meditation?
hermitwin
Veteran
in Meditation
I tried to find a simple way to answer this
question.
' to pay attention...'
that is the simple answer.
pay attention to what????
the most important is your thoughts.
if you pay attention to your thoughts
you are meditating.
ie observing your own thoughts as if
you were another person.
any thoughts?
question.
' to pay attention...'
that is the simple answer.
pay attention to what????
the most important is your thoughts.
if you pay attention to your thoughts
you are meditating.
ie observing your own thoughts as if
you were another person.
any thoughts?
0
Comments
Attention to attention.
:om:
Awareness that doesn't touch all of the senses gates and skandhas seems directed to me. Many meditaters mainly experience meditation as the observation of the thoughts but with a little softening of that stance, a much wider world unfolds.
When we try to properly meditate we don’t properly meditate. We must learn to trust the process and surrender to it. When we do that, our meditation is perfect no matter what happens.
When we are distracted we surrender to the distraction. It will pass. When we feel bliss we surrender to bliss. It also will pass.
Maybe a key to meditation and to enlightenment is that we don’t get it. We fail and fail and fail some more. Until we surrender to that.
That’s all there is to it.
Isn't it?
Echoing a similar sentiment to zenff above, I think of meditation as an act of total trust: accepting everything as perfect and complete just as it is—this is the significance of the ‘just’ in ‘just sitting’ (shikan-taza).
The only obstacle is that we can't be or do 'just' anything--we always want to add something extra, or tweak it, adjust it, change it--which is where we discriminate between 'this' and 'that.' Meditation seems so difficult because we seem unable to trust in THIS moment right here, right now--and so off we go chasing ghosts. So when we meditate, we actually notice our monkey mind for a change.
Of course, you can't stop that monkey mind--you can only observe it and over time, the monkey mind will settle because there are no more toys for it to rattle about. Counting the breath and concentrating on it serves as a provisional method toward 'just sitting.' Then there is no 'ought,' only 'is.'
There is a beautiful haiku by Issa that illustrates this profound trust of meditation perfectly: (translated by R.H. Blyth)
There are many forms and definitions of meditation on a site like this. My practise happens to be Zazen. It's not that one is better than another, but that each has it's effect. Understanding what that outcome tends to be means that the practishioner can better decide if it's the right one for them.
When some one says that the most important aspect of meditation is paying attention to your thoughts... I sometimes say the most important aspect of meditation for me is to be unwaveringly present with an ever widening heart.
Our identity does not easy describe it's absence (enlightenment) any more understandably that it describes the process of it's own dissipation (meditation).