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Why meditate?
Since desire is the cause of suffering, isn't it better to spend one's time fighting against it as and when it arises? So why must we do any meditation - whether watching the breath or controlling thoughts, or whatever else. Once desire goes, so do our problems. I understand that meditation may have relaxation benefits and such, but music (or whatever your fav. activity) can do that for you anyway.
My point is, meditation doesn't seem indispensable if our top priority is to eliminate desire.
My point is, meditation doesn't seem indispensable if our top priority is to eliminate desire.
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moreover, meditation is not done just to eliminate desire - rather meditation is done to see things as 'just they are'.
The meditation Buddhism teaches helps us become familiar with the workings of our mind and the ability to gain control over them and eventually overcome them entirely.
Bottom line proper Buddhist meditation IS the method we use to fight the delusions.
to see things as 'just they are' - is in a way removing ignorance from our mind and getting wisdom in our mind. meditation is a way to go inside us, to directly experience the ultimate reality as it really is, and not how we think it is. meditation is done to let-go of things and not to get anything.
In meditation you can let all desires fade away and be really happy and peaceful. That gives the mind the strength and insight to let go of even deeper desires. It sees that being very still is peaceful. Outside of meditation the mind is not that still, at least not as deeply. If you are listening to music, the mind is disturbed by music, it is not really silent. So without meditation the mind won't know what it is to be this happy and peaceful. It is too disturbed to see the deepest attachments.
People often see meditation just as a tool, but that's also not true. Meditation is a natural development of the mind that happens when the time is right. The Buddha and his enlightened students still meditated. They didn't need a tool anymore. Still, is was the natural thing for them to do, because that's what enlightened minds are like.
Meditation leads one away from craving, but being with less craving also leads one more and more towards meditation. A good musician doesn't just play her instrument because she earns a living with it, she likes it as well.
With metta,
Sabre
Strange to hear teachings over three millenia old being called new age.
SN 47.10, for example, briefly details how directing the mind towards an inspiring object can act as an antidote to these unskillful mental states, and MN 20 lists five methods for dealing with unskillful thoughts in the course of meditation. Once the mind is calm, clear, focused, concentrated and temporarily free of the five hindrances, it's then better able to perform the next mode of training—discernment.
The way I see it, craving (tahna) is the cause of suffering, and to end suffering its cause must be removed; the difficulty arises when it comes to how exactly this is done. My theory is that craving is a very subtle but powerful aspect of our psychology. It's there, latent in the mind, waiting to exert its influence through mental fabrications by directing or at the very least encouraging the mind to feed upon sensory experiences via the five clinging-aggregates in an unhealthy way. The problem is that these processes of subtle movement in the mind are so subtle that they're almost impossible to discern as they're taking place. That's where I believe meditation comes in; meditation helps to calm and still the mind so that these mental events become easier and easier to observe.
One, in effect, uses conditionality in order to fabricate controlled states of mental absorption until they're able to discern the presence of craving, its movement in the mind, and the fact that even these refined and subtle states of mental absorption are ultimately stressful and unsatisfactory. This leads one to develop dispassion (viraga), and dispassion leads one to cease fabrication, thus opening the doors to the deathless by ending the psychological chain of causation that gives rise to suffering.
The problem with philosophy as it has developed in the west is that it is strictly bound by logic of some kind. It was not always so-- Greco-Roman philosophies such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, Pyrrhonian scepticism, etc. was not merely a rational enterprise but involved practices in order to effect change in one's life. With the rise of Christianity as a state religion, "pagan" philosophies were, at best, relegated to the role of being the "handmaiden of theology" which, ironically reduced the original philosophia to a purely theoretical function which has unfortunately stuck with western philosophy ever since (existentialism represented an attempt to break away from that role, but I don't think it was entirely successful).
Rationality can only get one so far because it is not experiential-- and what we experience in life cannot always be formulated in a simple, rational way. Not being able to recognize those limitations is to be locked in a prison. No matter how one goes about it, such thinking--and remaining within that thinking--can only result in a universe of reified, essentialized, permanent entities in a kind of ontological fragmentation. A bunch of separate parts that never quite adds up to a whole. I'm not saying rationality is bad-- it has its uses within certain contexts, but not as an absolute. You cannot THINK or TALK your way to nirvana. THAT is a dead end.
The problem is confusing the map with the territory.
Buddhism points to a different vision where there is a whole which expresses myriad forms. The world of dukkha is a world where waves think they are separate but don't recognize the ocean which they also are. As long as the waves are unable to SEE that (not merely theorize about it) they will be deluded and suffer.
That is where mindfulness practices step in--not as a form of distraction, but a method of attention. Enjoying an activity such as listening to music is just as much dukkha as not enjoying it. Dukkha is not only craving but also resisting--the flipside of the same coin. Resisting is just another way of craving--craving the opposite of what it is you are resisting. Wanting to eliminate dukkha IS dukkha (after all who wants to suffer?)-- in fact it can become just as much something one craves as heroin--such craving is, like heroin, the desire to escape suffering! One doesn't eliminate suffering by running away from it, but by facing it, by seeing it for what it is--not in other people, but in ourselves.
The "point" about mindfulness practices such as meditation is not to just theorize about this ontological whole, but to SEE it and to BE it. Until that happens, all the thinking in the world about it is still occurring in a state of fragmentation-- because that is what thinking, by nature, IS. Meditation is a means of recalibrating our deeply rooted misperception of the world as seperate and permanent-- and to realize oneself as an expression of interdependence and impermanence. In SEEING and REAL-izing that, clinging and suffering disappears because the mis-perceived self as separate and permanent has vanished.
Short version: the Buddha didn't realize nirvana by sitting on his rear thinking, but by meditating. Something that Buddhists far and wide have been doing for 2,500+ years. That isn't "new age," that is very "old age"!
It is not developed in some systems, in others it is a way of emotional fervour, trance and ecstatic evocation.
Loud music creates natural brain opiates. I used to listen to loud music through headphones and fall asleep . . .
Find what you Love
To the extent you can just drop a desire, for sure, just do it. In principle (i.e., not speaking from experience), meditation provides the stability of mind to develop the capacity for restraint of any desire.
Anyway, you shouldn't be focusing on eliminating desire, as you are quite discontented. Metta meditation would be a much better choice for you, and you might actually enjoy it.
By sitting in silent meditation, you see the impermanence and transitory nature of desire, and learn to let go.
Preparation may be of benefit.
If craving is conflict then wouldn't further conflict (fighting) likely add to the malaise?
Where does desire have to go when it comes from us?
Indispensable comes into play when conditions are limited, we're free to reinvent the wheel - that said, time is limited such that there is much to be said for expediency.
I guess there's no one size fits all.
Love in the spiritual sense is not the same as desire. However to get started, motivated, hopeful, we need to use the tools of even a wounded or sick ego . . .
Connect to Love
Entangle the 3 jewels with the love connection
Connect to a higher form of Love; metta, compassion, bodhicitta
. . . and so on . . .
This might be what Jeffrey is saying.
The second noble truth is the truth of the origin of dukkha. The origin (Pali: samudaya) of dukkha is commonly explained as craving (Pali: tanha) conditioned by ignorance (Pali: avijja).
Here is avidya within the framework of dependent origination:
http://www.search.ask.com/web?l=dis&o=100000031&qsrc=2873&gct=sb&q=avidya four noble truths kagyu
^that's a link to a google search. The document is a pdf so I guess I couldn't link it directly. The 'hit' of the search to the document has 'huntington archive' Here is avidya in the context to the four noble truths: I think that Theravada tries to avoid craving and Mahayana, at least yogacara, is trying to see clearly and remove self clinging (rangtong) or other clinging (shentong). Thus in both of these desire is clarified and the Buddha qualities are liberated. Desire is clarified into sensitivity. Even our ego grasping is just a distorted Buddha quality.
But everybody has the same starting point where they start trying to create karma dharmically and follow the five precepts. The mahayana doesn't stop trying to uproot negative cittas and plant positive. The thing is is that there is an emphasis in letting kleshas be there as in the Sogyal Rinpoche's instruction: "muddy water let stand gets clean". But ayya khem says basically the same thing or maybe a different emphasis or flavor in one talk of hers I listened to.
since everything we do is driven by desire.
Apart from the deeper levels of wisdom that can be gained from meditation, another benefit we can gain from meditation is basically to have greater control over our thoughts through the enhanced ability to be more aware and focused. This means we no longer have to live in auto-pilot mode where our thoughts take control over our mind and bodily actions, but meditation gives us the ability to switch from auto-pilot mode to manual.
A lot of the suffering we experience in our daily lives is really the inability to take control of our thoughts. Sometimes we feel stressed because we are stuck in the past, thinking about how things could have been this way or that way only if we had done this or that. At other times, we are stuck in the future, thinking and thinking about how things might turn out. At other times, we are thinking and thinking about how this person shouldn't have done or said this or that, how wrong their actions were, how different we wish they would be. And at other times, we are thinking about how nice a certain person is, how we miss them and what to be with them, etc. etc. Basically, we often get lost in our own thoughts. We are get stuck in the past or the future and we forget about the present, about ourselves. We are so lost and unaware that we do not see our own suffering ie. how the various thoughts in our mind are causing us to suffer.
So through meditation, we can stop all of that. We can quickly pull ourselves out of living in the past or living in the future and come back to the present moment. And by doing so, we begin to really understand how our thoughts are causing us to suffer and we begin to realize the benefit of stopping ourselves from getting lost in our thoughts, ie. we start to realize the benefit of being aware and focused and the dangers of being unaware and unfocussed.
There is a lot of talk about how we should just let our negative thoughts arise and observe them. But at times, it is also useful to make a conscious effort to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. This is especially the case when your negative thoughts have gained in strength to a level where it is causing you to act in ways which is harmful to yourself or others. For example, if your angry thoughts are going to make you shout harsh words at another person, or if your sad thoughts are making you so depressed you want to commit suicide, or if your thoughts of desire are leading you to engage in sexual misconduct etc, etc, then these are the kind of situations where we should make a conscious effort to replace these unwholesome thoughts with wholesome thoughts. Meditation gives us the ability to do this. We can quickly become aware of the angry/sad/greedy or other negative thoughts and we stop them in their tracks before such thoughts gain strength over us and cause us to behave unskillfully/immorally. We can then generate positive thoughts such as compassion and contemplate about the harmfulness of those negative thoughts.
After the mind is more trained and with the ability to produce higher levels of awareness and concentration, then there will be no need to make a conscious effort to stop negative thoughts, simply because the simple act of being aware and concentrated automatically stops your negative thoughts in and of themselves. Basically, the act of observing a negative thought will, in and of, itself destroy the negative thought and the mind is able to sustain that awareness and concentration to a degree which prevents the negative thought from reappearing again.
So, I hope you will give meditation a chance. You will find that your fearful thoughts about rebirth will have less power over you because you will no longer have to be stuck in such thoughts about the future and how things will be. You can free yourself from the grip of such thoughts through awareness and concentration. In the same way, you can also free yourself from the power of desire/craving.
Desire (outside of things necessary to live) is "bad" or, well, suffering in the context of Buddhism right?
If that's the case, then wouldn't the desire to end suffering from other desires be suffering as well?
And if that's true, meditation could = suffering?
I'm likely totally wrong as I feel that I am, but for reasons I don't fully understand. I have a severe issue (an issue when it comes to Buddhism anyway) with thinking too literally or logically about some things. This is one of them.
Craving would not be the direct issue but rather it would be the causes of craving. Nothing wrong with desire per se. Re the 2nd Noble Truth, as the extract quoted by Jeffrey clarifies, it is suffering conditioned by ignorance that is the problem. That is, ignorance is the problem to be overcome, and overcoming this will naturally result in a certain detachment from the desires of the self and at the limit even a complete cessation. Attacking desires and craving head-on, with no change in ones own mental state, seems like a recipe for a great struggle and near certain failure.