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Does meditation lead to wisdom?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
in Meditation
In my experience formal meditation leads to insight and compassion. It also leads to experiential awareness with the potential for understanding and 'wisdom' - though insight is probably the better term.
Meditation takes time, commited regular practice, not unconvincing feeble efforts. I would suggest that many people have a wealth or long lifetime of experience but are yet to digest. Meditation allows digestion.
Any wisdom?
0
Comments
Yes I think so too.
Meditation is a broad term, there are lots of different techniques, many of which aren't intended to result in wisdom. Shamatha is designed to increase concentration, Metta to develop love.
But in general, I agree that delving into one's mind and seeing whats in there can lead to wisdom.
Matthieu Ricard uses the analogy of watering a plant. Lots of people have brief experiences of insight or compassion but it quickly runs off and doesn't really soak in. In meditation we return our focus to these experiences and stay concentrated on them as long as we can so that the experiences soak into and become our being.
Meditation can't take you where you aren't.
Neither can it take you where you are.
It's a pretty good exercise, for all that.
My thoughts are that meditation facilitates gaining wisdom,
but it cannot result in the gaining of wisdom if not coupled with learning
Meditation could be likened to marinating meat, it allows for the soaking of knowledge that you have previously "gained" by moving that knowledge into a deeper realm of understanding
@person I feel the focus/concentration of positive components, including metta, positive insights, koans for the unthinkable and more subtle mind awareness without such recognizable form, all have their place and potential.
Many thanks.
Sometimes I think..
Meditation is just a name for the processes for getting ourselves out of compassion, love and wisdom's way.
I don't think it's so much about us becoming compassionate, loving and wise,
as us learning how to stop obscuring their innate manifestations.
I'm not sure about "wisdom", but for me it's like it creates more space, the room for a different perspective perhaps.
I think that's exactly what it does.
I feel @how is exactly right.
Ultimately we need to get out of the way.
Initially many of us are in 'The Middle Way', that is subjective meditation - a formed practice if you will. We have to empty that continual forming ...
Thanks guys, we iz unplanned - iz plan!
Our conditioned responses to phenomena are the programs of our own ignorance.
Your achievement of space between phenomena and your conditioned responses,
seems like a fundamental step towards denying ignorance it's rule.
Here wisdom unfolds of itself.
Sometimes the whole point of it is to have no point at all.
Wisdom is already there, it's part of Buddhanature. Sometimes, it comes flying out and you later don't even recognize it. I see it sometimes in things i have written, I barely recognize myself in what I wrote, and it's because I got out of the way and let something else come through. Meditation is a tool that opens the door. We don't gain wisdom. We just let it shine when we open the door.
Well said @karasti.
Open door, it never really was shut ...
Wisdom sun always shines ...
Practice.
Pure and simple.
Iz plan!
Watching mind-body processes can lead to wisdom with appropriate guidance.
I like this way of looking at it, innate wisdom obscured by ignorance. The other option is innate ignorance which has to be overcome in some way.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an01/an01.049.than.html
Great insights guys, many thanks,
LOL
sounds a little enigmatic, that can be affected but not in this case ...
In one sense as @karasti and others have intimated, 'wisdom' (for all that's worth) is already an innate component of our being. Meditation where we are. Presence where we are.
In an ideal situation we don't enter or leave meditation, it is part of our being.
So how to sit, without sitting? Tee Hee. Just sit where you are not, when you are.
... and now back to the tathā-gata
Tathā-gata is often thought to mean "one who has thus gone" (tathā-gata) and "one who has thus come".
Yes!
@lobster ... of course it's affected. Affectation is the name of the game, isn't it?
But for those who may be offended by the notion that...
I suggest trying the alternative (getting somewhere else or 'being in the moment') and assessing how affected or deeply-true that may be.
What a pisscutter!
Is it?
I did not feel it was affected in this case.
Que? Offended whatever for ...
I think that is fine as it stands.
I don't feel it is an absolute alternative, just an initial necessity. I feel the original statement is closer to the ideal as it entails and suggests something quite subtle, worth contemplating.
Sorry for any confusion
Some of the Buddha things in the Mahayana are not about seeing reality as it is but they are developed to help beings. But the two aren't necessarily totally separate things. For example you could learn sign language if you knew some people that spoke it. That learning would have to be re-accumulated your next life. But the point is that a being can do other things than have understanding.
You said it.
Indeed, though I think it's a fiction that insight ( vipassana ) can develop without calm and stillness ( samatha ). I don't find the "dry insight" rhetoric at all convincing.
I also think it's a fiction that the Buddha "invented" vipassana. The Buddha was certainly an innovator, but many people were doing insight practices before he arrived on the scene.
It leads to restless leg syndrome, but only temporary.
I am getting my words confused.
Mistaking affectation with affection and effection.
Word nerd required. @federica? any word wisdom ... ?
Speak less.
Think more.
If the mind is 'open' to change, I guess so.......
Interesting responses.
Certainly provided me with insight, which I can not add to my store of wisdom, as I have nowhere to keep it.
In other words I feel wisdom does increase through meditation and contemplation both subjectively and objectively. However wisdom is an expression of innate qualities independent of our limited projection. We are flawed expressions but 'wisdom' is a precious, unsullied ideal that has to manifest through form. That form would be us ... getting out of the way of wisdom ...