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What truth has been revealed to you thru meditation?
ive learned recently that there is clarity readily waiting for everyone but that it is clouded over by a bunch of junk! namely from distractions of every form and function.
Nothing that reading books and stuff hasn't taught me.
But meditation has shown me the truth about my tumultuous mind. I would like to think I'm at peace. But the deep consciousness doesn't lie. I know I'm at peace when I don't dream in sleep.
There seems to be a link between my conscious awareness and my subconscious dreaming. My conscious awareness seems like an iceberg to my subconscious dreaming. Consciously, I may already "stop bothering about an issue". But my subconscious dreaming seems to be the real test, cos when I stop dreaming about the issue, then I truly had "ceased".
Meditation seems great for sweeping away random dreams (eg from seeing weird events in daily life), leaving just the dreams that really matter.
Prior to learning a bit about Buddhism I always saw things as black and white, so it was difficult to identify what's right and what's wrong. Which actions are good and which are bad. While meditating I had this realisation... the only reason we have the idea of good and bad is because of the results of an action. If we do something and as a result we benefit, we decide it was a good action... if it doesn't bear fruit or results in pain, we decide it's a bad action.
We can go our whole lives doing something that's actually horrible, without realising it. It's evident in cases like cheating. If the individual isn't caught, they can think of themselves as a good person and act superior... only if the original action is found out it's considered bad. In that sense cheating is generally considered ok by the person as long as it's not found out. If you have listened to Tiger Woods talk about it or have experienced it first hand, you'll see what I mean. We often lie to ourselves and don't realise it's not a beneficial action. I've had moments when I've felt pretty smug about myself, but that was all based on delusion.
There's a (non-Buddhist) guy on youtube... he made a video where he gave an example of the sort of thing I am talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WMhJ1rmMXs
In a restaurant, there are various groups of people sitting around: Drunkards, druggies, fat guys and wife beaters. The drunkards were judging the druggies, the druggies were judging the fat guys, the fat guys were judging the drunkards and all of them were too busy judging others to realise they are being judged. However, the wife beaters have a problem which others don't know about, so they are sitting there being smug and judging everyone, while nobody is judging them.
Unless the results of our actions are visible to ourselves and others, we don't realise think about whether they're good or bad.
I can now see how replacing good and bad with helpful/skillful and unhelpful/unskillful/foolish actually goes to the root. We can see if an action is helpful without having to see the result... that's where intention comes in. If you act with the right intentions, you'll be more likely to produce good results and be honest with yourself.
Realising this has helped me be more honest with myself and find some of my unhelpful traits which are a hindrance. Before, I just used to rationalise those traits and didn't really think they were good or bad... they didn't result in any actions... they were just there. Now that I can see they're a hindrance, I have the motivation to do something about it.
This was actually very profound to me... that my whole understanding of good and bad was critically flawed.
Comments
But meditation has shown me the truth about my tumultuous mind. I would like to think I'm at peace. But the deep consciousness doesn't lie. I know I'm at peace when I don't dream in sleep.
There seems to be a link between my conscious awareness and my subconscious dreaming. My conscious awareness seems like an iceberg to my subconscious dreaming. Consciously, I may already "stop bothering about an issue". But my subconscious dreaming seems to be the real test, cos when I stop dreaming about the issue, then I truly had "ceased".
Meditation seems great for sweeping away random dreams (eg from seeing weird events in daily life), leaving just the dreams that really matter.
It took me some time to find out where I had been hiding the monkey's stash!
Prior to learning a bit about Buddhism I always saw things as black and white, so it was difficult to identify what's right and what's wrong. Which actions are good and which are bad. While meditating I had this realisation... the only reason we have the idea of good and bad is because of the results of an action. If we do something and as a result we benefit, we decide it was a good action... if it doesn't bear fruit or results in pain, we decide it's a bad action.
We can go our whole lives doing something that's actually horrible, without realising it. It's evident in cases like cheating. If the individual isn't caught, they can think of themselves as a good person and act superior... only if the original action is found out it's considered bad. In that sense cheating is generally considered ok by the person as long as it's not found out. If you have listened to Tiger Woods talk about it or have experienced it first hand, you'll see what I mean. We often lie to ourselves and don't realise it's not a beneficial action. I've had moments when I've felt pretty smug about myself, but that was all based on delusion.
There's a (non-Buddhist) guy on youtube... he made a video where he gave an example of the sort of thing I am talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WMhJ1rmMXs
In a restaurant, there are various groups of people sitting around: Drunkards, druggies, fat guys and wife beaters. The drunkards were judging the druggies, the druggies were judging the fat guys, the fat guys were judging the drunkards and all of them were too busy judging others to realise they are being judged. However, the wife beaters have a problem which others don't know about, so they are sitting there being smug and judging everyone, while nobody is judging them.
Unless the results of our actions are visible to ourselves and others, we don't realise think about whether they're good or bad.
I can now see how replacing good and bad with helpful/skillful and unhelpful/unskillful/foolish actually goes to the root. We can see if an action is helpful without having to see the result... that's where intention comes in. If you act with the right intentions, you'll be more likely to produce good results and be honest with yourself.
Realising this has helped me be more honest with myself and find some of my unhelpful traits which are a hindrance. Before, I just used to rationalise those traits and didn't really think they were good or bad... they didn't result in any actions... they were just there. Now that I can see they're a hindrance, I have the motivation to do something about it.
This was actually very profound to me... that my whole understanding of good and bad was critically flawed.