The importance of meditation

How do we understand meditation?

Some of us may think or feel that meditation is only allowed to be practiced by a specific culture or religion. The author has honestly heard these statements and questions, and that is completely understandable. By growing up in 'Western' society, something like meditation may actually sounds quite taboo.

Some of us may have thoughts like "One needs to be a Hindu to meditate" or "Do I need to believe in Buddha to meditate?" This may sound funny, yes, but this is actually what some people think or ask. There is of course nothing wrong with asking these questions, and that is also one of the purposes of this article - to shed some light on the concept of meditation and to discuss the benefits we can experience.

Meditation can be practiced or performed by absolutely anyone. Any belief or religion, even an Atheist, can do meditation. It has nothing to do with any beliefs, even though meditation is practiced in some religions and philosophies. Meditation is so beneficial, and the author saw the fruitful effects it has on children when he was working in a school in India. These small children, starting from four years old and from mixed religions, followed a short guided-meditation each morning for about ten to fifteen minutes. The topics of meditation are easy to understand, even for children; Respect, Kindness, Honesty, Compassion, etc. Even though the topics are 'simple', the results are great!

Let's discuss meditation in some more detail.

The power of the mind

Meditation is an extremely beneficial practice for the mind. All of us, regardless of our race, culture, religion, all of us 'have' a mind, is this not true? So, if meditation is beneficial to the mind, then we can say that meditation can be beneficial to all of us, as all of us have minds.

At this point, it is important to take note of the following point. We need to understand that we are not our thoughts. We, as our True Self, or in our True Nature, we observe the activity of the mind, we observe what the mind projects, how thoughts arise, how ideas come and go, but the ideas and thoughts are not who we are.

We may have noticed how the mind can really 'trouble' us. The mind goes into overthinking, creates stress, which affects us mentally and physically. All our thoughts, ideas, perceptions, are all formed by the mind. The condition of our minds determines the experience we have. Actually, our mindsets directly affect the experience we have.

"How?" we may ask... let's use a practical example; We have the same event, experienced by two different mindsets. Say, for example, a very rude person is encountered. 

The one mind may project; "What a terrible human being, wow! So rude, how dare he speak to me like that?! This person has no respect for me!" In the end, we have an unhappy experience, which leaves us with anger.

The second mind may project; "Oh, this poor person. They must be so unhappy on the inside, they must be suffering, that is why they are so unhappy. The best thing I can do is to be kind to this person and to show some compassion." In the end, we have a happy experience, leaving us with peace and compassion.

See, how powerful the mind is?

Caught in the habit

It is important to note that the mind is a creature of habit. For decades, our minds have been conditioned to a specific way of reasoning and experience. These mindsets are formed by our societies, cultures, and beliefs. At some point, we may realize that we are actually all just products of our societies!

We need to take a look at our minds and decide whether our minds have been beneficial to us, bringing us peace and happiness, or have our minds only been bringing us suffering?
Are we really happy? Most of the time we may admit that we are not. If this is the case, then the time has come for us to re-wire our minds! This, we do through meditation.

Since the mind is so caught up in its habits, it is true that our minds are caught up in 'negative thinking' too. The ego-mind. Now, we want to change the patterns of the mind into positive thinking, in ways that the mind can be beneficial to ourselves and others,

What we can do, through meditation, is to cultivate a positive way of thinking. For example, if we just take as little as 5 minutes in the morning to sit and think how fortunate we are to wake up and to have been given another day, we actually build a foundation of gratitude for the whole day. Think about this...

Imagine if we just take as little as 5 minutes each morning to think of patience, how we can be more patient with ourselves and others, and how beautiful the fruit of patience is. Through this, we can set a positive mindset for the day, and we shall realize how we slowly slowly become more patient, which may also lead to less anger and more peace.

In the same way, we can actually meditate on anything! Compassion, kindness, love, gratitude, how to be more understanding, to be less jealous, to be more honest. Anything! And, the most amazing thing about meditation, is that we can actually start to notice the benefits immediately!

Of course, we need to be realistic. We have been conditioning our minds for decades, and the layers of conditioning are very thick. Throughout our mental continuum, endless amounts of imprints have been made. Thus, to re-condition our minds take time. We need to be patient and persistent. It takes time to set these new habits, but once set, they are extremely beneficial!

How do I meditate? 

Based on this, we may want to start getting into the habit of meditation as soon as we can. For those that are unsure how to do it, please understand that meditation is absolutely nothing fancy. There are no funny hand gestures or weird poses needed, no. Simply sit comfortable, on a bed, on a chair, on the floor. This can be just a normal seating position or crossed leg, whatever is comfortable.

Then, relax the body, breathe deeply and concentrate on breathing, just for a minute or two, to calm down the mind. When the mind and body are calm, then we can start to meditate on something. Even if it is just for five or ten minutes, this is also great! We meditate on what we feel is beneficial for a few minutes, and in the end, we try to 'rest' on this for a minute or two, just to kind of 'absorb' it. Then, we use it as some kind of foundation to start our day on and we keep this with us for the rest of the day. In the beginning, it may be difficult, because the mind can wander around a lot. Just remain patient, and soon this will become a new habit - to be able to calm the mind for a few minutes or even longer. We keep doing this until whatever we are meditating on, becomes part of us, it becomes our second nature. 

Of course, meditation can get very deep and technical. Some schools of philosophy require great meditation practices, which require a lot of concentration, a lot of visualizations, and more, but this is not what we are aiming for at this point when we start to meditate. The benefits of meditation have no limits. We can even use this to heal ourselves, experience altered states of consciousness, or attain great realizations. However, as said, this is more advanced levels of meditation and not the purpose of this discussion.

To conclude, when we notice how our moment-to-moment experiences are directly affected by our mental states, we can start to create a healthy, happy mindset, which allows us to live in peace and happiness. This can be done through meditation and can start off with as little as only five minutes every day.

Think of how we can actually determine our own happiness, and share our happiness with others. All of this, existing within ourselves! 

A photo I took at a school in India, where children from different castes, religions, and beliefs sit together and meditate.