The purpose of meditation is to learn to just be. This sounds so simple, but actually this is quite hard for us. Often people are critical about the Buddhist view that human nature is good. The how come there is so much evil in this world? But through a simple deduction we can scientifically proof that this is true. If you would have to define the nature of water, would natural clear water come closer to that definition, or cloudy muddy water? Of course; clear clean water comes closer to that. The same goes for our mind which is filled with conditioned thoughts, fears and concepts which can cause us to act fearfully and aggressively. But this is not who we really are, this is not our true nature; meditation is proof of that. In meditation we let go of all these fearful concepts; I am this, he is that, this is good or bad. What you see, and one can truly examine this for oneself, is that when the mind becomes clear again there is actually a lot of wisdom, positive emotions and compassion. We do not only know this from 2500 years of experience but also through state of the art brain scans; that when the mind is in a wakeful but deeply relaxed state, brain parts that stand for these qualities become more active. Not only is this healthy for the mind, dozens of researches show that it has major advantages for our immune system and health (for instance psoriasis heals 4 times quicker when the standard UV treatment concurs with meditation practice). But for us Westerners this has become difficult, it is hard to just be. We feel as if just being human isn’t worthy enough and it is exactly this distrust in our selves that causes so many problems. We have to start trusting our selves as the source of wisdom and compassion we so desperately need in this world, let go of the distrust of just being.
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Comments (3)
That’s an interesting thing you bring up, people asking why there is so much evil in the world.
I think like you said, if people meditated, maybe that would answer that question. Asking why there is so much evil in the world, sounds like a question that comes out of confusion and not knowing how to find happiness
Exactly, we have to start working with the so-called ‘evil’ instead of neglecting it, it’s all in our own minds!
Leting go and just being, is the easy part. The hard one is the interaction with others. I strongly believe that inner peace can only emerege with honesty, compassion, communication and validation from others. What’s the point in finding your own space of truth and being if one can’t find the space of being togheter and not just one. The art of meditation is just finding my way. We need to find a way to make that our way, to be able just to be, together with our fellow kind.