Meditation Articles Series

What is Meditation?

Meditation can be simply defined as awareness. When you think about the times in your life where you've experienced what is termed momentary awareness, you would have been very focused on whatever you were doing. Your mind, even for a few seconds would have been without distracting thoughts or turbulent feelings. You may have felt implicitly whole and complete, that all past and future had dissolved and you were completely in the present moment. Watching a sunrise, holding a newborn baby, or an expression of devotion from a lover are examples of being in momentary awareness where there is deep stillness and tranquillity.

De-tangling the Mind

Meditation is the pathway to experience the present moment where we connect with our infinite, boundless, limitless being without the constant and ever present mind chatter.

You could not walk along a path if it was entangled with dense, thorny branches. If you cleared the obstructions, you would see a path that was clear and uncluttered. Our thoughts are often like thorny branches covering our essential nature, but once cleared we can see the pathway unfolding before us. The clear unobstructed path is like our essential nature; calm, peaceful, infinite, and boundless.

Our thoughts occupy our waking hours. It is estimated that we think something like fifty thousand thoughts a day and what we think about doesn't really change that much. The same thoughts we had five years ago, for example, are still there today.

The goal of meditation is to calm the continuous, often chaotic and destabilizing array of thoughts. Thoughts of them selves are neither good nor bad. It is our attachment to our thoughts that takes us away from our essence.

Thoughts may arise as negative thoughts that give sway to feelings of sadness, anger, hatred, guilt, frustration, and resentment. These thoughts can dominate our lives and manifest in misery and unhappiness for ourselves and others.

Thoughts that are worrying create anxiety. We cannot stay focused in the presence of our being as our worrying thoughts take us back into a past of regret or a future of fear. We can waste a lot of precious time enmeshed in worrying thoughts. It is as if we are caught in a thicket of thorns that prick us mercilessly, and this can lead to physical dis-ease.

We also have thoughts that provide a structure for day to day living. These thoughts are necessary for us to be able to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, and provide the necessary support for our lives.

Walking the Pathway to Peace & Compassion

When we experience positive thoughts we dwell in peace, calm, love and joy. We experience inner stillness and yet we remain very alert. Imagine yourself now walking down the path that has been cleared of thorny branches. These thorny branches have been pruned back so that they now border each side of the path. There are buds on the branches and some of these have opened into the most fragrant perfumed roses. Like the pruned branches, we prune our thoughts so that our natural state of being blossoms into the beauty and fragrance of stillness, calm, peace and serenity. We could call these roses - the roses of compassion. We could also call meditation, the pathway to compassion. When we experience compassion, we are in unity and no longer separate. We are connected to our essential state of inner peace and thus we are connected to everything and everyone. When we experience compassion, our self-awareness and self-acceptance is enhanced. Our thoughts no longer control and dominate our lives. They are just thoughts; arising, falling and passing away. We learn to observe our thoughts and to lessen our attachment to them.

In meditation we walk the path of serenity and equanimity.