Mettavalokanaya Buddhist Magazine - December 13 2016

MEDITATION AND IT'S BENEFITS
Getting to Know Your Mind
Imagine if the whole world practiced meditation. If everybody
in the world had the opportunity to get to know their mind.
To clearly perceive the wholesome mental qualities that
need to be adopted, nurtured and perfected, as well as the
unwholesome mental afflictions that need to be relinquished
and eradicated, and then implemented the invaluable
meditation methods taught by the Buddha.
I think that you may agree that all wars and conflicts would
be pacified, and peace and understanding would pervade
the world. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, “If every
eight year old in the world is taught meditation, we will
eliminate violence from the world within one generation."
We all want peace and happiness, and want to avoid conflict
and suffering. But we need to understand the causes of peace
and happiness, and adopt and practice them. We also need to
understand the causes of conflict and suffering, and abandon
and eradicate them. This way we will achieve our goal.
Everything begins in the mind, all things are constructs
of the mind. We are what we think. Thinking, acting
and speaking with a pure mind leads to positive results.
Thinking, acting and speaking with an impure mind leads
to negative results. When a pebble is thrown into a pond,
the ripples that are created cover all parts of the pond,
likewise every thought, action and word effects everything.
Peace must firstly be developed internally, in our own
mind and then expressed outwardly through our actions
and words. We must live by example. Thinking, acting and
speaking with the motivation to cause and maintain peace,
harmony and understanding. Then peace can be caused
and realised, and the lack of peace can be overcome.
The Buddha Dharma clearly teaches morality and a path
to peace. Buddhist meditation is grounded in morality
and leads to the realisation of genuine wisdom and
compassion. But if we live contrary to these teachings then
genuine peace based on true wisdom and compassion
can never be individually or collectively realised.
To calm our mind, first we must live morally and therefore
be free of regret and guilt. A mind free of regret and
guilt is more conducive to and ripe for the practise of
meditation, which enables us to develop genuine insight
into the nature of our mind and the nature of reality.
When our mind is calm and clear, we will be less confused,
worried and anxious, and therefore able to perceive things
more clearly, and able to make better choices on what to do
and what not to do in our lives. We will be able to deal much
more clearly and efficiently with life’s changes and difficulties.
To bring about the awakening of students of all temperaments,
the Buddha taught a wonderful variety of spiritual practises.
There are foundation practises for the development of loving
kindness, generosity and moral integrity, the universal ground
of spiritual life. Then there is a vast array of meditation
practises to train the mind and open the heart.
These practises include awareness of the breath
and body, mindfulness of feelings and thoughts,
practises of mantra and devotion, visualisation and
contemplative reflection, and practises leading to refined
and profoundly expanded states of consciousness.
Us sentient beings are all different in one way or another.
All at different stages on our spiritual journey, our path
to enlightenment. Therefore, we should seek to receive
instructions on the particular methods, as taught by the Buddha,
that are suitable to our current individual temperaments
and needs, and wholeheartedly put them into practise.
Benefits of meditation are now widely known and the practice
of meditation has become part of the mainstream in many
places around the world. For instance, it has become common
place for meditation to be practised at various educational
facilities such as schools and universities. Also many medical
practitioners encourage their patients to meditate to help the
healing process. These are just a couple of examples how the
practice of meditation has become part of mainstream culture.
As mentioned above, meditation helps us to get to know
our minds, enabling us to be aware of the harmful mental
states that we need to relinquish and eradicate, as well as the
beneficial mental states that we need to adopt, nurture and
perfect. It helps us to be more calm, clear, stable and content,
and helps to improve our short and long term memory.
It also helps to enable us to communicate with
others and all of nature in a more clear, peaceful and
understanding way. Therefore the practise of meditation
not only benefits the individual practitioner, but also
all of the living beings that we come into contact with.
Meditation is for the purpose of understanding the true
nature of our mind. It reveals the inner psychological world.
It penetrates the ordinary, superficial perception that
obscures the nature of reality. With meditation you can
understand the reality of self and other phenomena, for if you
understand your own mind, you will understand everything.
Without meditation we cannot realise the truth, for the
mind will remain clouded with disturbing thoughts and
emotions, and will become more and more confused
and deluded over time. So the whole purpose of
meditation is to lessen the deluded afflictions of our
mind and eventually eradicate them from the very roots.
Just as a professional tree-cutter would carefully cut back the
branches of a tree, before being able to dig out the roots and
eventually get rid of even the tiniest bits of the roots, so that the
tree has absolutely no chance of growing again. We must chip
28 fu;a;djf,dalkh I foieïn¾ I 2016
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