Meditation: The Essential Buddhist Practice
...ubject, which would not persist after reaching full nirvana. The main goal of Buddhism is to abolish suffering in human existence. One “has to trigger an inner realization, a perception which pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot” (Bodhi). Humans are very steadfast and do not easily welcome change. To be content with life’s events, we unconsciously formulate ideas and beliefs and are bound and conditioned by them. Concepts are formed out of ignorance and then desire arises from our concepts. Eventually, humans must face their negative feelings and concerns. When a person is overwhelmed with their false senses of happiness, “a deeper reality beckons us; we have heard the call of a more stable, more authentic happiness, and until we arrive at our destination we cannot rest content” (Bodhi). People must become aware of their own self and everything around that encompasses it. In order to be aware one needs to know that they are living in a world of sensations. In the “The Hawk” sutta, the Buddha teaches that one’s foreign domain is the “five-fold realm of sensual pleasure” (Wallis p.3). This refers to sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. When we have a desire, we only want to fulfill it. When we do fulfill our desires all we are left with is a sense of emptiness. The Buddha says, “Live within your native domain, within your own ancestral, natural habitat. Death will not gain access to the person who lives within his or her native domain, within his or her own ancestral, natural habitat, death will not gain footing” (Wallis p.3). Rather then living in one’s foreign domain, present moment awareness should be obtained. This is what the Buddha is referring to when he says “native domain.” We need to live seeing sensations as they are – as a part of nature and impermanent. A practical method to achieve present moment awareness, end suffering and truly feel good is meditation. Nirvana and human suffering are difficult concepts to explain, so Buddhism moves towards explaining meditation in more easily understood ways. Meditation helps a person realize positive feelings. It assists in “the increase, enhancement, and cultivation of positive feelings such as love, compassion, equanimity, mental purity, and the happiness found in bringing happiness to others” (Burns). Many people that are upset or suffer from depression do not know that positive feelings exist. The negative constantly brings down their state of consciousness and they do not know there is a positive. Meditating will allow a person to break through the clouds and see what is really out there. Aside from realizing the positive feelings, meditation offers the “relinquishment and renunciation of greed, hatred, delusion, conceit, agitation, and other negative, unwholesome states” (Burns). This furthers the importance of practicing meditation. Not only does it help you see the good in the world, but it will help get rid of the bad. Experiencing the practice of meditation will allow one to have better self-understanding and appreciate the nature and quality of our own feelings, whether positive or negative. Positive feelings are never permanent; therefore, people will experience negative feelings. When one is aware of this fact and practices meditation, they will learn to not get bothered when feeling bad. Aside from realizing Nirvana, abolishing suffering, and becoming attuned with one’s positive feelings, meditation is useful to help gain non-attachment, insight, and concentration. Non-attachment refers to “freedom from craving and freedom from infatuation for sensual experience” (Burns). Everyone knows that desires and cravings control the mind and are very difficult to overcome. Cigarettes are proven to give people lung cancer and other health problems, but the craving people get from the addiction is hard to resist. This is a more extreme example because they are addictive, but other cravings are hard to resist such as chocolate and other junk food. Meditation allows people to control their obsessions for sensual experience. “It is not a state of chronic apathy nor a denial of sense perception existence. Rather it is psychological liberation from our ‘enslaving passions and our addictions to sensual and emotional pleasures’” (Burns). The human senses are constantly looking for attention and satisfaction and meditation will help control them. Insight has a couple of different meanings. “In its classical Buddhist usage insight (vipassana) means full awareness of the three characteristics of existence” (Burns). These three characteristics are impermanence, suffering, and impersonality (Burns). People must realize that everything in the universe is temporary and changing. One must be aware that our sensations are impermanent. They are constantly coming and going and we always react to them whether they are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Our lives become reactions to sensations. The Buddha says we needs to see sensations as a water bubble, constantly changing and without substance (Wallis 34-35). Suffering is inevitable because no state of mind can last forever, and the soul is not immortal because nothing is permanent. In psychiatric terms insight means, “gaining awareness of those feelings, motives, and values which have previously been unconscious” (Burns). People have many feelings they do not consciously know about that affect their everyday ...