Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

By now you know the meditation we practice is Vipassana or Insight meditation. Vipassana is pure exercise in attention and awareness. When we practice it, we have to toss everything in our mind except pure awareness of sitting. This is not easy to do. We keep practicing diligently and one day our conscious thought, the ego, moves like a cloud and lets the sun of awareness shine. The pure awareness hides behind our ego which is nothing but our reactions to people and events and mental images that hide awareness. 

To clear the cobwebs of ego we focus on our breath, the inhalations and exhalations at the tip of our nose. Such focus takes us deeper and deeper and makes us aware of our sensations, feelings and thoughts, in short our life experiences. We learn to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them. We watch the truth of transitoriness and how nothing in us is permanent. In our day-to-day life we refuse to see that impermanence is constant and eternal. We pine for lost youth, for our past possessions and powerful positions. When we had them we assumed those were solid, real entities. Meditation teaches us that life as an ever-flowing river.

Meditation teaches us to experience the world in an entirely new way by paying attention. You learn what is truly happening within you and around you, perhaps for the first time. By participating in your own current life you engage in the process of self-discovery. 

We worry. This is a problem. Worry sets a response in motion. Notice when worry begins: we either grasp or reject a thing or a person. Here meditation comes to our aid. We learn to view our own reaction to stimuli with calmness. We react without getting caught up in the reaction. The obsession slows down and eventually subsides. We escape from the obsessive thinking and watch a new reality come to surface. We see things as they really are, with clear mind and open heart.

As meditators we seek to know reality without illusions, masks or garbs. We view life with awareness, complete with all our fears, pain and danger. And to our surprise, knowing the truth frees us and makes us feel more secure. Just by observing what is going on, little by little we chip away at our obsessive thoughts. With such insights our life begins to change. Benefits start right away and they pile up over the years. The more we sit in silence and solitude the more we learn about the real nature of our existence. After years of practice we are benefitted with perfect mental health, loving friendliness for all and alleviation of suffering. 
(Based on the chapter “What Meditation is” from Meditation in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana, Wisdom Publications. (First Pub. 2011)