Thursday, May 8, 2025

Thursday, May 8, 2025

Practicing meditation frequently can produce pleasant states but real payoffs are lasting traits that result from practicing it diligently. Altered traits shape how we behave in our daily lives. The most compelling impact of meditation is not better health but a development of better nature. With years of practice it cultivates selflessness, equanimity, a loving presence, and compassion. 

In 1987 the Dalai Lama organized meetings of leading scientists at Mind and Life Institute he has established in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, India where he now lives. Its mission “to alleviate suffering and promote flourishing or utter wellness by integrating science with contemplative practices.” To debate, discuss and engage in serious research on meditation, he brought together a community of like-minded scholars and scientists from around the world who share this quest.

The graduates of Summer Research Institute (SRI) in New York, doing similar work, have published several hundred papers on meditation. This research repeatedly concludes that “as meditation trains the mind, it reshapes the brain.” The more hours we practice, the greater the benefits we reap. At the highest levels of practice we find true altered traits—changes in the brain that science has never observed before. 

The path of concentration or one pointed attention begins with a mere focus on the breath. At first it’s a wobbly dance between full focus and wandering mind, also called “monkey mind.” In the beginning, the flow of thoughts rushes like a waterfall. It’s discouraging for the novice practitioners because they feel they are out of control.” But as the concentration strengthens the stream of thought flows more slowly, like a river and finally after years of practice it rests in the stillness of a lake.

With concentration comes a feeling of delight and peace. Sense of bodily lightness and spaciousness comes when one is at the brink of the full absorption. There any and all distracting thoughts totally cease. The mind fills with strong rapture, bliss, and an unbroken one-pointed focus on the target of meditation. Finally, even bliss falls away leaving only unshakable focus and composure.

The Buddha excavated deeper. He discovered an innovative variety of meditation that no one had experienced before: looking deeply into the mechanics of consciousness itself. Then going even deeper he veered into a different kind of inner focus: the path of insight, Boddhi. With such mindfulness, the meditator simply notes without reactivity whatever comes into mind and lets it go. Here is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens within mind. Ordinarily our thoughts compel us to like or dislike. But with strong mindfulness we experience a deep sense in which both are the same. Like all other thoughts these are just passing moments of mind. We observe our mental machinery with greater clarity. 

Strong negative feelings like greed and selfishness, anger and ill will fade away. In their place comes the predominance of positive qualities like equanimity, kindness, compassion and joy. 

It is said, after Siddhartha Gautam achieved Nirvana, an effulgence emanated from his being. He looked less like a person and more like the radiance. Someone asked him, “What are you, monk?”

“I’m awake, I’m Buddha.” Thus the name the Buddha—the awakened one.”