As you get more familiar with the prelim's and the flow to contemplation, meditation and dedication, you will enjoy the meditations more and more. This is the good news: Like yoga asana, meditation becomes more and more enjoyable and natural. The beginning is tough.
***
A Note on Preliminaries: Since the purpose of these two weeks is simply to get an overview of this path, if you are finding the preliminaries a bit overwhelming, you may just do the 7-limb practice (Preliminary #4 on the blog named "Preliminaries"). Just getting comfortable with these 7-limbs will be fantastic. If you have the time and the drive, go for the whole thing!
Topic 3: Impermanence
As you may have already experienced, it is hard to get to your meditation cushion everyday and work on the mind so intensively. It is hard for all of us.
One of the main reasons it is so tough to practice is because we are attached to worldly activities, and so may not have a strong wish to practice. To overcome this obstacle, we need to remind ourselves that everything in our lives, including our body, is impermanent.
The ways to make this life meaningful is to ensure that we will take a higher rebirth, we will attain liberation, we will achieve full enlightenment; realize ultimate truth, experience pure bliss and help others to do the same.
To motivate ourselves to work on the above goals, we meditate on impermanence and death. It may sound dark but again think of the long term. The purpose is to cultivate a strong motivation to pursue these intense practices. This path is challenging and we will need the motivation to be firm. Remember the power of realizations - once your have a direct uncontrived realization of something, it stays with you always and you don't ever have to spend a second contemplating the topic again.
Contemplation:
I am going to die. The timing of my death is uncertain. I may die any moment. Day by day, moment by moment, my life is slipping away.
Many young people die before their parents. Some die in accidents or due to illness. There is no certainty of how long we will live.
Meditation:
Mentally repeat: "I may die any day." Concentrate on the feeling it evokes.
You may come to a conclusion such as "Since I shall soon have to leave this world, it doesn't make sense to be attached to worldly things. I will devote at least a little bit of time everyday to practice spirituality so that by the time of my death, I will experience true liberation."
Meditate on this conclusion for as long as you can.
Dedication: Same everyday - see previous blogs. (In brief: I dedicate the virtue I have created in this meditation practice to the welfare of all)
Subsequent Practice: throughout the day, feel less attached to worldly objects remembering that at the moment of death you will have to part with all of them. All you will have is your mindstream - will you know about liberation? will you know about pure light? will you know about bliss? will you know how to take yourself to a higher rebirth? This path has all the answers. Be happy you have the karma to learn. Be happy we are training our minds together and preparing for beautiful, high states of being.
Practice these meditations. Even though they are not the brightest topic (death!), there is a brilliant reason for it. Practice, practice, practice, trust the yogis of past...soon we will come to more blissful topics of meditation, but for now we have to do the harder work....
Love,
Reema
No comments:
Post a Comment