Meditation For Happiness
Everyones wants happiness yet few of us seem to find it. In our search for satisfaction we go from one relationship to another, one jop to another,one country to another. We study art and medicine train to be tenis players and typists, have babies, race cars, write books. We spend our money on home entertainment systems, mobile phones, ipods, handheld computers, comfartable furniture and vacations in the sun. Or we try to get back nature, eat whole foods, practice yoga and meditate. Just about everything we do is an attempt to find real hapiness and avoid suffering.
There is nothing wrong with wanting happiness, The problem is nothing with any of those attempts to find it. The problem is that we see things like realtionships, possessions and adventures as having soe intrinsic ability to satisfy us as being the cause of hapiness. But they cannot be simply because they do not last. Everything by nature constantly changes and eventually disappears our body, our friends all our belongings the enviroment. Our dependence on impermanent things and our cllinging to the rainbow-like happiness they bring cause only disapointment and grief, not satisfaction and contentment.
According to Buddism There is lasting stable hapiness and everyone has the potential to experience it. By practicing meditation-we can learn to be happy at any time in ant situation even difficult and painful ones. Eventually we can free ourselves of problems like dissatisfaction, anger and anxiety and finally by realising the actual way that things exist, we will eliminate completely the very source of all disturbing states of mind so that they will never arise again.
What is Mind?
Buddhist theory is said that all happiness, ordinary and sublime, is achieved by understanding and transforming our own minds. The mind is nonphyscial kind of energy .It is clear in nature and reflects everything that it experiences, just as a stil lake reflects the surrounding mountains and forest.
Mind changes from moment to moment. It is a beginingless continuum, like an ever-flowing stream: It is general name given to the totality of our conscious and unconscious experience: each of us is the center of a world of thought, perceptions, feelings, memories and dreams-all of these are mind.
Mind can be compared to an ocean Just as the waves can subside to reveal the stillness of the ocean’s depths, so too is it possible to calm the turbulence of our mind to reveal its natural pristine clarity. The ability to do this lies within mind itself and the key to the mind is meditation.
What is Meditation ?
The tibetan term for meditation means “ to become familiar” What arises in our mind is what we are most familiar with . If somenone treats us unkindly or disrespectfully, we immediately feel hurt or angry, it is because these are the reactions that we are most familiar with or habituated to. Buddhist meditation involves making our mind familiar with positives states such become more natural and spontaneous. Then, when we encounter an unkind or hostile person we’ll be more likely to remian calm and patient an deven feel compassion for them.
These are many different techniques of meditation each technique has specisific functions and benefits and each is a part of framework for bringing mind to a more realistic view of the world. Meditation is not an activity of this is not simply matter of sitting in a particular posture or brething a particular way nor is it done fort he purpose of experiencing pleasant bodiliy sensations. Rather it is an activity of the mind and is done for the purpose of transforming the mind, making it more positive. Although the best results come when we meditate sitting quite place, we can also meditate in a noisy enviroment and while working, walking ,riding on a bus or cooking diner.
Through meditation we can recognise our mistakes and adjust our mind to think and react realisticly, more honestly. The final goal, enlightenment is a long term one. But meditation done with this goal in mind and do have enormous short-term benefits. As our concrete Picture of reality softens we develop more positive and realistic self-image anda re thus more relaxed and less anxious. We learn to have fewer unrealistic expectations of the people and things around us and therefore meet with less disappoinment;relationships improve and life becomes more stable and satifying
Transforming the mind is a slow and gradual process. It is a matter of ridding ourselves, bit by bit, of instinctive,harmfull habit patterns and “becoming familiar” with habits that necesaariliy bring positive results-to ourselves and others
Above information are taken from the book of "How to Meditate" by Kathleen McDonald Please see details of our Meditation nights in this month