What Mistakes Prevent People from Meditating Effectively? – Modern Koans
What mistakes prevent people from meditating effectively?
Response:
Bring on the mistakes. They are why we meditate. From a Buddhist perspective meditation offers tranquility (Shamatha) and insight (Vipassana). One feeds the other like yin and yang.
Mistakes are the teacher. Mistakes are our responses that lead to suffering. Unless we’ve been endowed with equanimity at birth, mistakes are the food that Buddhas feed on.
Here are some examples:
During and after I meditate, my body aches – no mistakes here. You learn (insight) that if you don’t pay attention to your posture and find balance, your body will very plainly tell you (by aching). Your job is to listen and learn. When your body hurts. adjust; move towards balance and tranquility by letting yourself respond to the message that your too stiff.
While I meditate I have thoughts – no mistake here. As I’m fond of saying, there may be only one way to eliminate thoughts and you won’t like it – death. The mind is a lush green pasture for thoughts. These mental butterflies come and go, tickle us when they land, and carry us along with them. Your job is to notice how you respond to thoughts.
If they produce disappointment, ask yourself why. Are some thoughts bad and some good? Do they have the intention of doing you harm? Are the inherently evil? Pshaw, no such thing. If we respond negatively to a thought, we must root out the cause. We will learn that we make intentional or unintentional choices in our response to stimuli.
More often we instinctively respond based on past experiences. We learn that it is not the thoughts that are the problem, but our unmindful responses. Applying this insight, we can discover more tranquility.
Serve me up a big helping of mistakes please.
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Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important than their answers.
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton
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