Thursday, April 8, 2010

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere

Or so the song went something like that.

For me, sitting is the best thing I can do for my sense of sanity and well-being.

We're told not to expect anything or have any goals or agendas when it comes to practicing, and for the most part I do agree. But there is absolutely a tremendous benefit to meditating on a regular basis, even if it's just for 5-10 minutes a day. Better that than an hour once or twice a week, trust me.

What goes on when you're sitting goes on throughout your entire life, but you probably just don't realize it.

When we meditate the silence fosters a kind of self-awareness that isn't as readily available during the course of a normal distraction-packed day. However it's very easy to avoid the work of studying ourselves because it's much more fun and tempting to engage in fantasy, planning and speculation.

We don't meditate so we can excel at the art of meditation.

If you can sit and concentrate your mind long enough and regularly enough, you can bring that quality of stillness and clarity with you into the rest of your life.

1 comment:

wm. said...

true, wonderful, and yet why are so many people so hesitant to begin meditation? My father recently 'understood' the possible use, not by listening to me, but by reading that it can lower bloodpressure. The West, it seems, requires benefits above and beyond Awakening. With Metta ...