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Buddhist Meditation does not encourage imagination
According to experts in the Buddhist forms of meditation and Buddhist texts, one ought to grip the real nature of things rather than indulge in one’s imagination and opinions about things.
Suttas (Sutras) recommend against cluttering the mind with too many concepts or “ideas” related to meditation. This, according to them defeat the very purpose of meditation.
In many cases of meditation, people have visions or specific bodily experiences which others may never experience.
Never give undue importance to Visions
This can happen, although all of them have adhered to the same process of meditation. Such experiences relate to a particular individual and have little to do with the final outcome of meditation.
Specific experiences should not carry away a person practicing Samadhi meditation. This can make you go off track and lose time. One should keep the basics of meditation at the forefront and stay observant.
We should regard meditation as a skill just like carpentry or painting. However, for many people, meditation can come across as a great challenge or as a mystic code.
Breathing: At the heart of Buddhist practices
Several meditational processes are in addition to the one mentioned in this article. The Pure Land technique is a very popular form of Theravada Buddhist practice. Alternately, processes like Anapanasati focus on breathing as a powerful technique and a key to the code of meditation.
When one considers breathing, one should pay attention to the feeling of breathing from the inside. Thus we transfer attention to the breathing process.
Breathing does not simply relate to breath going in and out of the lungs.
Breath relates to the thread that connects our worldly experiences with the inner instruments of the mind. Strangely enough, attention on the breath can work towards ending suffering. It relates to feelings, emotions, and even bodily sensations.
The elements of the body have much deeper relevance than what modern science believes or has tried to prove.
Inner Elements connected with the Mind
The elementary feelings of energy, warmth, liquidity, solidity, emptiness, cognizance, stuffiness relate directly to dhatu or elements of the body. These elements of the body present themselves directly to inner awareness.
When this starts happening, one can be certain that meditation is working for us and the inner instruments are unraveling the mystique of life. The path of Buddha hinges around the breath.
Attaining Insight through Breath
If one only holds on to the breath sensation with undivided attention, one would go far, exploring the many dimensions of consciousness. When one hinges on to the breath with sustained practice, one shall automatically enter the stage of insight.
One then shall be able to “thread out” the complexities of the mind, strand by strand. When the strands of the mind unravel pure knowing shall emerge at the end. When pure knowing becomes a reality, our attainment shall be trustworthy and real.
Ordinary Understanding remains defective
All people of the world operate on a murky and shoddy platform of contorted understanding. Unlike such defective, faulty understanding, the platform of pure knowing is perfectly insightful and unerring.
Understanding on this platform remains free from bias and represents the true nature of things. In other words, if we let the breath follow its own nature and let the mind “simply be”, meditation shall successfully deliver its objectives.
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Attention: The key to the mind
The core of attention or awareness contains the key to “being”. When attention remains untrained, the breath becomes irregular. If the breath becomes irregular, the mind becomes murky and turbulent, infected with lower emotions and misapprehensions.
This shall distort or unnecessarily amplify emotions. Finally, it leads to stress. Dhamma guides us, trains us, so that we secure happiness, stability being an essential feature of such happiness.
If our hearts have no guiding principle, if awareness does not lead action, we shall have no centering. Then it would be like a person who has no dwelling place who moves from street to street looking for shelter in shanty places.
Being Unaware is like being Homeless
Homeless people have no dwelling places. They stay in whatever circumstances they find themselves in. Such people bear the heat, cold, dust, and rain. They have many complaints but no solution.
Centering is like building a Home for oneself
When one practices centering, one builds a home for oneself. The roof of such a home is attention or awareness. Momentary concentration is known as Khanika Samadhi. Such concentration resembles a thatched roof, ready to leak during the rains.
Upachara Samadhi resembles a tiled roof that will break easily, with a little force. In Upachara Samadhi, there can be bouts of intense concentration but that concentration is vulnerable and can become unstable. Appana Samadhi resembles a house with a brick roof, strong, ready to bear all seasons or withstand many blows.
It is also resistant to forceful attacks. A house that has a brick roof can also house many valuables.
One cannot break through the strong walls and the roof of such homes. The tension of watching over our valuables is also released because you have built a strong house with strong walls and a roof.
Good thoughts without Centering have no Value
When we do not possess a centered mind, we cannot gain anything of value. In such a state, we try to possess good by allowing our minds to wander and dream through concepts and preoccupations.
Sometimes, out of inquisition, we may indulge in good thoughts. In spite of this, we cannot be safe. They just come and go like the passing winds with almost no effect on our overall personality.
Our desire to attain goodness shall remain no other than wishful thinking. Our anticipation for good to happen shall only remain in concept.
No one derives any benefit in the end.
Without Centering we will lose all Wealth
A woman, all of a sudden, finds some gold ornaments. She immediately tries to cover herself with all that gold, in the mid of the road, in the open. Being weak, that gold can put her in great danger, because dacoits are all over the place.
In the same manner, if we have an untrained mind, and try to develop some good qualities, they remain temporary. Others shall take advantage of our goodness.
We can never benefit from our own goodness.
All goodness shall remain superficial and even dangerous if smarter ones out there are prowling all the time to trick us. Our intelligence shall remain underdeveloped because the mind is untrained.
Samadhi Meditation is all about training
Unless we have strengthened the mind with deep meditative practices, we can never have the grit and strength to safeguard ourselves and use our virtues to our advantage.
An untrained mind can never be decisive and tends to get confused and stray easily. Such people can never get good from whatever they do. Therefore we have to first begin by plowing the mind and weeding out the undesirable tendencies steeped in it.
Samadhi Meditation helps remove the unwanted weeds helps yield a rich harvest.
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