What Brings Us To Meditation?

written by YeShey on Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Most of us come to the spiritual path because we are experiencing something in life that we don’t like, something that we want to overcome.  At some level we have a dissatisfaction, a pain, some form of suffering. Perhaps we have already tried various ways of overcoming the suffering. We found that some methods helped to minimize the suffering by masking it or suppressing it etc, but they did not eradicate the suffering all together, we did not get to the root of the problem.

Once a tree has had its roots eliminated, the trunk and all the branches go as well. Right?

What is the root? The thoughts themselves.

We suffer because the mind is always in motion, always thinking of the past, the present or the future. We have a pervasive feeling that something is not right, not enough and we find ourselves searching for the thing or things that will make it right, that will fill the hole.  We try to make it right, we try to accumulate more, increase pleasure and security and decrease pain and insecurity.

This is a slippery slope because once we experience something positive and think that it is this that will make us happy, we do our level best to make this experience last as long as possible and repeat this experience as many times a possible. Similarly, we do everything we can to put an end to the things that we think cause us pain. We search for the perfect thing or the perfect state.

This very search is the essence of the problem, We search for something we do not have or we try to eliminate something that we do have.  Can we control this? Can we make sure that we will always get things that we want and not get things that we don’t want?

Nope, and in fact, the very fact that we position ourselves in this way is the very thing that causes our suffering.

As we frantically search for the perfect state we are missing the moment, missing life. Even if we get some of the things we think will make us happy, the struggle remains.  We have a fear of losing it and the feeling of wanting more of it, and still things come that we do not want anyway.

At some point we finally ask ourselves why do I have this pervasive sense of dissatisfaction, this pain, this struggle.  Why is happiness fleeting? Why does suffering return again and again?

What would happen if I let go of all of these thoughts and just observed the nature of the struggle itself, just experience without wanting more or less?

In meditation we learn to overcome the two polarities – wanting and not wanting, attachment and aversion and understand the futility of pitting the good against the bad.

In meditation we observe the struggle itself. We observe the nature of the struggle. When we allow ourselves to just observe the nature of good and just observe the nature of bad; we experience the present moment, we experience it    as it is. No more, no less, just as it is. In this experience there is great freedom, and wonderful serenity, we are absent of struggle.

Living in the present moment is a very effective way to live, we experience everything just as it is, without the judgment of good or bad. We experience each moment of life as beautiful and captivating.

In Dharma,

YeShey