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Why meditate? Here’s why…Why meditate? This is a serious question every practitioner asks themselves before taking on a meditation practice. The good news is that never before have we understood so clearly and had so much evidence as to the benefits of a regular meditation practice. Modern sciences such as physics, psychology and neuroscience are confirming what meditators and especially Buddhists have been saying for hundreds of years. To boil it down it would say something like this: the whole universe is fundamentally one and that this realization brings us peace and happiness. In this website you can explore the benefits of meditation related to self-improvement. These include working at the roots of anger, depression, and improving mental health, concentration, self awareness, and effectiveness in professional and personal relationships. But for these to be the main purpose of our meditation work would be like stopping off at a muddy pond when you are on a trip to see the ocean! The fact is that enlightenment is real, or else why would countless monks and devotees of all the major religions be talking about an “experience beyond words” for thousands of years? So why meditate? This question then naturally turns into - what exactly is enlightenment? That subject is treated in more depth later on in the website, but there are a few things we can say in the context of the question - why meditate? Enlightenment has been called various things by various people – being one with God, opening the mind’s eye or third eye, a turning about of the mind, seeing our Buddha-nature, and awakening. The enlightenment of the great Zen Master Dogen is described as follows in The Three Pillars of Zen: “Spying one of the monks dozing, the master reprimanded him for his halfhearted effort. Then addressing all the monks, he continued: “You must exert yourselves with all your might, even at the risk of your lives. To realize perfect enlightenment you must let fall [that is, become empty of all conceptions of] body and mind.” As Dogen heard this last phrase his Mind’s eye suddenly expanded in a flood of light and understanding.” The good news is that enlightenment and the benefits of meditation are not just for monks in remote mountain monasteries of the Far East. Meditation practices have adapted in many ways to the unique circumstances of western culture. Zen Master Dogen reached full enlightenment after passing through a series of previous awakenings. These awakenings have also come countless times to busy people like you and me that have committed to a daily practice and who attend meditation retreats. Broadly speaking, an individual who experiences insight through their meditation practice will commonly develop a thorough and deep sense of self confidence, social responsibility to friends, family and society, and a feeling of unity with their environment. This character transformation is a direct result of seeing into the illusion of ego and our own “self” as the centre of the universe. Once we have released ourselves from this grasping to the ego, even the sky is no limit!
To learn more about the Spiritual Path, click here To return to the Meditation Information page,click here To return to the Homepage from the Why Meditate? page, click here
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