Meditation and Insight
Meditation for Beginners
Doing the opposite of habitual actions is a meditation: doing nothing intentionally instead of acting automatically, being self-aware instead of being unaware and sitting tall instead of slouching.
Actionless Action
Meditation is actionless action. It brings changes to your body, your mind, your life and even people around you.
Intentional Nondoing
It is liberating to realize that you do not have to do anything in your meditation even though you have urges.
Meditation and School
Meditation is like going to school where you gain new knowledge by seeing for yourself instead of accepting words from books and teachers.
Stagnant Meditation
If you watched your breath for 10 years and learned little or nothing, it is like you went school for 10 years and learned little or nothing.
Meditation and the Stranger
Meditation is getting to know the stranger, yourself.
True Meditation
True meditation addresses the inner cause, not just its symptoms.
The True Value of Meditation 3
Meditation leads us to liberating realization. For example things that we try to eliminate in our meditation and life are often our own creations.
Mental Chatter
Benefit from your mental chatter in your meditation rather than trying to get rid of it or running away from it.
Not Breathing Alone
You are not breathing alone but with the universe.
Automaticity
Breaking free from habitual automatic thinking and acting unlocks real human potential and power.
Mind Without Self-Monitoring 2
When the mind is unable to monitor itself, it is unaware of its own dysfunction as well as dysfunction of other mental functions.
Meditation and Connecting
Meditation is an act of connecting. It connects to oneself and to the world.
Self-Connection
Connecting to self fosters inner growth.
Inner and Outer Growth
Inner growth enables true outer growth.
Your Breath
Your breath is a bridge connecting your body, your mind and the world including countless living beings.
Three Kinds of Knowledge 3
The conventional knowledge, knowledge of nonself, helps you get what you think you want. Knowledge of self helps you know what you truly want. Knowledge of both helps you grow beyond desire.
Mental Chatter 2
Mental chatter provides an opportunity to grow.
Useful Things Become Useless
A useful thing becomes useless when you do not know how to use it. So do adversities in life and the thoughts that come during meditation.
Breathing 3
Breathing is connecting to the world.
Each Breath 2
Each breath is a new beginning, a chance to start over and move forward.
Self-Knowledge 2
Knowledge empowers, self-knowledge transforms.
Basic Human Knowledge
Knowing what your body and mind are doing is a basic human knowledge. Without it, you can not live as the owner of your life but as a servant, even with all the wealth and power in the world.
Rediscovering Walking
How you use your feet and body while walking is important, but how you use your mind is even more so.
Living on Autopilot
Lack of self-awareness leads to living on autopilot.
The True Value of Meditation
Meditation grows you within to meet your true teacher, your own life.
True Understanding
You can not truly understand what you see or think unless you understand its causes, which always include yourself.
Great Intelligence 2
Ordinary intelligence sees only the cup but great intelligence sees the self and the world in the cup.
Living on Autopilot
Lack of self-awareness leads to living on autopilot.
An Obstacle to Knowing
Not knowing what you do not know is an obstacle to knowing.
From Contradiction to Transformation
Knowing one’s own contradictions leads to knowing one’s own ignorance. Knowing one’s own ignorance leads to knowing oneself. Knowing oneself leads to inner growth. Inner growth leads to self-transformation.
Intelligence and Wisdom
Knowing truth is intelligence. Knowing truth in untruth is wisdom.
The True Value of Meditation 5
Meditation unlocks deep human potential by cultivating self-awareness and inner growth.
Inner Growth
Inner growth is essentially the process of realizing and solving our own contradictions, such as why we often create our own suffering despite not wanting it.
Transformation Through Benefiting Others
By benefiting others, we honor the sacrifices and contributions of all living beings that made our lives possible, and transform ourselves and the world for the better.
World Transformation
Transforming ourselves within transforms our world.
Meditation the Innate Capacity
Meditation is an innate human capacity.
Meditation and the Stranger
Meditation is getting to know the stranger, yourself.
Each Breath
Each breath is a new beginning.
Breath Awareness and Insight
Paying attention to one’s breath reveals deep insights into oneself and the world.
The Real Difficulty of Meditation
The real difficulty of meditation is not how to do it but why to do it.
Unwanted Thoughts
Not creating unwanted thoughts is better than creating and trying to eliminate them.
source: New Direction Archive