What is the purpose of meditation?
The purpose of meditation is to solve a problem by coming up with a good idea.
What is the purpose of meditation?
Or is it to achieve a suspension of thought?
Neither.
The ultimate objective of meditation is to be able to live a free life without suffering.
In Pali,
There is a name called Nipana.
In Sanskrit,
It is pronounced as Nirvana.
What do we have to do to reach that state?
First,
Our mind and body needs to be relaxed.
Second,
Your mind needs to be focused singularly on a single point.
Third,
You need to be wide awake to the things that are happening.
Is it at this state that this illusion called suffering disappears immediately upon arising or doesn't arise at all?
The illusion of suffering is the same as the illusion of being in the state of mindfulness.
Buddha taught us you need to maintain four aspects of mindfulness in order to arrive at this state.
Number one,
You have to be mindful to your own body.
Then you have to be mindful to your own breath,
Like what we are doing.
Second,
You have to be mindful and awake to your own emotions.
Third,
You have to be mindful to all the parts that make up your body.
Then you have to maintain a mindfulness to the dissolution of your body as your body returns to the ground.
If you maintain these four aspects of mindfulness about your body,
Then you won't suffer on the cause because of your body.
The second type of mindfulness to sustain yourself is be mindful of your sensations.
Third type of mindfulness is to be mindful and awake to your emotions.
And fourth is to be mindful or awake to the law of the truth itself.
And these are the four types of mindfulness that you need to maintain in order to sustain at that state.
And the first step to this,
Going back,
Is to be awake to your own breath.
But for example,
Say we're sleeping and we're comfortable sleeping in our own rooms.
But then we sink into a nightmare of some sort.
Then we suffer,
Might ask for help,
We're fearful,
And we might be sad.
However,
If there was someone watching over us as we sink into this nightmare and struggle,
He probably thinks that we're just talking in our sleep.
Because to him,
He sees no problem at all with how we're sleeping.
Say a hundred people are sleeping.
Although we might be sleeping under the same physical conditions,
Each one of us is probably having a different dream.
And each dream may cause different suffering for that individual.
So in order to escape from the suffering caused by these dreams,
It's not a matter of interpreting or realizing the types of each dream.
It's to wake them up.
So dreams are like a virtual reality.
And to the person inside the VR experience,
It feels real.
But once you wake up,
It's no longer there.
So your thoughts are like your dreams.
You know,
You're sitting down comfortably now,
Right?
For the next 30 minutes,
Nothing will happen to you.
But once you engage in meditation,
You start thinking of what happened in the past and you start dreaming about what's going to happen in the future.
So either suffer or feel joy or you worry or you dream just because of these dreams of thoughts.
But nothing is really happening.
And whatever you experience is a construct of your thoughts.
That's why in Mr.
Meditation,
Even if you're thinking of the Buddha himself,
That in itself is actually a misleading illusion.
That's why we teach to stop your thoughts.
So it's not the actual stoppage of thought that's the objective.
The goal is to reach a certain state of mindfulness and thoughts is an underlying cause to prevent you from doing so.
And a natural follow up question is,
How do I stop my thoughts?
In order to do that,
You have to stop even thinking that you need to stop your thoughts.
It's a matter of just focusing on your nose.
And just be awake and mindful to the breath as it goes in and out.
Even if certain memories come to you unbidden,
Maintain that focus on your breath.
So we can't stop all these random thoughts kind of streaming into our consciousness.
But you cannot imbue them with any meaning.
You cannot allow them to drag you along.
Say all of a sudden you want coffee.
But even in the midst of this desire for coffee,
Don't lose that focus on your breath.
Because these thoughts will disappear soon.
And it's going to be followed by other thoughts.
And they'll also disappear.
But we tend to imbue some random thoughts with meaning,
Allow them to lead us along.
If we think of coffee,
We think of somebody we used to share coffee with.
And think of the conversations we had with that person.
And allow these thoughts to kind of lead into each other.
And we just focus on the breath.
And these we are allowing the thoughts to take over.
This is like a dream.
And this is the same thing,
Being lost inside a dream.
You're being lost inside your thoughts.
So there's no way to stop from these random thoughts from appearing.
But there is a way for you to maintain focus,
Despite these thoughts that kind of stream in.
But once you start doing it,
It's not so easy because you just tend to follow your thoughts along.
And when that happens,
In a non-judgmental way,
Just say,
Oh,
I lost it.
And just start to go back to your focus.
You know,
Once your body and mind is relaxed,
Focus your mind on the tip of your nose.
Realize your breath as it goes in,
And realize that breath as it goes out.
Whatever noise you hear from the outside.
Whatever sensations you feel from within your body.
Whatever random thoughts invade your head.
Without disregard for these.
Just focus on the ins and outs of your breath.
If you lose it,
Regain that focus.
Don't imbue anything with significance.
Just engage.
And once you achieve this state,
You know the question said,
Do we get good ideas?
Sometimes you do get good ideas.
But these are also distractions.
Don't imbue this idea with any significance.
If you get good ideas,
You can get good ideas.
If you get good ideas,
You can get good ideas.
But it's almost a secondary consequence of maintaining that heightened focus.
If you want to get good ideas,
They don't often come.
But in this heightened focus of detachment and just focus on the singular breath,
Sometimes good ideas do come to you.
If you get good ideas,
You can get good ideas.
So we don't have time to go into the whys of these,
But maybe next time.
Nah.
