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Why meditate?

This article is a modified ex­cerpt from the book ‘In­tro­duc­tion to Bud­dhism and to Bud­dhist Med­i­ta­tion’ by Khun Rein­hard.


Humans strive for hap­pi­ness but usu­al­ly we ex­peri­ence it rare­ly and then for a short time only. Some­times we are really un­hap­py but most of the time we are in a more or less in­de­ter­minate state of mind. Not real­ly un­hap­py, but not real­ly hap­py either and usu­al­ly we do not bother, but at times we have the no­tion that some­thing is not quite right, some­thing is miss­ing, with­out know­ing what this might be.
Avalokitesvara statue with Buddhist monks

A quiet place for meditation


Even this indeterminate state of mind, though not an un­hap­py state, is al­ready dif­fi­cult to bear for many of us be­cause there is a sense of lack which pre­vents us from feel­ing hap­py, but that is what we are look­ing for all the time.

In order to escape we have invented or are us­ing all kinds of means: over­in­dul­gence in sex or the use of al­co­hol, nico­tine, other drugs, in­dul­gence in food, TV, inter­net, end­less chatter...

We are used to looking outside our­selves, look­ing for sense stim­u­la­tions which may make us hap­py and some­times they do. But all of this is just tem­po­rary and when the effect is gone, we have to do it again and again... chas­ing hap­pi­ness end­lessly because, as we all know from our own ex­pe­ri­ence, there is no last­ing hap­pi­ness in all these ex­cite­ments.

Sometimes we are totally stressed out, tired of every­thing and what are we then long­ing for? Then we are yearn­ing for a quiet and calm place, we don’t want to hear or see any­thing, we want to be alone, want to just rest, relax or go to sleep. I guess all of us have ex­pe­ri­enced this feel­ing of being fed up with every­thing.

However, all of us might be familiar with a dif­fer­ent kind of hap­pi­ness as well, a hap­pi­ness which does not spring from ex­cite­ment but out of calm and peace­ful cir­cum­stances: a walk along a quiet, empty beach in the early morn­ing, a stroll through a beauti­ful land­scape bathed in mild sun­light, listen­ing to the birds and crickets in the morn­ing, watch­ing a spec­tac­u­lar sun­rise or sun­set.

Usually it happens when we are alone, silent, un­dis­turbed by peo­ple. This con­nec­tion with na­ture can uplift our minds im­mense­ly; it induces a very peace­ful and calm kind of hap­pi­ness, a feel­ing of light­ness, of float­ing, some­thing mag­i­cal.

Peacefulness and calmness of the mind is our refuge after being stressed out by all the other means of chas­ing “world­ly” hap­pi­ness. So why live the hard way and turn to this inner peace and bal­ance only after a health scare, a divorce or other ca­tas­tro­phes in life? Why wait until our prob­lems in life mount until they become nearly un­bear­able?

A much wiser approach is to in­ves­ti­gate the causes of our dis­con­tent­ment and lit­tle by lit­tle free our­selves from this re­lent­less and tir­ing chas­ing after pleas­ure. Even though read­ing books or lis­ten­ing to talks will help with this inquiry, it can ef­fec­tively be done only by look­ing inside, by ex­am­in­ing our own bodies and minds – by med­i­ta­tion. At the end of the road Nib­bana or Nir­vana, a bal­anced per­ma­nent state of mind is wait­ing but at least for me (and I sus­pect for the vast majori­ty of oth­ers) this is be­yond reach. But we can free the minds more and more fre­quent­ly from dis­con­tent­ment and unhap­pi­ness. The path to gen­u­ine hap­pi­ness is pro­vided by medi­tation. [...]

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