I had a revelation recently in regard with meditation and Buddhism, that made me almost completely change my view and opinion of it.
In early forms of Buddhism or Zen it was very common for the gurus or the masters to misguide their students, in order to help them understand something that would be impossible to explain or convey in some other way.
As far as I understand the main objective of Buddhism is to teach acceptance or surrender to life in order to eliminate sufferance.
This is basically an impossible task because if you give someone any instructions you tell them to control themselves. For example if I say pay attention to your thoughts, I am telling you to control your attention. Which means that I am teaching you the opposite of surrender I am teaching you control.
There is a story about Buddha that I like, after he become enlightened and he started to teach others. One day was visited by a woman of which son just died, somehow she got the idea that Buddha had magical powers.
And he begged the Buddha to bring her son back to life, no matter what the Buddha would tell her she wouldn't understand so he eventually agreed to bring her son back to life with one condition.
If she manage to bring him a grain of rice from a house from which nobody lost anybody. The woman eventually leaves satisfied, and of course she fails to accomplish that task because it is impossible, as death is a certainty of life everybody will eventually lose a loved one.
But in that process of attempting the impossible she understood the true nature of life and surrender to it.
You see the task of meditating, to silence or control your mind is as impossible as stopping your heart while you are still alive or your stomach from digesting.
Sure you can have really pleasant experiences while meditating, and periods that are free of thought. But you can have those doing almost anything: going on a walk, playing a game, cleaning your house etc.
It is not necessary to meditate, or I should say that it is necessary only if you believe it is. The purpose of meditation is to make you fail at it to realize that control is bulshit and give up on trying to control your mind.
Meditation is not a real thing in itself, it is a teaching tool, something to deliberately send you in too the wrong direction at an accelerate rate so you can understand that it doesn't work.
I guess you could considered meditation a metaphor to how most people are attempting to live their life. Am impossible to accomplish self administered torture, full of contradictions.
Meditating is like falling sleep, the more you try to do it, the harder it is to do. The physical aspect of meditation is also very important, particularly diet. Your diet must be very clean for meditation to be easy.
i also interested in yoga
To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Whoa. That's one heck of a thought. I see what you mean but now I'm trying to wrap my mind around it.
When you put it that way, I wonder how much of it could be a placebo effect. You sit there in silence for 15 minutes thinking that this should make you feel better - and it does, sometimes only because you're expecting it too.
That could be the same as when I started "walking meditation." Half the time I do it I just zone out, the same way I would on any regular walk. The only difference is that I added the word "meditation" to the end, and suddenly it makes me feel a lot better than just a regular "walk" would.
Haha, meditation as deceit or a scam is a thought I'll have to play with more. There's definitely a benefit to meditation, but maybe it's not because of the reasons we expect.
Thanks for the cool post :)