WHY WE NEED MEDITATION?
SAYADAW U PANNA DIPA
Aggamaha Saddhamma Jotika Dhaja
Dean, Faculty of Patipatti,
I T B M U, Yangon
1999
In the midst of various pleasurable things of the material world, the more something becomes new, the more we look forward to getting newer and newer things. Obviously, we are insatiable. We long all the time for something more pleasurable, one after another.
Blinded by ignorance and ensnared with craving, we tend never to be satisfied and be contented with just what we have; rather we are always chasing after more and more luxuries and pleasures. We are always wanting more in the way of money, wealth, position, status, power and glory, etc., throughout our lives.
We must look at ourselves, For example, our eyes see beautiful forms, our ears hear sweet sounds, our noses smell sweet scents, our tongue tastes delicious food, our bodies feel pleasant objects and our minds observe and entertain fascinating notions and ideas. yet are we ever satisfied with these sensual pleasures. Although one may get what one wants in larger and larger quantities. Is it ever enough?
The answer is very definitely “No, never.” It is just like a person who drinks salt water trying to quench his thirst. What he drinks makes him more and more thirsty. In fact many a man may reach the end of his life still hankering after sensual pleasures.
So man on the whole is certainly sure to face anxiety, worry, sorrow, pain, grief, lamentation, and so on and so forth, because of his own craving. So long as man cannot overcome his craving and attachment, he has unavoidably to face a great deal of misery at present and will also be the same in the future.
So if you really wish to be released from all these pains in your life, you positively need a remedy for releasing and dispelling all your miseries. The remedy is nothing but insight meditation which alone will free you from all your sufferings and enable you to attain the real peace and happiness of your life.
Meditation means to keep one’s mind quite calm guarding it not to go away here and there. Mind usually goes away to enjoy pleasurable things. Thus, mind is unstable, shaking or jumping from object to object. If so, one’s mind is sure to come across anxiety, worry, tension, agitation, ill-will, grief, sorrow, dissatisfaction, resentment and so on and so forth. And then, your mind becomes impure with evil thoughts. If your mind is impure, your being or physical body becomes impure too. Then. you are sure to suffer from all these physical and mental ills or pains. Naturally an impure mind indeed will give unhappiness and a pure mind happiness.
Actually, we human beings want to gain happiness and be released from all suffering. Then how can we gain happiness and avoid suffering? It is nothing but to control your own mind, or manage or train your mind by means of meditation practice. Only through meditation practice, you can control and purify your mind, and as a result, your mind will become calm, tranquil, peaceful, satisfied and contented, and then you will come to see the truth which in turn leads towards real peace and happiness in life.
Happiness really blooms out of ones mind. So, mind training is indeed of vital importance. Mind usually takes delight in evils (Papasamin ramati mano). If your mind goes away to evil ways, it will become impure and this impure mind will in turn give you mental pain and thus you are sure to suffer in some way or the other. Then you wont have ease and peace of mind. That is only because you do not know how to make your mind calm. peaceful, or happy. When you have meditative experience, you will come to know that meditation is really a source of peace and happiness which again leads to enlightenment in the Noble Truth. Without peace of mind and happiness, our life is meaningless and is truly not worth living.
We have two kinds of happiness, namely, physical happiness and mental happiness. If we have a wound or if we are sick, we naturally suffer from physical pain. If we have sorrow, grief or lamentation we suffer from mental pain. But, in reality, mind is the only thing which feels the actual suffering from both of these two kinds of pain. Pain usually arises out of mind, for whenever you come across unhappiness, you feel some kind of mental pain.
For instance, when you see a pleasant thing and if you like it, then the consciousness of greed arises. And in like manner, when you see an unpleasant thing and if you dislike it, consciousness of hate or aversion will arise; in exactly the same way, if you are not aware of the thing as it truly is, the consciousness of delusion or ignorance arises. Therefore you are not able to escape from these evil states of mind. These evil states of mind are indeed the very roots of unwholesome mental factors. And consequently, you will have had effects as a reaction from your own mental thoughts.
So meditation actually means to purify one’s own mind from evil mental states; in other words, to make one’s mind calm, peaceful and happy And then you will find the real truth or Noble Truth in your own being. In fact, you can discover the real truth as it is in its own nature. You will have to find out this real truth within your body and mind through the practice of meditation. When you find the real truth in your own being, then you can see the same thing in other beings too, because each and every one is composed of the same phenomena.
For instance, you now have to focus your attention on the tip of the nose to make a mental note just on the touch and awareness. In due course, you will come to see that there are only two elements or phenomena in your being that is, “Touch and Awareness.” Touch is a physical phenomenon and awareness, a mental phenomenon, and you are indeed composed of only these two elements. For instance, hair is a solid element or a material phenomenon; urine is a liquid element, the wind in the body is an air element. and heat in the body is the fire element. These elements are already existent in your physical body as well as in the whole universe, but they all are not permanent, they are indeed transient, changing from one state of constant flux to another.
As for mental element or phenomenon, the so-called mind is only a process of consciousness. For instance, when you see an object, eye consciousness arises and so on and so forth. In this way, there always arises a process of consciousness. There is nothing more than this. On the whole, only these two elements – mind and matter – are going on, nothing else rather than the flux of these two states. Here you come to see that the so-called person, man or woman is nothing but just a composition of elements, in other words, a group or composition of mind and matter or a psycho-physical element.
An ordinary worldling is originally deluded by ignorance (Avijja) and ensnared with craving (Tanha.) These two roots of defilement are the very origins of ones evil mental states. Until and unless you drive them out of your mind, they certainly will overwhelm you all the time. Because whenever you see anything you will take for granted that what you see is permanent, lovable, substantial and pleasurable and thus there arises the two evil mental states of defilement, namely, ignorance and craving, and as a result, you will suffer something in your mind involving either desire or aversion.
For example, when you see an object, your mind will be greedy if you think that the object is beautiful and desirable. Opposite to that, when you see an object, your mind will be agitated or angry if you think that the object is not good or makes you feel unpleasant. And you will also be ignorant or fall under the influence of ignorance if you are not aware of the object as it truly is. Here, you come to see that without meditation practice, you are sure to become a victim or fall into the domain of evil thoughts or defilements or passions.
So, you really need meditation. In a real sense, meditation in the Buddhist way means to see things as they really are in their true perspective and nature. It is a practical teaching of self observation or self-examination or self-analysis. It is a kind of scientific and reasonable method of analysis of one’s own body and mind. So Buddhist meditation is indeed able to provide you with the real result of total purification of mind and the supreme bliss of liberation.
The objective of meditation is first to purify one’s mind since all our actions come out of our mind. A pure mind is indeed full of love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity without any taint or shade of impurity. So you will come to know that the sustained practice of meditation will bring about a real transformation in your behaviour, attitude and personality.
I have composed a Myanmar verse about the results of insight meditation. Insight meditation is for the purification of all impurities or defilements. For the appeasement of worries and sorrows, for decreasing of sufferings, for the development of insight knowledge and for the attainment of Nibbana.
Meditation in an ordinary sense is to think about a thing deeply and reflect seriously. According to our Buddhist sense of the term, meditation means to keep one’s mind quiet or calm. not to let it go away here and there, and to develop it stage by stage for the progress of mental purity. It is therefore called mental development in Theravada Buddhism of Myanmar ‘Naing Ngan’. (Burma)
There are two kinds of mental development. They are:
1. Concentration or contemplation (Samatha) and
2. Insight meditation (Vipassana.)
Concentration in an ordinary sense is to bring together one’s thoughts and fix on one object or to give one’s attention on one object. Contemplation means to look at a thing seriously or think about a particular thing deeply.
As for concentration and contemplation, there are altogether forty objects in the Buddhist Text. When your mind is flexed on one of the objects, such as concentrating on the much of your breath at the tip of the nose, it is called concentration. When you look at or think about the physical nature of your body, such as unpleasantness or loathsomeness, it is called contemplation.
We have four kinds of contemplation under the title of the Foundation of Mindfulness (Mahasatipatthana). Namely:
(i) Contemplation on the body (Kayanupassana satipatthana)
(ii) Contemplation on feelings (Vedanupassana satipatthana)
(iii) Contemplation on consciousness (Cittanupassana satipatthana)
(iv) Contemplation on mental objects ( dhammanupassana satipatthana)
Concentration or contemplation makes one appeased from hindrances or defilement (Nivarane sametiti samatho kilese sametiti samatho).
Most of the Yogi practitioners in India are following along these two kinds of concentration and contemplation, but they are not on the way of Insight Meditation (Vipassana).
According to Buddhism, these two techniques of Samatha can dispel only craving (Tanha) but not ignorance (Avijja). The darkness of ignorance can only be annihilated by means of the practice of Vipassana. Regarding insight meditation ( Vipassana). the Word Vipassana is a combination of two words Vi and passana. Vi means particularly or specifically and passana means seeing or penetrating into the real nature of a thing.
According to the commentary. Vipassana is so-called:
(i) because it sees or penetrates into states or things by way of impermanent nature, etc., analysing in their true perspective from different aspects. (Aniccadivasena vividhehi akarehi Dhamme passatiti Vipassana.)
(ii) because it sees or penetrates into the nature of conditioned things as impermanence, etc., in their true perspective from different aspects. (Sankhare aniccadihi vividheni adarehi passatiti vipassana).
(iii) because it penetrates into things by way of impermanence, etc., from different aspects discarding their outward appearance or parlance. (Pannattim thepetva aniccadi akarena dhamme passatiti vipassana)
Among the various types of meditation in the world today, this technique of insight meditation is a very simple and scientific way of practice and it is also logical and applicable to everybody for the achievement of real peace and happiness of mind which, in turn, will lead to a practical and useful way in one’s daily life.
Insight meditation will certainly bring you real peace and happiness in your life. At first you will feel as though you were wandering on a rough and potted road, but gradually you will find it to be a real royal road, which leads to liberation from all sufferings and to the attainment of full enlightenment. I have no doubt that this very road leads directly to the goal the Noble Truth (Kriya Sacca or Nibbana.
I would therefore, like to encourage all of you to take this road so that you will also find the real way of truth and peace in your life and experience the real happiness of liberation in Nibbana. The real test of meditation is applying it in life. I want to encourage you to live in the world happily with a mindful awareness on the real nature of life. I distribute this technique of meditation purely and sincerely as a noble service to humanity in order to help those who are in need of help. The technique of meditation offers equal benefits to all who practise it without any discrimination on the basis of race, class, sex, colour or faith. I can definitely say it is applicable to each and every person.
Time is always passing away. The time that is spent can never be regained. So you must use your time in a fruitful way. Most of you perhaps are whiling away your precious time. Let us see the normal schedule during the 24 hours of your day. You usually spend 7 to 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working, 4 hours going, coming and eating, 4 hours playing, practising and exercising for your health, entertaining people socially and carrying out family matters.
Now you have spent the whole 24 hours, but you haven’t really gained much for spiritual progress in your life. In this way you are wasting your precious time, day after day, month after month and year after year. Meanwhile, your body is getting older and older, yet you are not waking any spiritual progress in your life. There are 168 hours in a week. If you cannot reserve, or set aside just one hour per week, if not daily, for your own sake to obtain real peace and happiness, your life is not worth living. So in order to attain a real benefit in your life, you have to try and reserve some, if not all, of your free time in the pursuit of mental peace and happiness. Thus is simply for meditation or spiritual retreat.
Meditation alone will bring you real peace and happiness. You should have meditation experience so that you can obstruct or hinder your evil tendencies coming from outside through seeing, hearing, smelling and so on. Your mind is originally pure, but when it becomes mixed up with these evil thoughts, then it becomes impure. The impure or defiled mind will merely make you unhappy and miserable.
When you practice meditation, for instance, making a mental note just on the touch and awareness at the tip of your nose, your mind is only knowing and mindful of the touch and awareness. Then it will become calm, and you will be mindfully aware of seeing whatever you see, of hearing whatever you hear, and so on. In this way. you are ever alert or mindful of every mental state. So whatever mental state happens to you, you know immediately whether it is good or bad and then you don’t keep the bad mental state any longer in your mind. You come to know at once that the evil mental state or thought has occurred. Ordinary ignorant people find it very difficult to know how their minds are working. They cannot see the real nature of things as they are. Since the mind usually takes delight in sensual pleasures. It is extremely difficult to guard or control one’s mind. A guarded mind will make you really happy.
On this point, I would like to talk about the mind as the Buddha explained in His Teachings. It is mentioned in the Dhammapada.
“The mind in nature is wandering after, flitting alone, immaterial. located in the recesses of heart, flighty and fickle. It is rather hard to guard, control and bring under restraint.”
“The wise, however should guard, control and overcome it. The guarded and subdued mind will certainly bring about real peace and happiness. He can thus be liberated from the bondage of the miserable world.”
The real root of all sufferings in our life is due to craving, (Tanha), entangled with the four kinds of attachment or clinging, namely, attachment to sensuality (Dammupadam), attachment to ceremonial rites and rituals (Silabbatupadam), attachment to wrong views (Ditthupadam), and attachment to the belief in one’s eternal Soul or Ego (Attavadupadam).
When your mind is fully concentrated and constantly mindful of each mental state, you will be able to stand just on the present moment of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking. Here your mind will be freed from all evil thoughts because you are fully meditating on each and every thing, just at the present.
On this point, the Buddha taught the following stanza: “Don’t be sorry for the past, Don’t worry about the future too, but if you can keep your mind attentive, Concentrating just on the present, Your mind will be free from impurities And so you will he really happy.” In this meditation practice, you are sure to enjoy the most supreme Bliss and Happiness of Nibbana.
source : www.nibbana.com
