pointless?

[Cranestyle]

Hi! I have a question for all of you practitioners of meditation.

if the underlying purpose of meditation is to be in the 'present' and be alert, and the ultimate aim is to develop a permanent state of full awareness in your life, what is the actual point in any sitting meditations or formal meditation processess?

Surely developing an 'awareness' from being in a certain enviroment (e.g. alone in a quiet room with incense etc.) will mean that any interaction with the world that causes this enviroment to change will also lead your awareness to be disrupted. You will surely formulate attachment towards certain methods in order to 'acheive' awareness rather than attempting to intergrate awareness into every aspect of your waking life.

Therefore surely these practices are pointless as they are bound to have the awareness disrupted at some point as one cannot live in isolation from the world in todays age. Not only would they be pointless but they may lead you further away from enlightenment as you will feel like you have to be in certain conditions in order to be fully aware of the present moment.

So surely instead of dedicating our time to methods that provide a false sense of gaining something whilst actually not going anywhere in the long term (in terms of progressing towards enlightenment) it would be far more productive to dedicate your internal energies to being 'aware' within everyday life and society?

I am sorry if this has been addressed before, I do not visit this place often!

Thanks

[SPJ]

Good points.

There are several types of meditations.

1) Quieting your mind by quieting your heart. You focus on your breathing. Then the rest of the body. You mind and the body become one. You develop more acutey in the senses of your body. Your mind is clear, uncluttered, and focused.

This way you may perceive things as things are, and not influenced by your emotions, preconceptions or prejudices.

This practice is good for health. Your mind and emotions are rested and refreshed. This is good for martial arts practice. This is also good to think, analyze or meditate things in life and fightings with a freshed and focused mind.


2) Cognitive meditation.

Pick a topic. And state it with what, where, when, how, why, who etc.

Lists all pros and cons.

Integrate all info. Search a central theme. Or find a point applies to all. That theme or point is the truth. You are on your way to see things clearly in light, thus the name is enlightenment.

No doctrines. No words. See everything with your heart.

This is the transmission of Chan.

There are many other types of meditations.

Prayer is for religious purpose.

On and on.

[SPJ]

What is I?

My name, my birthdate, my nationality, my personality, my profession, my skill and knowledge in TCMA, my looks, my age---

No. These are all attachments to I.

I have Christian belief. I have honesty. I work hard.---

These are I.

My consciousness, my awarenss (of me and everything in life), or me being me.

That is I.

[SPJ]

What is the point of meditation?

Meditation is to see things as things are with a clear or illumious mind.

How to do it?

The TV said. The newspaper said. The President said. The books said.

Yes. Yes.

What DO YOU say?

[SPJ]

What is attachment?

If need to eat, we eat enough.

If need to rest, rest enough.

If need to travel to work, use whatever is available. If you insist on driving a Jaguar, a v-8 SUV, where subway or bus is readily available. That is an attachment.

If need to communicate, fax, e-mail, phone, letter, depends on timing. If you insist on ever newer cell phones, that is an attachment.

In short, you may eat small meals and rest in an apartment. If you insist on 150 course meals and a huge palace like an emperor of China, that is the attachment.

To understand life or appreciate life, you need to unclutter your mind and remove all attachments.

I am used to play pokers. I am used to watch TV. I am used to chat on line. I am---

Make some time away from all these and meditate.

[SPJ]

Yes. Indeed.

The point of meditation is that there is no point.

The point of life is ?

Does everything need to have a point to exist?

What is the point of having fun?

What is the point of being successful?

What is the point of being wealthy?

What is the point of being fit?

What is the point to have an army?

What is the point to live?

What is the point to let live?

What is the point to have a point?

In short, pointless is also a point?

[FngSaiYuk]

What is meditation?

It's a method of training/excercising the nervous system. Is it effective? A LOT of people claim it is. What can it do? There are many different ways of training and excercising the nervous system. The various excercises have benefits and sometimes negative results in just as many different aspects of the mind and body.

Really, when asking if it makes sense whether or not still meditation can increase your alertness in movement, well there really isn't enough scientific data to come to a conclusion. Do it if you really want to, or don't. It's no big deal.

[Cranestyle]

hello again! Thanks for the replies but i think that there has been some misinterpretation of the question.

The question wasn't "what is meditation" or "what the different types of meditation are" What I am saying is that if the underlying purpose of these meditations is in the long term to try and bring a state of enlightenment through an unwavering awareness to the practitioners lives - then what is the point in seperating times when we are meditating and times when we are not meditating?
All these methods are going to create is an attachment to certain conditions in order to maintain awareness and once these conditions are disrupted (which they are certainly going to be) your little bit of false conditional awareness is going to crumble down, leaving you needing your next little fix of meditation before you start going cold turkey and your mind comes back as the master even stronger than before. The results of meditations based on methods are going to be temporary, so surely these excercises are (if the practitioner is after enlightenment) absolutely pointless and are actually just as much of a short term 'sense pleasure' happiness fix as doing drugs etc.

So why do them? Why not try and devote energy to increasing awareness in daily life? Why increase the boundries seperating your everyday life with meditation? Surely the meditative awareness produced that remains whilst actually 'in' society is the only awareness that ever applies because it is present both when you are alone and when you are interacting with others or experiencing certain conditions that may be disruptive.
The type of awareness produced by me sitting in a warm room with incense and music is a sham as it gets destroyed as soon as adverse conditions start to happen.

-So Why Do It?-

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

My own experience leads me to believe that meditation, ultimately, is designed to bypass prejudicial thought processes and see the experiences as they are.. One of the more profound aspects of Taiji is its training in movement without thought.. we practice repetitively until we no longer need to think about the form, we simply experience it.. hopefully, we can move that "stillness in motion" to our everyday lives, and begin to experience life without the deceptive prejudices..

Although visualizations, chantings, forms, etc.. may serve to initiate some quality of meditation, they are not meditation itself.. they are only tools to help us get there.. too many people get trapped in tools stage and miss the purity of "no mind" (no preconceptions).. in the "be here now" scenario, thought is what separates us from the present experience.. while considering the previous experience the one actually unfolding in the present is unnoticed or lacking our full attention..

So, if the goal (as i see it) is to live a meditative life, shrines and special times of meditation may actually distance us from that goal.. or, may just be a temporary path toward that goal.. the wisdom is to be certain of the goal..

Be well...

[emre]

Cranestyle,

Here's my question to you:

When you begin training in the martial arts, do you go out and pick a fight with a streetgang on the first day?

Here's another one:

Did you drive in busy traffic the first day you got behind the steering wheel?

[Cranestyle]

I did not start a streetfight with a gang on my first day of training, because there is an obvious threat of danger, e.g. if i start a fight i will get injured. besides this there is no reason to, as what would i gain by beating up a load of people for no reason? Pride?

I did not drive in traffic the first time i drove because there is an obvious threat of danger. If i drive in traffic there is a high chance i will get injured. Again what would be the reasoning in risking this? Why would i want to in the first place?

I understand what point you are trying to make, but that is suggesting then that if we were to be alert in our daily lives and trying to apply a meditative state to our lives we would suffer some sort of catastrophe and be inviting it? What basis do you have to believe this? How is awareness of the present moment going to be damaging - surely it is ego and mind that are the cause of madness so how am i going to go mad or suffer (which is what i gather you are implying, i apologise if this is not so) if i am maintaining a constant vigil on how my mind is working and what effects it is having upon me.

I would not have done the things you mentioned owing to them not having any point to them - why drive in traffic, why start a fight? There is no logical reason behind it and a danger of doing oneself harm.
There is total reason to try and maintain complete awareness in daily life - enlightenment, a happy life, seperation from attachment to the ego etc. with as far as i can see no danger.

what would be the point in meditation methods? They cannot give me a more 'real' reality can they? All in fact they are going to do is create a barrier preventing me from accessing reality directly "Oh no, somebodys talking loudly! thats not right for meditation!" the mind of the method based meditator screams out and *poof* there goes your awareness- wave goodbye to it and go buy some more incense sticks so you can try and temporarily grab it again...
if I never got used to being in a certain condition in order to experience awareness then there will obviously not be this voice in my mind will there? If I am maintaining a state of awareness DESPITE my conditions and circumstance rather than owing to them surely this is going to be the only way to ensuring that a state of awareness is always present.

If something is conditional it has no inherent existance - as long as a conditional meditative process is needed to access awareness, it means your awareness will always be conditional and will never be permanent, by trying to get to enlightenment you will build a barrier between reality and you without even knowing that you are doing it.

has anybody got a good reason why methods should be used in meditation yet?

[FngSaiYuk]

As I mentioned earlier... meditation is a form of excercise for your neural system. All the chants, visualization, focused thought, etc. are methods of excercising and training your neural system.

I bring this up not because I don't believe in the spiritual/enlightened process and state, but rather because you are asking very practical questions on meditation. The practical answer is that you meditate to improve your performance by entraining and excercising your neural system.

HOW does it all work? Well, there hasn't been throrough enough studies for a scientific answer.

[Cranestyle]

enlightenment would be the Ultimate enhancement of your neural system and the only way to attain enlightenment would be through learning to develope an UNCONDITIONAL awareness that is present always. Therefore conditional meditations will always have a 'glass ceiling' to them in terms of progress and sooner or later will have to be abandoned for the unconditional awareness method. Therefore again i ask what is the point. Why not start with, and only use the method of keeping your awareness of the present moment.

whatever method you decide to use sooner or later you are going to have to give up your attachment to that method as well otherwise you are going to be believing that you are progressing when in fact your attachment to using one method or the other will keep you stagnant in terms of progression.

[SPJ]

Good points.

Let me use an analogy to chess play.

Do you think about all the senarios several moves ahead before you make your move?

How do you condition yourself to a knee jerk or fast chess thoughts and playing?

Still meditation is necessary to clear the mind and your heart from daily events or dusts.

We feel tired, anger, frustration, upset, disturbed etc.

Do we need time to sort things out or our feelings out by quieting our mind and heart first?

We take shower. We rest and feed. We work out. To keep our body clean, and fit.

What to do with our mind? No need for cleaning?

Can you play chess while feeling angry, listening the radio, reading the papers, talking on the cell phones all at the same time?

Do you need a time out to self examine your life or daily events?

What do people say or think in their prayers?

What do you do when you meditate?

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

Properly trained, one's meditative state becomes one's life.. it permits a natural or instinctive awareness that bypasses the mental "storage and retrieval" system.. if there is a barrier as someone suggests, it is self-imposed..

what would be the point in meditation methods? They cannot give me a more 'real' reality can they? All in fact they are going to do is create a barrier preventing me from accessing reality directly "Oh no, somebodys talking loudly! thats not right for meditation!" the mind of the method based meditator screams out and *poof* there goes your awareness- wave goodbye to it and go buy some more incense sticks so you can try and temporarily grab it again...

Actually, meditation CAN give you a clearer view of "reality".. it can help us acknowledge and bypass the deceptive prejudices which taint our experiences... suppose you are sitting outside and notice a fly approaching on a potential collision course with your eye.. you can either relax and let your natural reflexes blink when appropriate, or.. you can set about the task of analyzing and calculating direction, velocity and probability.. Meditation reacquaints us with our natural processes.. unless we get lost in the rituals..

The description of special meditative conditions (ie: quiet, incense, etc...) is a description of training for full-time meditation.. as was mentioned, before you jump into full-contact fighting you train, before you drive in heavy traffic you take less traveled routes.. and, so it is with meditation, before you can live it, you practice it..

Be well...