Meditation – The Cleansing of the
Mind
As humans, we
are constantly thinking about our future or our past. But in order
to experience life, we have to live each moment. Lives happening of the past are just memory. For
lives happening in the future, that is planning. The only time we
can live is now, this moment. Difficult as it may seem, we have to
learn to do that first. We have to actually experience living in
the present to eliminate a great many of our problems. Simple as it
may sounds, difficult indeed it is to carry out. The only way to
learn to live each moment is through what else - but the process of
meditation.
Most if not all
of us are quite capable to look after our bodies to make sure it is
able to function well. But are we doing the same for our mind? What
we may not have given much thought about is that our mind is the
master and the body is the servant. The master, the one in charge,
has to be in the best possible condition to direct the servant to
ensure everything is in order. Everything in this world is
mind-made, yet many of us take the mind for granted. Not many of us
would take the body for granted though, we would ensure that it is
well feed, well rested and when it is sick it is taken to the
doctor. For the mind, that would be another matter altogether for
most ordinary folks. Looking after the mind is essential for it to
grow in depth and vision, but one suspect it is only the meditator
who would know how to go about looking after it.
Many of us
would likely to live our lives in the realities of yesterday and
tomorrow, good and bad, like and dislike, but it is only when the
mind is trained can we see beyond this and into other dimensions.
The first thing that we need to do to made the mind ‘see’ beyond
this present two dimensional lives is to first ‘wash’ and ‘clean’
it up in all our waking moments. For that, we will need to learn
how to go about it. With the body, we certainly would know how to
do it right from a very young age. But for the mind, it can only be
cleansed by itself. What it has put in there before, the mind is
the only one that can take it out. In that respect, one second of
concentration in meditation is also one second in the purification
of our mind. Luckily for us, mind moments follow each other in
quick succession but only one at a time.
When we
concentrate, the five hindrances of sense desire, ill will, sloth
and torpor, worries and doubts, would not have the chance to arise
as our mind can only do one thing at a time. As we get better at
concentration and the period gets longer and longer, the mind gets
cleansed more and more. Our mind is like a fine, wonderful tool
that each of us possesses and we obviously should learn how to go
about looking after it at all times. It is a tool that we can use
to accomplished many things including enlightenment and learning to
look after it would ensure it will function properly.
During our
meditation we learn to drop from our mind what we do not want to
keep and only keeping our mind on the meditation subject. As we
become more and more skilled at it, we should also be able to start
making use of our meditative practice to assist us in our daily
living, like helping us to drop those thoughts which are
unwholesome and putting our attention to wholesome ones
only.
Next, we will
need to exercise and strengthen our mind to do exactly what we want
it to do, to stand still when we want it to do so. This creates the
power in the mind to let go, to renounce when it is so required.
Thoughts which arise, happy or unhappy ones, in constant flux and
flow; this is what we must learn to drop when we manage to stay on
our meditation subject. Renunciation arises in meditation when we
drop all thoughts. When we think, talk, or reads, it is using the
mind in the interest of our ego. When there is nobody thinking,
there will be no confirmation of the existence of the
ego.
For those who
have become masters of their own thoughts and learn to think what
they want to think, have indeed move onto the path to becoming
Arahants, the Enlightened Ones. At that stage, one has become
master of the mind instead of the mind being the master of one
self. The spiritual path is all about letting go, the letting go of
all we have built up around us, which would includes conditioned
habits, ideas, beliefs and thinking patterns. A strong mind does
not suffer from boredom, frustration, depression or unhappiness. It
has learned to drop what it does not want, and the practice of
meditation has given it the necessary muscles to do so.
Of course the
mind too need to rest. We have been thinking ever since we were
small, in fact over our innumerable lifetimes. The only time the
mind can have a real rest is when it stops thinking and start only
experiencing. One simile used for the mind is
that, it is like a blank screen on which a continuous film is shown
without intermission. Here the film is like our thoughts and we
forget that there is a screen behind it. If we for once stop the
show for a moment in meditation, we can experience the basic purity
of our mind. This moment also brought about the arising of a moment
of happiness with an accompanying state of bliss as well. It is a
state conditioned by concentration. When verbalization stops, there
is quiet and contentment of the mind. Thinking is suffering, no
matter what we are thinking. The moment we relax and rest our mind
it gains new strength and happiness. This happiness created in
meditation should also carries through to our daily living as the
mind knows it can go home too and find peace and quiet in
meditation when it so requires.
The letting go,
the renunciation in meditation brings along with it insight, the
understanding that the ego is constantly wanting and therefore
wanting to think. When the ego stops wanting, it does not need to
think and all un-satisfactoriness disappears. That is why, as
Buddhists we need to meditate to cleanse our mind, to bring it
peace and calm and most importantly, with the arising of Insights
through experience, the eventual cessation of our
Suffering.