Meditation is a very much confused activity with so many objectives and interpretations.
The mediator must first choose why he or she chooses to meditate. Hindu and other religious meditations are for the purpose of controlling the mind and to bring it to a single point of attention with high intensity of concentration. That is not the path Buddha described.
That is not the object of meditation Buddhists are meant to do. A Buddhist means a person who is exploring and investigating to understand the four noble truths, (what suffering is, cause of suffering, the path of ending all suffering and ending all suffering). Anyone grew up with other religions would also be a Buddhist, if that person seeks to understand four noble truths.
Misguided Buddhists also do this concentration technique wrongly labelled with many names including anapanasathi and watching arising and ceasing, mindfulness, samadhi etc, because they have not yet come across original Buddha's teachings and not have heard the correct translation of Thripitaka.
This concentration method was practiced by Hindu and Brahmins even before Buddha discovered the path of ending all suffering.
Therefore the purpose of Buddhist meditation is not to watch arising and ceasing of breath or to contemplate on repulsive nature of the physical body.
Buddha's teaching was not about the physical body but about observing how suffering is constructed in the mind moment by moment.
The five senses and the mind are the six ways of arising conscious awareness. Those are the six forms of conscious recognitions arise and cease at a rapid frequency with every thought that arises and ceases. By recognising each thought we can observe how each thought is linked to 'I' (self) that creates an attachment or a resistance. According to the degree of attachment and resistance, 'I' or self is trying to control to keep things, people and conditions as 'I' want. As we observe we can see that activity of seeing, hearing and other perceptions through smell, taste, touch and mental activity are impersonal activities and the view of self creates a personalised experience, moment to moment. That is the ignorance or the false view. Seen this phenomenon through the mind's eye (wisdom) removes the false view revealing the cause of suffering. This is the meditation described in Buddha's teachings to understand the nature of suffering created by construction of self.
This meditation can be practised by any human being and it is a secular practice, doesn't matter what religion you believe, what gender you are, where you live, what nationality you are or what clothes you wear, what job you do or how wealthy you are. That can be done from any place any time when you are not asleep. You dont need to wear a robe, sit on a cushion or live in a temple or go to a forest to do this meditation.
But being in a quiet, isolated place would help initially to cut out distractions helping you to get into the practice. But you will not become skilled in this meditation until you do it eyes open, in a busy place with so much noise and distractions and conflicts. These distractions become the source of your thoughts for you to watch so many ways the mind interacts and become activated. If you have practiced in an isolated place, and feel you are skilled at watching your mind you will not know how skilled you are until you practice in a troubled place and realise that you have a lot to learn.
This is only an introduction to the meditation that leads to ending all suffering. I am not making any attempt here to elaborate it any further because it is beyond the scope of this blog post.
However, if you have any questions or comments please post them here, so that we can explore this further, together.
If your objective is not ending suffering as in Buddha's teachings, if you have other objectives and purpose of meditation, you may choose other forms of meditation.
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