Question: You have been encouraging meditation in your website, I want to know and understand the real meaning of doing meditation? Is it alright to use them just as a tool for relaxation?
There is a difference understanding of meditation in the east and west. Meditation is originated in the east, in India and subsequently in China through different natures.
If you are living in the east, you may have heard before “this is the way of life”, “this is how we have endured for the whole life” or “this is part of the life journey”. Life journey is part of the sayings passing from the old to the young especially when you have met with some obstacles in the east.
However, if you are living in the west, you resolve problems quickly, find solutions, find answer when you hit with a problem. This is why meditation has become one of the relaxation techniques and eventually combined with the research in alpha and beta waves that you had read about.
Nowadays, with globalization, cultures had cross-reference and meditation is accepted as one of the ways in therapy for stressful and tension community. If you are living in a develop country right now it is now very common if you hear about Om meditation or Yoga meditation. All these are relaxation techniques that you can use for overcoming your daily stress or problems you are facing.
The question is, how far do you want to go in meditation? Meditation itself is a life journey, is an art of understanding the way of life. Are you ready to live a meditation life, without any ego, any self and nothingness? If you practice meditation as a life journey then you have to be willing to leave your ego, comparison and even the competitiveness behind.
But before these you have to understand how the life around you function, the perspective towards life have to change first. As I have mentioned before, you have to be able understand or experience that “no matter how much you have achieved you are just running in a circle” and in a circle there is “a dot in the centre that is always unmoved”.
I am not saying to leave you family members and goes deep into mountain for meditation. Meditation is just a tool for you to experience the understanding of the circle and the dot. Stay where you are, do what you think deem to do and do not stop searching for yourself and the dot in you.
Since you are into meditation, instead of using it as a relaxation method, try to experience the nothingness, the egoless and you will find your own way.
—The author —
XunLer is a disciple from a great master is practicing meditation since 1999. Self-searching is the real route of all life journey. More works can be seen at http://lifejourneyanswer.com
