Purpose of Meditation

One of our participants sent me an email asking is the purpose of meditation practice to find that 15 minutes of peace. This is such a great question so I thought we would talk about the purpose of meditation practice tonight. Surely, we want to find that peace within us on a daily basis for however long that we can find it. But the purpose of practice is never the practice.

What do I mean by that? Let’s say you decide to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Now unless you are used to climbing fourteeners, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is no small feat. Especially, the last day. The first few days it is relatively easy but on the last day, you are supposed to start climbing around 9 or 10 pm at night. You will reach the peak just around dawn. You take a few pictures and then continue with the descent for about four hours or so before getting to a camp. This is not an easy day for anybody. You will be essentially on your feet for 10 hours or so. In this case, you will start conditioning your body before you head out to Tanzania. You begin a daily exercise routine and probably weekly climbing practice. The purpose of this conditioning is not to get good at conditioning but to prepare yourself for the climb on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Our daily meditation practice is supposed to condition us for our daily worldly activities. For example, let’s say you buy a 10,000 piece Lego puzzle. That’s a lot of pieces and would take you a few days to complete for sure. Now you begin to organize your pieces in different piles first. Then you begin to build the puzzle. You spend say 30 minutes doing this. If you spend the next 23 ½ hours breaking what you have already built and mix all the pieces you had separated what is the result? The next day, you will have a bigger challenge on your hand.

So when we meditate, we are trying to find that peace within us for sure. The bigger purpose however is to make sure that we carry that with us throughout the rest of our day. We want to be centered no matter what life throws at us. That is the real purpose of our meditation. Getting grounded within ourselves. If during our meditation practice say you had a rough time concentrating on a particular day. But after meditation is complete, you are able to be kind and loving towards everyone you come across. That is a successful mediation session. On the other hand, if you had a peaceful meditation where you came close to enlightenment but after the meditation session you have difficulty showing compassion towards anyone, that was an unsuccessful meditation session.

Types of Mind

I am sure you have heard a lot about the mind. Before we dig into it, let’s just briefly make sure what it is not. A mind is certainly not your brain. Our brain is an organ, mind on the other hand does not have a physical dimension. Our mind is located in the region of our heart chakra. Its nature is clarity. This means that it is empty, like clear space, and that it is a formless continuum completely lacking shape and color, which possesses the actual power to perceive, understand and remember objects…The function of the mind is to perceive or cognize objects, to understand or impute objects. The mind also has the power to create. The mind is the “creator of all” according to Buddha. If we think about it, this makes sense. Everything that we have in this world, someone had to create it in their mind. Our computer for example, before someone built it, someone had to design it. They had to think about how it may work and then put it on a piece of paper. Similarly, in the building we are in, an architect came up with a design in their mind before creating plans for someone to build.

Our mind also known as “Chitta” is generally divided into three broad categories. Our gross waking mind, our subtle mind, and our very subtle mind. Our gross waking mind is the one in charge of our day to day activities. It allows us to function in this physical world. Our mind controls all of our actions. Our gross waking mind is in our physical realm meaning it knows the concept of time and space. At night, however, when we fall asleep, our gross waking mind ceases to exist. It is almost like the death process. We have no clue what happens in our deep sleep. As if we did not exist at all. During our sleep, our subtle mind takes over. This is the mind that controls our dreams. It makes sure that our bodily functions are still active. Our subtle mind is not conformed to our physical realm. It moves from one place to another without any concept of time and space. Sometimes we remember what happens in our dream state, that is because we are either in the process of moving from gross mind to subtle mind or the other way around. In these cases, we are in a lucid state and we distinctly remember our dreams. A very subtle mind on the other hand is our so-called consciousness. This is the mind that travels from lifetime to lifetime without any attachment to our body. It is mounted on our karma so that is why our karma decides our fate. Our very subtle mind leaves our body at death along with our karmic winds. Our very subtle mind is a pure mind. It has no delusions. It is our buddha nature meaning it has potential for enlightenment. Every one of us has that pure potential. During our meditation, the peace we discover is our very subtle mind. That is what we want to hold onto and use as our go-to resource when delusions arise in our gross minds.

Equanimity

Today let’s talk about equanimity. There are two types of equanimity. One that is your attitude towards the situation and the other your attitude towards the phenomenon. Let’s take the second one first. In this context, equanimity means compassion without attachment. It sounds very simple but it is a profound topic. If we think about it, we normally have three different attitudes toward all beings. Attachment, hatred, or indifference. We exhibit compassion towards those who we are attached to. We have no compassion for those we hate. And we don’t care one way or another about someone we are indifferent about. For example, as we sit here there are genocide’s going on in parts of the world. We read about them in the news and have little or no compassion towards their situation. If on the other hand, someone we are attached to is going through difficulty, we show great compassion. That is great. However, oftentimes our compassion is conditional because of attachment. It may be we want them to do things a certain way or we want them to thank us or what have you. An equanimous mind is a mind that is compassionate towards all beings without attachment. So we have some compassion towards someone who is a family member as someone who we know nothing about. Currently, if two people are in trouble, we tend to help one who we are attached to but not the other. This discrimination is what we need to stop in trying to be equanimous. Developing universal compassion is not easy and can take a lifetime but we need to start somewhere. The best place to start is to try and start with removing attachment from who we are already compassionate. Give them out unconditional love. These are the people we are already attached to. After that, we begin showing compassion towards everyone we meet and expand from there. The second definition of equanimity is a mind that is steady regardless of the situation. This is a balanced mind. No matter the situation, we keep our cool. That means if a situation is tense and people are talking negativity, we don’t get angry and react accordingly. We assess the situation without emotionally getting involved and respond to the problem at hand. This also means is the situation is all positive we don’t get excited and let our egos go rampant. Even in such a situation, we remain even kill. Equanimity is protection from what is called the Eight Worldly Winds: praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute. Becoming attached to or excessively elated with success, praise, fame, or pleasure can be a setup for suffering when the winds of change shift. According to the Buddha, the way to bring about equanimity is wise attention: to be continually mindful from moment to moment, without a break, based on the intention to develop equanimity. One moment of equanimity causes a succeeding moment of equanimity to arise. Once equanimity is activated, it will be the cause for equanimity to continue and to deepen. It can bring one to deep levels of practice beyond the insight into the arising and passing away of phenomena. Ways to develop equanimity include 1) balanced mental state towards all living beings; and 2) balanced mental state towards nonliving things. Equanimity allows for the mystery of things: the unknowable, uncontrollable nature of things to be just as they are. In this acceptance lies peace and freedom—right there in the midst of whatever pleasant or unpleasant circumstances we find ourselves in. When we realize that it is actually very little we can control other than our own reactions to circumstances, we learn to let go.

Positive Karma

Let’s talk about virtuous or positive actions. There are three parts to this discussion. 1) ten virtuous actions; 2) factors in the beneficial powers; 3) the effects of virtual actions. Virtuous actions are paths that lead to happiness. Similar to ten negative actions, there are ten positive actions. They are essentially opposite to ten negative actions. Each of the ten positive actions is restraint from their respective negative action. They are abandoning killing, abandoning stealing, abandoning sexual misconduct, abandoning lying, abandoning divisive speech, abandoning hurtful speech, abandoning idle chatter, abandoning covetousness, abandoning malice, and abandoning holding wrong views. Each of the ten principal virtuous actions is restraint from one of the ten non-virtuous actions. To refrain deliberately from non-virtuous actions, having understood their danger is what is important for it to be a virtuous action. For example, when a baby does not steal does not mean that baby is practicing virtuous action because the baby does not understand the dangers of the effects of stealing. Let’s take killing as an example. Some people are able to take all living beings as their object and try to abandon the killing of all living beings. This means insects on up. Some people say a fisherman whose job it is to catch fish may not want to do that initially. But they can take all objects except a fish and abandon the killing of those objects. They can then slowly introduce not killing a fish on weekends, at nights and so forth slowly increasing these periods of time. Once we have made this decision as long as we remain mindful, our virtuous actions are being fulfilled. Just like non-virtuous actions, the more we perform a virtuous action, the more powerful it becomes. All positive Karma also has three kinds of effects. The ripened effect, the effect similar to the cause, and the environmental effect. The ripened effect is taking birth in a higher realm such as human birth. Effects tendencies similar to virtuous actions allow us the opportunity to perform the same kind of virtuous actions over and over. As long as we don’t resist these tendencies, we will have an opportunity to add on to our balance of virtuous actions. Experience similar to cause affords better living conditions. For example, an experience similar to abandoning killing is that we enjoy a long life; the experience similar to abandoning stealing is that we effortlessly accumulate wealth. Have you ever noticed some people tend to have a Midas touch and make money effortlessly in anything they try? That is an experience similar to the previous virtuous action of abandoning stealing. Experience similar to the action of abandoning sexual misconduct is that we have stable friendships and happier family life. The environmental effects of virtuous actions are opposite to the environmental effects of non-virtuous actions. It is important to point out that an environmental effect is not a quality of external conditions but the quality of the mind that experiences that. What do I mean by that? The same external conditions can be experienced as different environmental effects by different minds. For example, in a place where most people find the food good and nourishing, some people experience nausea and indigestion. Two people can take the same medicine and one of them can get an adverse side effect. So it is the individual Karma of each one of us that determines the environmental effect. The object of virtuous action also affects the power of our actions. For example, if we give a pair of clothes to a hungry person, it counts. But, if we give them food, it is much more powerful. The motivation behind any action is also important. For example, we give something that we don’t have any need for counts. But if we give something with a wish to benefit someone is much more powerful. As you can see there is a lot to unpack here. Karma is a deep and profound subject. Hopefully, over the last five sessions, we have scratched the surface and all of us are beginning to think about the long term effects of our day to day actions.