There are many things that are not under our control. But it is possible to change one’s state of mind.
Meditation is a means of transforming the mind. Meditation is a practice or technique that involves focusing on an object, a sound or your breath.
Many years ago meditation was considered something just not meant for modern people, but now it has become very popular with all types of people.
Meditation is often confused with various forms of concentration.
The intention of concentration exercises is to focus your full undivided attention on specific aspect of functioning of your mind and body in order to accomplish a certain goal or develop certain skill.
It allows your mind activity to settle down and results in you becoming more calm, peaceful and focused.
Buddhist meditation practices are techniques that encourage and develop clarity, concentration and emotional positivism. By engaging yourself with a particular meditation practice one learns the patterns and habits of the mind, and the practice offers a means to cultivate new, more positive ways of being.
With patience and discipline, these calm and focused states of mind can deepen into profoundly tranquil and energized states of mind. Such experiences can have a transformative effect and can lead to a new understanding of life.
Meditation is a method for acquainting you mind with virtue. Your mind will be calm and peaceful if it is familiar with virtue. When your mind is peaceful, you are free from worries and mental discomfort and you can experience true happiness.
If you train your mind to become peaceful, you will be happy all the time even in unpleasant conditions. But if your mind is not peaceful, you will not be happy even if you have the most pleasant conditions.
Meditation is an exercise which aims to prevent thoughts in a natural way by deeply relaxing the physical body and then trying to keep the mind blank with no thoughts. This state can be maintained for a few seconds to few hours.
Meditation is a great reliever of stress. Stress occurs in your mind and your mind is the key to relieve stress from your life. You will experience mental focus, relaxation, increased awareness and sense of peace with meditation if practiced regularly.
Exercises such as tai-chi, breathing exercises, yoga and visualization are all forms of concentration.
There are two types of meditation; placement meditation and analytical meditation. By deeply contemplating the instruction, eventually we reach a conclusion or cause a specific virtuous state of mind to arise. This is the object of placement meditation.
Placement meditation depends upon contemplation, and contemplation depends upon listening to or reading Dharma instructions.
When we consider the meaning of a Dharma instruction that we have heard or read we are doing analytical meditation.
Having found our object through analytical meditation, we then concentrate on it single-pointedly for as long as possible to become deeply familiar with it. This single-pointed concentration is placement meditation. Often, analytical meditation is called simply ‘contemplation’, and placement meditation simply ‘meditation’.
Meditation is proven to be one of the alternative therapies. Now-a-days doctors are prescribing meditation to improve exercise performance, lower blood pressure, relieve insomnia and relax with every day stress. Meditation is a simple and safe way to balance a person’s emotional, mental and physical states.
