Why Meditate

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In a speedy, stressed out world, meditation helps you access a sense of calm and focus. You may have noticed that most of the time we’re operating on autopilot, caught up in thoughts about the past and the future. Meditation helps us to be more present.

Awareness is revolutionary
Sangharakshita

Meditation isn’t a way to escape. It can be very enjoyable, but it involves sitting with our experience with awareness, and sometimes that’s challenging. It’s a way to be more whole, whatever’s happening.

Our minds are more flexible than we think. Long before science told us about the brain’s ‘neuroplasticity’, the Buddha taught that we can change our minds by directing our attention in a more helpful way. 

What a person frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of their mind
The Buddha, Dvedhavittaka Sutta

The effects of meditation extend to the whole of our lives. Bringing awareness into our experience in this way is what we call mindfulness.

Meditation and mindfulness speak to something deep inside us, calling us towards dignity, kindness, wisdom and strength. We all possess untold potential, and practising meditation means opening to that.

Imagine an enormous subterranean chamber all lit up from within. We are living in a tiny chamber next to – indeed, part of – the larger one. We can see nothing at all of what’s going on in the large chamber. In fact, we have no idea that the large chamber is even there.
Sangharakshita

When we step out of our habits and reactions, as can happen when we meditate, it’s natural to become more aware of the needs of others and want to respond to them. That’s why kindness and compassion are important parts of Buddhist meditation.

The world needs us to be more aware. It needs us to meditate.

next page: types of meditation (calm and insight)

meditation