【Description】
Do you often feel overwhelmed by troubles? When facing difficulties, are you confused and devoid of solutions? Please listen to Grandmaster JinBodhi’s illuminating teaching.
Meditation is an ancient way of self-cultivation. It not only purifies the mind and consciousness, it also cleanses the body. This purification gives us the ability to see through the surface and identify the real issue; thus, we can solve complicated matters in a simple yet effective way.
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【You will learn】
- The fundamentals of meditation
- Gaining purity and health through meditation
【Featured aphorism】
- The meditation process can clarify one’s confused thoughts; it pushes complicated, troubling thoughts aside to reveal purity in the mind, and a pure mind can solve all challenges with ease.
- When we exercise calming behaviors, our body will receive the energy that brings us health and happiness.
【Content】
A few years ago in Vancouver, when I started to teach meditation, people from different cultures and races asked me the same question, “Why does meditation benefit our health?” It is hard to explain. At the time I used a simple analogy to explain, which may not be 100 percent correct. I explained if we used a transparent pail to get water from a running river, observe it: This water should be turbid, full of mud, sand, grass, wood, and dust floating on the surface. Usually after two hours, the heavy stuff like mud and sand will sink to the bottom; the light bits will float on the surface. In the middle, the water is relatively clean.
Meditation, I mean beginner meditation, is like separating the complicated chaotic things in the mind into several layers: Set aside the complications and afflictions. Keep the pure, calm part. When we are purified and calm, and we think things over again, we may find things are really simple. Some may lose their temper over something minor. After meditating for a while, that is not so easy to do so.
For instance, when you have a bad stomach ache, as a person in charge of an organization, can you chair a reasonable meeting or negotiate with your business partner? If you are young, can you date happily? Of course, some injured people still can date. But the date could be affected because our emotions are affected by our physical pain. Also, when chaos fills our brain, even when facing something minor our brain tends not to accept or see it clearly, but instead tends to dislike it. When we are irritated and hear something, we don’t think at all and say, “I don’t want to see” or “I don’t care, leave me alone.” We use words of rejection. Such emotions can lead to disharmony among family and colleagues. It is clear our mind is filled with too much stuff.
Once we calm down, we discover it is not a problem. Something seems to bother us today, but it no longer does after meditation. Only when our mind is pure and calm, can it work normally. We can accept happy or upsetting things and untangle them more easily. If our mind is clear, our affliction is gone automatically. Thus, I use the analogy of turbid water to describe the initial benefits of beginner meditation. It works for our mind; does it also work for our health? Yes. It does.
Thus, our health is undeniably related to our mental judgment and guidance. Our health may be directly related to the purity and calmness of our mind. This pure, calm behavior of meditation purifies and calms not only our mind but also our physical body. The human body is complex. Every molecule or atom of the human body is composed of different elements. When we have pure, calm behaviors, and healthy, compassionate consciousness, what we receive are those elements that bring our body health, joy, and help; we are absorbing those elements. Through visualization and calm, pure movements, we can eradicate or regulate the complicated, harmful parts in our body.
Maybe our emotions, injuries, or infections cause the imbalance in our body. If we create balance through pure, calm meditation, health is regained. Meditation seems inconceivable. To many Chinese people, meditation is the stuff a minority of senior philosophers and monks study. Now we apply it to our life and physical, mental health, and we benefit from it.