Buddhist Meditation

Find a Buddhist meditation to help you to live a life of mindfulness.

"Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts."--The Buddha

Perhaps there is no greater religion that deals so much with meditation. The primary focus is to look at the world the way it is, and to discover the root to suffering that is prevalent everywhere.

There is a famous Buddhist story that exemplifies this point of finding the root of all suffering. It went something like this.

"Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts."--The Buddha

Perhaps no greater religion deals so much with meditation. The primary focus is to look at the world the way it is and to discover the root of suffering that is prevalent everywhere.

There is a famous Buddhist story that exemplifies this point of finding the root of all suffering. It went something like this.

One day there was a great battle, and a warrior lay wounded with an arrow piercing his chest. When the physician came over to remove the arrow, the warrior stopped him. "Before you remove the arrow, I want to know the name of the one who shot me. I want to know about his lineage. His origins. And then I want to know about the arrow, what type of wood used, who made it. And about the bow ..."

And he died without removing the arrow that was causing him suffering.

Meditation on Suffering

My first exposure to Buddhism was while hiking solo in the Himalayas of Nepal, some 25 years ago. I found myself a copy of the Dhammapada, the teachings of the Buddha. It was a fine day, the sun shining, the high peaks above me glistening like crystals. I was sitting upon a stone reading the Buddha's words and watching the monks below me, moving to and fro from their monastery. Feeling so happy, I could not understand why the Buddha kept talking about suffering! Then a few years later, I remembered the Buddha's words that all the world is suffering, as I watched my partner writhe in pain.

Everyone you know and love is dying. It may not be today when death will come, but it will be soon. Our lives are not very long. This realization of our flawed lives and mortality was what Siddartha's father tried to prevent his son from knowing when it was foretold at birth that the prince Siddartha would either become a great king or a great holy teacher. His father knew that if his son saw the world truly, he would be lost to the spiritual path. And so it was. Despite the king's best efforts, Siddartha found out that sickness, old age, and eventually death plague everyone. When he returned from these discoveries, he saw his wife and child and knew he could do nothing for them, even as a king, to prevent the inevitable suffering. So he set out to find the cure for this suffering. He must become enlightened.

When I look around me at the world, the horrors that Japan is now going through after the 2011 quake and tsunami and all the other environmental catastrophes, all the wars, the famines, the people out of work, social oppression, animals dying off, the list goes on and on, it all seems so hopeless. The only thing to do is to wake up from the nightmare and to comfort those who thrash about in their sleep.

Now I am rereading this, and it is the year 2020. The world, if anything, has become even more intense with suffering, on personal and global levels. The same lessons apply then as it does now—it is time to wake up and go beyond the changing forms and find that which is beyond our little thinking.

It was not easy for Siddartha to become the Buddha, for Lord Mara, the egoic mind, tempted Siddhartha ruthlessly as Siddartha planted himself at the root of the Bodhi Tree, vowing to remain seated in meditation until he had reached enlightenment. After passing through the lures of the senses, Mara came at him with his last temptation and appeared before him (this re-telling is based on Joseph Campbell's re-telling I heard many years ago, but which I use often).

"Look at you, sitting there like a bump on a log. What good are you? Do you not know that wars are being fought, people starving, and here you are, doing absolutely nothing. You are worthless."

Siddhartha says nothing but simply touches the Earth. And with his touch, the Earth Mother comes and says, "My son has done enough." And thus, he became the Buddha.

We can never do enough to fix the world with the actions of our bodies. It is going to the source of all our perceptions, all our beliefs --the mind. And this is where meditation and mindfulness are so imperative. One needs to know what the reason is doing, what thoughts are dictating one's life, and to be able to direct the thoughts with focused concentration. If one does not do that, then the mind runs riot and causes so much suffering to one's self and to the world.

This Buddhist section will offer various methods that the Buddha has suggested, as well as other Buddhist teachers, to end one's suffering and to come to the place of one's true nature, that I have found helpful upon my journey or those that I would recommend.