Meditation - Essential to Buddhism
 

Without a regular, formal meditation practice, there is no authentic Buddhist practice.

One of the effects of meditation is that you become more open-minded, and this gives rise to an interest in working with others. In that way, meditation practice can transform your lifestyle and your relationships with other people. Then, mindfulness practice becomes a reference point in dealing with the rest of the world. So we should look further at how to relate with the experience of everyday life.

Sometimes we talk about the “post-meditation” experience, which refers to our experience after we meditate. We could say that it extends to our experience of our work life and our home life—the boardroom and the kitchen sink—when that experience is influenced by mindfulness.

Beyond that, by applying mindfulness in post-meditation, or mindfulness in action, you begin to transcend or break down the boundary between meditating and not meditating. The benefits of meditation also begin to help you in your daily life. Daily problems and the pain of daily life may often feel almost poisonous. However, meditative awareness can help you to convert that poison into medicine, the medicine of cheerfulness. You begin to develop the ability to transform difficulties into delight, something delightfully workable. This transformation comes from appreciating your life, including its irritations and challenges.

However, purely working on the mindfulness-in-action situation alone is also not enough without the formal practice of meditation. This may seem somewhat doctrinaire or arbitrary, but I have found that it’s the case. When the practice of meditation has a footing in your life and becomes a regular practice, a regular discipline, the contrast between sanity and neurosis in daily life becomes clear and precise.

So working with both the formal practice of meditation and the post-meditation practice seems to be the only way to dismantle the fundamental core of ego’s game. One of the main things that I would like to encourage is our confidence that we can actually do this ourselves. We can’t simply rely upon prescriptions. But the one prescription, the one choiceless choice, is the need for the sitting practice of meditation. That is essential, absolutely.

The practice of mindfulness meditation is beginning from the beginning, using body, breath, and mind as the mediums for our practice. These are the only mediums that are available to us in this world, on this planet.

~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Full article is https://www.lionsroar.com/put-your-m...n-into-action/

All beings by nature are Buddha,
As ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
Apart from beings, no Buddha.
How sad that people ignore the near
And search for truth afar:
Like someone in the midst of water
Crying out in thirst,
Like a child of a wealthy home
Wandering among the poor.
Lost on dark paths of ignorance,
We wander through the Six Worlds,
From dark path to dark path--
When shall we be freed from birth and death?
Oh, the zazen of the Mahayana!
To this the highest praise!
Devotion, repentance, training,
The many paramitas--
All have their source in zazen.
Those who try zazen even once
Wipe away beginning-less crimes.
Where are all the dark paths then?
The Pure Land itself is near.
Those who hear this truth even once
And listen with a grateful heart,
Treasuring it, revering it,
Gain blessings without end.
Much more, those who turn about
And bear witness to self-nature,
Self-nature that is no-nature,
Go far beyond mere doctrine.
Here effect and cause are the same,
The Way is neither two nor three.
With form that is no-form,
Going and coming, we are never astray,
With thought that is no-thought,
Singing and dancing are the voice of the Law.
Boundless and free is the sky of Samádhi!
Bright the full moon of wisdom!
Truly, is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,
This very place is the Lotus Land,
This very body, the Buddha

~ Huang Po

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachin...g_of_Zazen.htm

' One of the effects of meditation is that you become more open-minded, and this gives rise to an interest in working with others. In that way, meditation practice can transform your lifestyle and your relationships with other people. Then, mindfulness practice becomes a reference point in dealing with the rest of the world. So we should look further at how to relate with the experience of everyday life. '


The ' Ripple effect ' :smile:

Good advice Janielee - Thanks!

*

The ultimate goal would to be in the meditative self-reflective state always,
so one did not have to set aside a special time for it. Then it is not what someone does,
it is what someone is.

I don't find anything useful or true in his teachings myself. What is essential is to know our true nature as Bodhidharma said. Bodhidharma also said dogma and practices without knowing our true nature are worthless or something like that.

However, purely working on the mindfulness-in-action situation alone is also not enough without the formal practice of meditation. This may seem somewhat doctrinaire or arbitrary, but I have found that it’s the case. When the practice of meditation has a footing in your life and becomes a regular practice, a regular discipline, the contrast between sanity and neurosis in daily life becomes clear and precise.

So working with both the formal practice of meditation and the post-meditation practice seems to be the only way to dismantle the fundamental core of ego’s game. One of the main things that I would like to encourage is our confidence that we can actually do this ourselves. We can’t simply rely upon prescriptions. But the one prescription, the one choiceless choice, is the need for the sitting practice of meditation. That is essential, absolutely.

Sage advice.

Jl

Dear Phaelyn, or Ryan,

I think you have shown in your reaction where things are at

The reality is that understanding the principles of awareness is easy. Any one can do that. Some build up a whole life based on that, avoiding what they don't like, emphasizing what they do.

As Trungpa Rinpoche says, both practices are essential.

I assume this has hit some nerve with you again; hence the reactivity, but then again, our ego always wants to survive, doesn't it?

The words above are not antithetical to any Buddhist teaching and is recommended for any students genuinely interested in genuine realization - and not forum antics or presentations.

JL

Have you thought about how The Buddha would have dealt with His behaviour ? He obviously had some problems and I surpose one could say , ' There but for the grace of God go I '