To meditate is simply letting your mind view life or reality as it is.
I simply looked at this heavy rainfall. 6:10 pm. Thundering clouds, but they were not nature’s empty vessels. I acknowledge my privilege that I had a shelter to cherish this scene and that made me oblige the tenets of ‘ Mettabhavana Meditation ‘ which has taught me to radiate the value of kindness for myself and others. Otherwise, how would I serve you the tea when my own teapot is empty?
Now I do not intend to blatantly refute the idea of professional therapies, which are vitally needed to transcend the genre of anxieties. But, yes, the Buddhist form of meditation rescued me from Borderline issues. I am not lying. The years of socialization, suppression of anxiety, parenting culture, work pressure, worldly affairs, toxic news, etc. gradually filled the jar in me, while I adjusted to them, only to realize in July 2020 that I cannot take my life ahead anymore.
I gently close my eyes, amid this heavy rainfall. 6:20 pm. The clouds continue to pour more as if it has lost control over their impulses and instincts. Thinking of my bitter journey, I opted to focus on my moments of breathing, to simply bring back my mind to the stream of the present. If I do not, my monkey mind would either stroll in the past (guilt) or else in the future (stress) leaving me on the bed of anxiety.
When I close my eyes, I focus on inhaling and exhaling. No chanting, no mantra. Just befriending all forms of thoughts and feelings that pass by. These are not external to me, as they have been ploughed by me. I am responsible for how I nurture the nature of these thoughts and that defines me. Not often do I experience continuity of thoughts. And, it’s ok.
The goal, as I learned from my autodidactic mode, is to not find meaning in everything. Neither to debunk the meaning in everything. I am still a learner, who has experienced that life is abstract, and it’s our choices and experiences that make life a concrete phenomenon.
It would be a matter of intellectual dishonesty to simply culminate that meditation is done for healing reasons. No, meditation cannot be confined and bounded to only therapeutic purposes. Meditation, in my experience, stemming from Anapanasati (focusing on breathing) to Mettabhavana Meditation (experiencing to love thyself and offering gratitude) to Qigong Meditation (aligning the body and mind) to Tonglen Meditation (transforming bitter experiences to better) and Maranasati Meditation (overcoming the fear of attachment and fear) has always guarded and guided me to supersede ‘what I am’ and ‘what I am not’.
All these acts of mindful meditation have at least made me overtake mindless than nothing at all.
If I resort to meditation to gain something, I am still stuck in the matrix of mental defilements. To meditate is simply letting your mind view life or reality as it is. The more I meditate, I am cathartic. And, I realize that this “I” is merely a mental projection shaped by the social images too.
Meditation has also guided me to guide others. In the last two years, I have helped my own community circle involved in meditation on weekends in online mode. Some have improved, some are trying, and some are in bliss without letting me know. This is good. Like food, clothing, or shelter, meditation too matters. It is a basic necessity that the mind requires, otherwise, there are no other scientific means to furnish nutrition to cognition. And nevertheless, meditation eases the body and makes us feel that we’re interdependent. Just like a tree needs support from the soil, water, wind, and sun, so is the human being.
Every time I meditate, I come to the point of zero energy, the base of a solid-less foundation. This “I” is simply a substance of illusions and it lacks an intrinsic identity of ‘self’. In fact, no other thing has any origin from the source. Thus, such an experience of emptiness has made me realize that the mind is empty already. But what keeps us loaded and heavier?
Yogachara Buddhism has a good case to make in this context: the mind is the only source and everything outside your mind is a myth. No doubt, the mind is a beautiful servant or a dangerous master.
And now it’s 6:50 pm. The rain has subdued. Mindful I am. Neither mindfull nor mindfool. This rainwater is my constituent and I am the rain’s matter. The source of us is zero energy, even when particles are in motion. In this atom, we are filled and we are not filled. The Enso is here, I am there and nowhere.
