My first experience of Buddhist meditation.
My first experience at a Buddhist centre for meditation
I had found work in Cardiff and wanted to see what the spiritual life was like over there. Doing a google search led me to an article saying that it was Buddhism that seemed to be very alive there and talked about the Cardiff Buddhist centre. I then went to find accommodation there near to my work and then very strangely the accommodation I found was very good and next door to that Buddhist centre. Was this a sign from God??
Then another strange coincidence happened in that my landlord told me he had a friend going to that centre today as there was a free meditation session happening and asked me would I be interested to go with him? You see I had asked him the day before if he was connected to that Buddhist centre in anyway as he had some Buddhist ornaments in his lodgings. Anyway , I said yes and I went with his friend and this is what happened.
We saw one of the teachers I believe. He explained to me what meditation was about. Basically my understanding from him is that it's to detach ourselves from the normal-day thought conditioning that we subject ourselves to. Which leads us to have busy minds that never get a chance to see the present moment. Instead we are always thinking either about the future or the past and flipping back and forth between them whilst letting the current moment pass. So that means we are never fully aware of ourselves. Our minds are busy pulling us back and forward. Poor humans !!
So when we then started the meditation session (called mindfulness) the idea was to focus on our breathing and that whenever we saw ourselves pulled away from this focus by a fleeting thought that what we should do is to recognise that this has happened and calmly focus back on the breathing. We also have to reset the count to zero as we were taught to count to 10 as we breathed.
So the result of this focussed breathing, in my view, is to make make us aware of the thought patterns that exist within us and which drive us in our daily lives. Once aware of them we can then decide to take control over them I believe, or at least to limit their control on us. Especially the negative thought patterns that we identify. And the idea also is then to decide to remove bad thought patterns and replace them with better patterns. If we continue to do that daily or regularly we then are able to positively change ourselves and become new people. Unrecognisable perhaps from where we once where. Or from how we used to be.
So this meditation becomes a transformational process that leads to creating a new us. I suppose this maybe why many find it life changing. Especially when they practice it regularly and often.
So I think I would highly recommend this type of meditation based on my current understanding of how it seems to operate.
Hope this is useful.
Peace
Ali
I had found work in Cardiff and wanted to see what the spiritual life was like over there. Doing a google search led me to an article saying that it was Buddhism that seemed to be very alive there and talked about the Cardiff Buddhist centre. I then went to find accommodation there near to my work and then very strangely the accommodation I found was very good and next door to that Buddhist centre. Was this a sign from God??
Then another strange coincidence happened in that my landlord told me he had a friend going to that centre today as there was a free meditation session happening and asked me would I be interested to go with him? You see I had asked him the day before if he was connected to that Buddhist centre in anyway as he had some Buddhist ornaments in his lodgings. Anyway , I said yes and I went with his friend and this is what happened.
We saw one of the teachers I believe. He explained to me what meditation was about. Basically my understanding from him is that it's to detach ourselves from the normal-day thought conditioning that we subject ourselves to. Which leads us to have busy minds that never get a chance to see the present moment. Instead we are always thinking either about the future or the past and flipping back and forth between them whilst letting the current moment pass. So that means we are never fully aware of ourselves. Our minds are busy pulling us back and forward. Poor humans !!
So when we then started the meditation session (called mindfulness) the idea was to focus on our breathing and that whenever we saw ourselves pulled away from this focus by a fleeting thought that what we should do is to recognise that this has happened and calmly focus back on the breathing. We also have to reset the count to zero as we were taught to count to 10 as we breathed.
So the result of this focussed breathing, in my view, is to make make us aware of the thought patterns that exist within us and which drive us in our daily lives. Once aware of them we can then decide to take control over them I believe, or at least to limit their control on us. Especially the negative thought patterns that we identify. And the idea also is then to decide to remove bad thought patterns and replace them with better patterns. If we continue to do that daily or regularly we then are able to positively change ourselves and become new people. Unrecognisable perhaps from where we once where. Or from how we used to be.
So this meditation becomes a transformational process that leads to creating a new us. I suppose this maybe why many find it life changing. Especially when they practice it regularly and often.
So I think I would highly recommend this type of meditation based on my current understanding of how it seems to operate.
Hope this is useful.
Peace
Ali
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