On meditation

[Mala]

I was listening to a talk by Alan Watts on meditation & would like to quote something interesting.

"The point is the Journey.
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment therefore if you meditate on an ulterior motive that is to say improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life then you've got your eye on the future and you are not meditating because the future is a concept that doesn't exist. Tomorrow never comes. Time is always now."

My thoughts on this so far are

According to this if we are meditating with the aim to lessen or reduce pain, then it won't work.

Being in the moment is doing something in the present moment even with the pain.

The future doesn't exist but the idea of tomorrow is very strongly embedded in all of us. The fact that our language allows us to talk about the future in the future tense suggests that the future is a presence we can't ignore. (So should I book that holiday or not?)

My conclusion is that meditation is a way of life rather than an activity that we choose to do for 30 minutes a day. My conclusion is also that its Bl....y ( pardon my French) difficult if not impossible.

Any thoughts on this?

Mala

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

I meditate just to relax and relieve worry or anxiety of the day. I didn't know that meditation is not to be used
to heal headaches or pain. Who really knows what the purposes or outcome of meditation is?
That may be different for different people.

I know that the future doesn't exist. But it's still awful hard not to think about it, but when I do I try real hard
to think of it positive rather than negative.

We in the western world just aren't as good at meditation as those in the East. They practice it from childhood
and it's part of family life. We westerners come to the knowledge of meditation as adults and it requires
discarding emotional baggage we've been living with for years. It isn't easy for most of us, including me.