Is meditation just about sitting still?

In today’s fast-paced industrial society, it is extremely difficult to focus on meditation. Although meditation is the purification of mind, we should not seek inner peace by abandoning our responsibilities. That is a wrong path. We must seek inner peace through Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, doing everything correctly, avoiding any wrongdoings. By doing so, we will achieve concentration and attain meditation, which is the teaching of Buddha.

The Buddha did not teach us to have a careless mind, to be speechless, or without profession. The Buddha did not teach us to abandon everything in order to meditate. What the Buddha taught us is to think, speak, act, and work, but we must do so without making mistakes. By doing so, we will have the merit to concentrate our mind in meditation.

Living without responsibility means we have no merit, no blessings. In terms of society, we are useless people, and according to the law of karma, we will gradually lose our blessings because we do nothing, but we still have to eat and breathe every day. In terms of religion, we belong to the category of breaking the teachings. Why do we break the teachings? Because we do not build the teachings and propagate the idea of not doing anything, then the teachings gradually decline. If we do not have responsibility for the teachings, we have no responsibility for the people, which is destructive. Not doing anything is a kind of destruction. The Buddha’s teachings are not about doing nothing, but about doing the right thing.

Please refer to:

• Mindfulness meditation
• Buddhist meditation retreat