Mindfulness Meditation For Beginers

Although meditation is a method of focusing the mind on purity and serenity, it cannot be separated from the overall framework of a human being. This framework includes elements such as: Health, Morality, Precepts, Merit, Doctrine, and Technique. This means that a meditator must live a healthy lifestyle, perform beneficial deeds, possess good health, have a clear understanding of the teachings, and be proficient in meditation techniques… Without any of these elements, meditation cannot be successful.

The pinnacle of inner purity is inner peace. If someone understands Meditation as solely inner peace without any connection to morality, then they have misunderstood. A Zen practitioner must always be very morally pure. There is never an inner purity that still harbors evil thoughts.

Unwholesome thoughts disturb the mind, while wholesome ones calm it. Inner tranquility is compatible with morality, so anyone who practices meditation needs to improve their morality very well.

Inner tranquility also helps us see our moral faults more easily. When we reach a higher level in meditation, hidden bad tendencies deep in our souls will be discovered and neutralized. That’s why meditation is said to have the power to build perfect morality.

Meditation and morality greatly affect each other. We can only attain the Right Concentration when we have eradicated almost all unwholesome thoughts arising from ourselves.

Morality and meditation are similar in that they both focus on the mind. Morality judges our thoughts right or wrong, good or evil. Meditation judges our minds peaceful or unpeaceful.

Mindfulness meditation for beginners

Then we must understand the three foundations of meditation which are Morality, Merit, and Qigong profoundly and practice them very well.

– Morality is our pure minds in which we pay homage to the Buddha, love all beings, and keep ourselves modest. These three things help us improve our morality and gain blessings. The most miserable thing when practicing meditation is erroneous thinking. When we have blessings, we can easily realize an arising of erroneous thinking, we just need to turn back to reside in the body (knowing the whole body). When we know the body to be impermanent, then erroneous thinking will disappear.

If we don’t have enough blessings, erroneous thinking will lead us the wrong way for last long.

Further, in our daily lives, we have to force ourselves cleverly to keep our righteousness. Try to deal with complicated situations intelligently to create more blessings and avoid sinning.

– Merit is what we gain when we bring happiness and morality to people (such as helping the poor, building schools or bridges for everyone, doing volunteer work..)

– Qigong helps keep potential energy low in our bodies, helping our brains remain stable during the meditation session.

These foundations help us have a virtuous life though we haven’t attained any fruition of meditation or Sainthood yet. And when we practice meditation, our practice, and those foundations will have a nice mutual relationship.

When we practice meditation with the right method (see Right method of meditation) plus our great merit, the awareness state will appear in our mind.

We shouldn’t practice meditation alone but invite others to join us. The blessing of asking others to cultivate will help develop our spirituality. If you want to be good at something, you should teach/guide/share with others that thing. Whenever the pagoda opens a course for meditation, ask your friends to join you to meet everyone from everywhere and keep doing it forever.

When talking with our friends about meditation, we have to skillfully help them understand meditation thoroughly but don’t think that we are experts in it, or else we will lose our blessings. So, let us humbly tell others about meditation.