Comment by CPLX
2 days ago
Meditation isn't an insight. It's a practice.
Your comment makes as much sense as saying that once you've moved the heavy weight to a new position there's no more need for weightlifting.
2 days ago
Meditation isn't an insight. It's a practice.
Your comment makes as much sense as saying that once you've moved the heavy weight to a new position there's no more need for weightlifting.
I dont understand that. I always assumed meditation is not a practice or an antipractice. There is no goal to reach. Nothing to gain.
It is a practice that leads, as a consequence, to insight. Insight is not information that might be read from a book, it is experience that uses observation to arrive at understanding and transformation. You can't just "decide to have" the experience without doing the work of transforming yourself through observation. People who have gone far in the practice do tend to say that there was never any goal to begin with, that they ended up where they started, but that's more of a metaphor than anything else. Someone who travels around the world and ends up where they started is in a very different place than someone who never left home.
It's a practice. There are benefits. It's not a cure-all. The goal is to be more in control and aware of your own thoughts and feelings. You achieve that by learning to turn off the "monkey mind" - the continuous stream of distracting thoughts and feelings which can lead us down paths which are not of our deliberate choosing and not necessarily beneficial to our wellbeing.
It is often said that if you go into meditation with a goal to improve yourself that you will probably be disappointed. I guess I would say that meditation is as much about unlocking your intuition as it is about anything else, so consciously trying to improve yourself through meditation does seem to miss the point of the practice.
> The goal is
That may be your goal and it’s a fine one. It’s a not accurate as a blanket statement.
For context I am speaking in the context of being a practicing Zen Buddhist. But that’s only one other of many perspectives.
Correct. Meditation is really a state. Formal practices just aim to help you get there.