Meditation
When Peter asked me if I would like to come with him to one of the meditation classes, I got confused. I have been reading about Buddhism and I already got an impression that it is a beautiful philosophy but my idea of meditation was quite blur. I thought that meditation is a state of body when your conchisness dissolves and your soul just flies away....
Peter laughed when I told him that. He even told me that I was funny for thinking that way. And now I can understand why.
My colleague Clare told me about this Buddhist Centre in Sefton Park. They have classes for beginners; Thursday Class is the one that we now regularly attend. This centre has a website:
In this article I would like to concentrate on Meditation only. Meditation is when your mind is free from uncontrolled thoughts. You sit comfortably (you just sit on the chair. Teacher sits in Buddha position thoughout the entire class), eyes are closed or half closed and you relax your mind. Then you concentrate your attention on breathing. So you have no thoughts at all, just concentrate on breathing. If some chains of thoughts pop into your mind, you calmly drift them away and continue concentrating on breathing. After a while, you can start countring till 7. If during counting your mind drifts away, you start counting again. Meditation (for beginners) normally last about 10 minutes or as long as you wish. That's it! These are the basics of meditation.
Really nothing abnormal. After basic meditation, you can start meditating on special feelings like love or wisdom. Basicly, you think of love, of people who you love like your partner, friends and family. You get this warm feeling inside you and when you feel this wormth, you stop thinking and just hold this feeling (and if images of loved ones pop in your head, you wish them happiness). That is soooooo great! I felt fantastic! After a while when you get thoughts in your mind, you just repeat the whole process: think of loved ones and then stop, holding this feeling.
Questions like why I consider Buddhism being a way of life, a beautiful philosophy, and not a religion as such, I will explain in my future posts. It is just radically different from anything else and is geniously simple.
Let Love guide your lifes!
posted by :-> @ 8:09 PM
4 Comments:
I'm glad your enjoying it, hope it helps u.
I do think Buddhism is alot more than just meditation though, quoting from a site on Buddhism "Buddha taught that there are six realms of existence – gods, humans, jealous gods, animals, ghosts and hell-beings". They believe in past-lifes, etc.
Clearly you can't believe this as well as be a Christian, for example.
It also say "Even some followers of other religions have borrowed some aspects of Buddhist practice (meditation techniques, for example)."
So i think learning about meditation and the basic buddhist way of life is still different from being a buddhist, in the same way that following the 10 commandments doesn't make you Christian or Jewish.
Sounds good though, have fun.
May love guide you too.
p.s. Your little picture kinda looks scary. It's ok when u click on it and it gets bigger, but when little it looks scary. And a little naked.
Lol, i thought that my picture looks scary too. I will enlarge it when i know how :->
i disagree with you there D! i think Aline can follow Buddhist practices and still be a Christian. There are many Christian and Buddhist churches (i don't know if Buddhists use the term church or temple but you know what i mean) which encourage mixed teachings.
Frankly nothing in Buddhism and Christianity contradicts each other.
Believing scriptures and believing teachings of a religion are two different things. One doesn't have to believe the Buddhist belief about six realms of existense, to follow the teachings (ie the underlying message of continuous change, suffering caused by desire, removal of desire leading to the removal of suffering etc.) any more than one person has to believe that wine and bread becomes the blood and body of Jesus Christ to follow the Christian message (do unto others as you would have them do unto you).
Surely it is getting bogged down in dogma that leads to many people having doubts about religion, especially organised religion and in extreme cases using religious messages for their own ends.
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