What is the benefits of meditation ?

To know the benefits of meditation, first let’s clarify the meaning of the meditation. Because I see a huge misunderstanding in the heart of many people when it comes to the word Meditation. The word Meditation means to get habituated to or familiarized with some positive topic or positive attitude, which can be divided into two:

1) placement meditation and
2) analytical meditation.

Breathing meditation is an example of the placement meditation and analysis on the mind or impermanence is the example of the second one. And the purpose of both meditation is to direct the mind towards positive and to reduce the negative and afflictive emotions to bring peace and happiness in the life. So benefits of meditation is that we will be able to control ourselves, we will be able to control our mind, with which we can give direction to our mind. 

From the very childhood, our parents send us to schools and then universities to shape our brain with modern knowledge. But nowadays in this materialistic world people fail to shape the heart with moral qualities and as the consequences you see many people who are very educated, the level of modern knowledge  is quite high, their general education is very good but they are not kind to themselves and to others. They are not responsible of their actions. Many of them are fail in the test of life.  

They might be very successful in the materialistic world, they might be very successful at work but when they get back to their home, they are not successful in their real life. Lots of problems with wife, husband, parents or friends. They might be a famous businessman, but at the end of the day they are not happy. So they don’t find peace and happiness in their life although they might get successful remark, job or the business or whatever it is. 

Some cannot even success in materialistic world because of their greed, ego, anger, fear, lack of self confidence and so forth. So through meditation one can remove these negative emotions and one will be able to be successful not only in materialistic world with modern education but also with inner moral education, also to have a nice happy and peaceful life, to have a content life, to have a life which is more meaningful. 

From other aspects I would say that since the childhood we have always been controlled by our indisciplined mind. You can see that a lot of children like to do many things that are not good for their own health. If you watch carefully even adults does the same thing maybe in a bit different way. Let’s say they love to eat food which are not good for their health, or people eat too much of what they like and as a consequence it’s not good for their health. Why do they do that? If you ask yourself “ Why does the child do such things?” And not just children, even many doctors smoke even they clearly know that smoking is not good for their health but they still do? 

The reason is quite obvious. Their indisciplined mind, they can’t control their desire, their urge to do that, to eat that, to drink that. And they are controlled by those desires and those mind which are not ethical and disciplined. There are many children in many countries unfortunately taking drugs. If you think carefully “why do they do that?” Because their indisciplined mind is controlling, these desires and these urge are controlling them. They know that it’s not good but still they cannot stop themselves, because there’s a force in them which is forcing them and that force is motivated from the unethical and indiscipline mind. And because the mind is not tamed so that mind is controlling us do something wrong. So you eventually become your own enemy. 

Those people who die because of drugs or cancer because they have excessively engaged into something. It doesn’t matter eating or anything else, it is actually knowingly or unknowingly themselves who do that.  Majority of sickness or cancer caused by something that people do themselves so they are becoming their own enemy, if you are not able to control that unethical and indisciplined mind.

Yes, we all desire happiness but what we do most is not something that gives us happiness. For example, we all get angry, we all have jealousy, we all have these negative emotions. Do we need that? NO. We know that we need happiness but sill cannot control ourself from all these destructive emotions like anger, jealousy, ego, pride, all these things. We know that all these things are not giving any positivity results because whenever you experience these emotions like anger, you cannot be happy but still we are controlled by this emotion. We don’t have control over these emotions because they are much stronger than us. So now because of meditation, you can see from that angle and my practicing meditation, you can control these emotions. If you meditate you will be able to control all those indiscipline mind, you will be able to tame all those mind, you will be able to be your good friend, and you can avoid yourself from being your own enemy. 

At the end of the day, benefits of meditation is that you will have peaceful mind, happy life, content life, satisfying life, confident, and less stress in life and you can also gain a strength to deal with any situations calmly. I will not say that you won’t have any problems at all in your life because the life is something as long as you have it, you will have some problems like you cannot stop aging. This is also one of the problems.

Recently a few weeks ago, a monk from my monastery passed away in Taiwan. So when he passed away, he went into the meditative state, the doctor declared that he is dead but then he was still in the meditative state for about 20 plus days. During those days, the body is not decaying, it shows that he has full control over his mind, although his body is dead, although his brain and everything is not working anymore but then his mind is still there meditating.

These are some of the benefits of meditation

Noted down from a dharma talk of Lama Nawang Kunphel..