There is a lot of interest in meditation lately. What is meditation? Is it useful? My definition of meditation is this: it is the process of observing your mind. I tried meditation a long time back. I was trying desperately to dispell any thoughts from my mind. As you can imagine, it would not work. It is almost like the story of instructing someone to not think about monkeys. After a few minutes of trying not thinking about monkeys, your mind will be filled with monkey games.
Emptying the mind cannot be an active process. One beginner's strategy is actively to engage your mind on some interesting activity. It is again the monkey mind concept. If you are not aware of your thoughts it will start controlling you. But if you keep it actively engaged, such as, "hey monkey mind can check on my breath through the nostrils?", it would be happy doing that for a while. It obviously, will start getting distracted pretty fast. Once you realize that gently bring it back to focus on the breath.
So the question is when I say "ask your monkey mind to do blah blah, " who am I that is asking? Isn't it my own mind? What is the distinction? Interesting topic
Emptying the mind cannot be an active process. One beginner's strategy is actively to engage your mind on some interesting activity. It is again the monkey mind concept. If you are not aware of your thoughts it will start controlling you. But if you keep it actively engaged, such as, "hey monkey mind can check on my breath through the nostrils?", it would be happy doing that for a while. It obviously, will start getting distracted pretty fast. Once you realize that gently bring it back to focus on the breath.
So the question is when I say "ask your monkey mind to do blah blah, " who am I that is asking? Isn't it my own mind? What is the distinction? Interesting topic
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