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MEDITATION
Why Meditate?
by Cynthia Kneen
author of Awake Mind, Open Heart
We are not trying to be good or pure.
We are trying to be as human and natural as possible, rather than trying to hide from ourselves and avoid ourselves or overly interpret reality. Meditation is not dwelling on a special state of mind. It is being with things as they are.
The practice is to be fully mindful of the details of everything we do, to be present immediately as much as we can, so that mind is synchronized with the body.
The Shambhala tradition uses meditation as a tool to recognize our potential for uniquely human intelligence and dignity and bring it forward into our day-to-day existence.
The fundamental view is that we have everything we need in us already, it only needs to be brought out. This is called unconditional meditation or meditating without an object, meditating as just being. It is more advanced than meditating on an object
of mind.
Courage is necessary simply to be ourselves, because there is a tendency in our culture to veer away from personal intelligence and dignity in our basic being. There is a tendency to forget about our basic strength. So, unconditional meditation is a method of courage to investigate what our basic being is, and then develop personal bravery based on that.
The logic of Shambhala is very simple. It is that meditation is intrinsic to human beings. All human beings have a natural disposition just to be. And unconditional meditation connects us to this intrinsic meditation, so we can contact and stabilize a fundamental openness in our everyday lives.
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