❖Why meditate? ❖ ~ Answer by Ajahn Jayasaro ~

❖Why meditate? ❖
~ Answer by Ajahn Jayasaro ~

Human beings want to be happy and do not want to suffer. Meditation is the most effective means of cultivating the inner causes of happiness and of eradicating the inner causes of suffering.

Meditation has numerous physical benefits. New technologies such as MRI, for example, have revealed that regular meditation over many years has positive effects on both brain structure and function. 

Meditation reduces stress and by so doing strengthens the immune system, leading to a decrease in the frequency and severity of illnesses. The training of the mind develops the ability to let go of toxic mental states, thus reducing the psychosomatic factors involved in physical illness. Having cultivated the ability to calm the mind, meditators are better able to deal skillfully with the feelings of depression, anxiety and fear which often accompany illness. Such skill reduces the mental suffering attendant upon physical illness and accelerates the healing process. At the end of life, experienced meditators are able to leave the world in peace.

The first task for meditators is to learn how to sustain attention on an object. By doing so they expose the normal untrained behavior of the mind, and can learn how to identify and deal with distracting and confusing mental states, and how to cultivate nourishing ones. A valuable ability learned at this stage of meditation is impulse control, one of the most significant predictors of success in all walks of life. The calmness and sense of well-being that arise through meditation leads to an inner self-sufficiency. As a result, the urge to seek pleasure through the senses is much diminished, and harmful behaviors such as drug use are abandoned without regret. 

Noble thoughts of generosity and kindness arise in the mind naturally and with increasing frequency.

The mind that has been well trained in meditation possesses sufficient clarity and strength to perceive the true nature of things as a direct experience. Seeing things in this light allows one let go of the mistaken assumptions and attachments which are the root cause of human suffering. Ultimately meditation leads to awakening and complete liberation from suffering and its causes, and to a mind pure and unimpeded in its functions, replete with wisdom and compassion.

(From “Without and Within, The Buddha” by Ajahn Jayasaro)

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To read the ebook, please visit ‘Without and Within', by Ajahn Jayasaro:

https://www.bia.or.th/ebook/content/web/index.php?bookid=130

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