QUESTION: What is the purpose of meditation?
ANSWER: Usually we react to our experience by liking or disliking it or by letting it trigger thoughts, daydreams or memories. All these reactions distort or obscure our experience so that we fail to understand it properly. By developing a non-reactive awareness we begin to see why we think, speak and act the way we do. And of course more self knowledge can have a very positive effect on our lives. The other advantage of practicing insight meditation is that after a while it creates a gap between our experience and ourselves. Then rather than automatically and unconsciously reacting to every temptation or provocation we find that we are able to step back a little, thereby allowing us to decide whether we Should act or not and if so how. Thus we begin to have more control of our life, not because we have developed an iron will but simply because we see more clearly.
ANSWER: Usually we react to our experience by liking or disliking it or by letting it trigger thoughts, daydreams or memories. All these reactions distort or obscure our experience so that we fail to understand it properly. By developing a non-reactive awareness we begin to see why we think, speak and act the way we do. And of course more self knowledge can have a very positive effect on our lives. The other advantage of practicing insight meditation is that after a while it creates a gap between our experience and ourselves. Then rather than automatically and unconsciously reacting to every temptation or provocation we find that we are able to step back a little, thereby allowing us to decide whether we Should act or not and if so how. Thus we begin to have more control of our life, not because we have developed an iron will but simply because we see more clearly.
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