Meditation, Mindfulness And Your Life
What’s Meditation?
“Meditation” is a word that originally comes from ancient India. It is a kind of mind training, which is frequently used in Yoga. In ancient China, since Buddha knowledge is introduced from ancient India, Buddha has developed into different schools. Meditation is one of the most important trainings in the school of Mahayana Buddhism, named Zen. In Zen practice, people need to learn how to observe themselves from their skin to their vessels. Instead of observing their bodies as technical equipment like we do in modern society, people learn about themselves through thoughts. That is the Zen meditation.
Nowadays, of course, people don’t need to use Zen mediation or Indian mediation to develop themselves and to achieve the initial goal that being a Buddha. However, does it mean that meditation is useless?
The answer is in the word “Mindfulness”.
What’s Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is introduced to the public as a psychological term about self-controlling learning and attention training. In psychology, mindfulness is usually used to treat people who are suffering from various psychological conditions such as anxiety, bad temper, being hyper-emotional and so on.
The word “mindfulness” is a translation of the Pali Term “Sati”, which means meditation. In fact, mindfulness and meditation have some similar parts. They are both a mental training and aim at teaching people how to concentrate on something. But, different from meditation that focuses on self-consciousness, mindfulness tries to help people focus on the thing that they are doing in the present moment. In other words, mindfulness has broader functions in people’s lives, including reducing the depression from high pressure life, rumination and useless worries.
However, if a person doesn’t feel depression or anxious, does he or she still needs to learn mindfulness?
The answer is “Yes”.
About Your Life:
Undoubtedly, people’s lives, especially working and learning methods, have been changed by the break thoughts of technology and science. People are exposed to mass information every second and become fragmented learners. Many people now are used to reading short articles online, instead of deeply reading. When people try to concentrate on working or learning, it’s hard for them to not check their phones or search for something online. Thus, a kind of flow of learning and working is usually divided into pieces. The drawbacks of being a fragmented learner is that people will feel it’s hard to focus on one thing at one time. For example, while you are eating, you want to do your assignments. While you are doing your assignments, you want to share something interesting with your friends. When sleeping time comes, you start to ruminate your day and start to feel anxious, instead of focusing on sleep itself.
So, how can mindfulness help us in our lives?
The key words are concentration, observation and experience. Learning the three words, a flow can be formed in your learning or working, and even in your entertainment. Time will never become the reason that makes you feel anxious and depressed any more. Because in a flow, if you focus on these things, you can not even notice time passing. You will feel the world, notices the details of your life and focus on yourself in a peaceful emotion.
Before using mindfulness in your lives, the first thing you should learn is meditation.
- Sit down or lay down in a comfortable posture and close your eyes.
- Focus on your breath. Inhale and exhale slowly.
- Follow the air you inhale and observe how it can access into your body and then how it leaves.
- If there are some images or thoughts in your brain, don’t care about them, just let them go.
Keep meditation in 10 mins and write down your feelings.
After daily meditation training, then you can try to use mindfulness in your studying and working.
- Keep doing one thing at one time. Eating is eating. Reading is reading. Sleeping is sleeping. To feel the food you are putting in your mouth. To feel the words that you are reading. To feel how your body relaxes gradually at the end of the day. (Concentration)
- Write down your feelings and what you observed today. Ask yourself whether you felt something new today? (Observation)
- Try to accept yourself and your confusion. Learning your drawbacks and weaknesses, but not pushing yourself to control them immediately. When you feel confused about something, learn to put it down instead of grabbing the confused problem tightly to let it influence on your other tasks. Reading and time relaxing can help you to deal with your confusion. (Experience)
