Meditation for Thursday 13 July 2023
Some people have difficulty in integrating meditation into other aspects of their lives even though this is the whole point of meditation. Those periods that we spend in meditation must permeate our everyday life. People complain that they have been meditating for years but don’t see any appreciable change in the way they live; they live in two separate worlds.
When we hear such complaints, it is usually the case that they are not practicing regularly for it is only through regular practice that we begin to taste that calmness of mind that remains with us long after our formal periods of meditation.
A simple practice that may help us to integrate is not to come out of meditation too quickly but rather to allow a little time for the peace of meditation to infiltrate our lives. We shouldn’t jump up and rush off, but rather mingle our mindful state of being in the present moment with everyday life. An author I read once put it this way. “Be like a person who’s fractured their skull, always careful that someone will touch them.”
After meditation let the wisdom, insight, compassion, and detachment that meditation gives us pervade our day-to-day experience.
Simple exercises in our daily routine assist us to integrate meditation into our lives. A Zen story illustrates this beautifully…
“Master how do I integrate meditation?”
“By eating and sleeping,” replied the Master.
“But master everyone eats and sleeps.”
“But not everyone eats when they eat, and not everyone sleeps when they sleep”.
“To eat when you eat and sleep when you sleep means to be completely present in all your actions.”
Meditate