TRAINING THE UNRULY MIND

Meditation is a means of transforming our mind. Meditation practices brings concentration, clarity, emotional positivity, and a calm seeing of the true nature of things. The whole point of meditation is not just to feel calm and focused but to affect our everyday lives. If we meditate regularly, it makes positive emotions a habit that we can apply whenever we need to, day or night. Ultimately, it becomes part of us. By practicing meditation, you learn the patterns and habits of the mind. With regular practicing, the mind can deepen into profoundly peaceful, calm, and energized states of mind, which can have a transformative effect and can lead to a new understanding of life.

There are many things in life that are beyond our control. However, it is possible to understand our own states of mind and control the mind through meditation. Meditation is the only real antidote to our sorrows, anxieties, fears, hatreds, and general confusions that beset the human condition.

The foundation of the Meditation practice is sīla — moral conduct. Sīla provides a basis for the development of samādhi — concentration of mind and purification of the mind is achieved through paññā — the wisdom of insight.

Before beginning to practice meditation, firstly you must purify your morality (sīla) by re-observing it. Otherwise, if you practice meditation without morality, past immoral actions will conquer the mind based on immorality. In order to avoid such hindrances to conquer the mind, you have to restore your sīla. The practice of morality (sīla) leads to a state free of worry and remorse, it leads to delight, joy, physical and mental tranquility, happiness, concentration and wisdom, which sees the true nature.

As a lay-person, the practice of the five moral precepts is important. What are the five moral precepts? To restrain from killing any living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, telling lies and intoxicant drink or drug. A Monk must purify the monk’s morality with respect to the 227 Vinaya rules, making sure that it is without offence then. If you break any discipline, you have to restore it. If you practice meditation without preliminary purification of morality, it is not easy to succeed.

As virtue is perfected, it nurtures samadhi, and the strengthening of the samadhi leads to an insight wisdom. As our understanding steadily grows, wisdom is born. As wisdom increases in strength and intrepidity, samadhi evolves to become increasingly firm. The more unshakeable samadhi is, the more unshakeable virtue becomes. That is how virtue, samadhi and wisdom merge and function as one.

These three aspects of the training are intertwined. These three forms the Noble Eightfold Path, the way of the Buddha. When virtue, samadhi and wisdom have been developed and perfected, it leads to Nibbāna, which is the extinction all suffering.