Hi, now I'd like to talk about the number three reason why everyone should practice meditation.
The number three reason why everyone should practice meditation is because meditation does away with suffering.
Now in the meditative tradition we understand there can be two kinds of suffering that exist.
The first kind of suffering is a bodily suffering.
This is the kind of pain which we feel in our back, in our legs, in our head, in our stomach.
All of the various parts of our body.
This is something which we tend to rely more on physical doctors.
We would never think to practice meditation as a way to get rid of our physical pain.
Actually meditation is something which really does allow us to, at the very least, overcome physical suffering.
The other kind of suffering which we understand is of course mental suffering.
And this I've already dealt with in some of my other videos.
But it's important to sort of specify in this video that
specifically what we're trying to do is get rid of mental suffering.
Because all of these things I've been talking about are a very real form of
stress and suffering and pain in our life.
Pain is not just something which is physical, that actually the mind does feel pain.
And when we feel pain in the mind it can be much worse than pain existing in the body.
So how is it that meditation is able to do away with these two very important negative aspects of existence.
Well for starters it allows us to understand that these are just a part of our existence.
That physical discomfort is actually not an uncomfortable thing, the discomfort arises in the mind.
When we have what we call physical pain, actually it's simply a phenomena which arises and ceases.
There's nothing intrinsically about it that says this is bad.
You know we often think that it's our body trying to tell us something.
Well it's our body simply saying that this is pain.
It's up to us in our minds, it's up to the mind as to whether it's going to say this is good or this is bad.
The body has no way of saying that something is good or is bad.
It simply gives different responses to different phenomenon.
We could say that pain is good if we wanted.
There are people who have trained themselves to think of pain as a good thing and something which they like.
People who like to feel pain, this is often a sign of mental sickness, or at least on a very basic level.
It's something that we consider to be a sort of disease in the mind, to consider that pain is a good thing.
But it's possible.
In meditation we learn to see pain as simply pain.
So when we have pain in the back, we say to ourselves "pain... pain...", reminding ourselves that it's just pain.
Or we have pain in the head.
Reminding ourselves that it's just pain, it doesn't have to be something that gives us stress and suffering.
It doesn't have to be something that's seen as negative, that we have to get rid of, that we have to do away with.
There's really nothing intrinsically wrong with us, with it.
But this is something very easy to say, but if we didn't have a tool to allow us to come to this realization,
we could never do it in reality.
But meditation is that tool.
When we come to realize for ourselves what it is, really what it is, then we're able to do away with the suffering.
But on a deeper level, when we do away with mental suffering, and of course mental suffering is the very same.
When we think about something and it makes us sad or it makes us angry, makes us upset.
This is only a judgment call on our part.
Even thoughts, even memories, worries about the future, things which we're unsure of.
All of these things can be very simply neutral, if we understood them for what they are.
So when we say to ourselves "thinking", we remind ourselves that it's just a thought.
When we say to ourselves "remembering" or "planning" or "worrying" or so on,
we come to see that actually there's nothing about what we're worrying, that is worth worrying about.
Now we come to see that it's simply what it is, it's something that comes and goes.
It's not really under our control, we can't change it, we can't make it be the way we want.
When we're able to do away with a great deal of our mental suffering.
The wonderful thing about meditation is, or one of the wonderful things about meditation,
is that it does change the body, that many things about our body do change.
And most of these are the sort of sicknesses which arise based on stress.
So people who have to have massages because of tension in the back,
they find that the tension disappears and never comes back.
And of course they have to go through quite a bit of suffering to be able to get to that point.
Because the meditation has to, you have to come to the point where you actually let go before you can get there.
But it actually does in the end do away with these pains and they never come back.
So it's not simply that you have to bear with them.
Once you learn to accept them, and let go of them, it's part of the letting go that allows them to heal.
People who have suffered from many different sicknesses that doctors just couldn't fix, bodily illnesses,
in the end turned out to be simply based on stress.
And when you do away with the stress, you do away with the sickness.
So, I think this sort of gives a good understanding of how meditation is able to do away with physical suffering.
A mental suffering of course is obvious.
The doing away with all of the unpleasant mind-states such as anger, greed, delusion, conceit and views and so on.
Does away with them, or it is the very mental sickness which, mental suffering, which we're trying to do away with.
So, meditation really is something that allows us to get rid of suffering.
To do away with all kinds of suffering.
And I suppose some people will be saying that suffering is actually a very important part of life,
and if it weren't for suffering we wouldn't learn anything or so on.
But I think that's sort of the point here, is that suffering is there to learn,
but most of us don't ever take the time to learn anything from it.
And meditation is allowing us to understand it, so that once we learn everything there is to know about suffering,
we don't need to suffer anymore.
So thank you for tuning in, this is number three, and please look forward in the future for the rest of the videos.