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Is meditation dangerous?
Many people ask
if there are any side effects from meditation.
Some people say there is “a dark side of meditation.”
People ask me a lot of questions about that.
For me,
if you learn about meditation only from books,
or maybe
nowadays from people who teach meditation
but do not have a
very deep understanding of meditation themselves,
or others who write books based on meditation
but might not be experts,
there could sometimes be
some side effects.
Especially
if you look for meditation
so that you can think of nothing,
or block thoughts and emotions
to have an empty mind or empty brain.
That kind of meditation
is impossible, actually.
You cannot block your thoughts and emotions.
Or have an empty mind or an empty brain —
that is impossible.
There are always thoughts.
The mind is always moving.
It is constantly changing.
If you do not know how to embrace that,
then the thoughts become your enemies,
emotions become your enemies,
noise becomes your enemy,
busy-ness and stress become your enemy.
In the end,
through meditation,
your mind does not become calm and peaceful
but becomes more
sensitive
and
agitated. It will develop agitation.
Therefore,
that is not the right instruction.
Do not try to meditate in that way.
That is one thing to avoid:
trying to get rid of thoughts and emotions,
or trying to block them.
Some people,
when they think about meditation,
are looking for bliss,
peace, calm, and joy.
When they meditate, they think, “Peeeeace . . .”
That is what we call “craving.”
When your mind
has too many expectations about meditation
or it is attached to
the experience of meditation,
craving peace and all of that,
then your meditation will not be so easy
because when you look for peace,
the peaceful experience will say,
“I am busy.
You have to make an appointment.”
Normally, our mind does the opposite of what we want.
You can try this out
and tell yourself, “Do not think about pizza,”
and you will think about pizza.
And when you really need to think —
“Oh, I am in an exam!
I have to remember all these things” —
your mind will become empty.
That is what
our mind does normally.
Sometimes we say that
our mind is “unpliable”
or “unworkable.”
Our meditation is actually a way to
develop our minds to be
more workable and pliable.
Actually,
the real goal of meditation is
to connect with our basic innate goodness.
We have fundamental qualities of our mind
that we call “awareness,
love and compassion, and wisdom.”
These three are there as the background
of all our thoughts, emotions,
ups and downs in our lives,
and ups and downs of our feelings.
They are the background for everything.
Normally we say
that awareness is like the sky,
and thoughts, emotions, feelings,
and ups and downs are like clouds.
Through meditation, we can connect with
a deeper quality of ourselves.
When we do that, there is more
freedom
and more liberation.
Now, our mind does the opposite,
but when we connect with this on a deeper level,
everything is okay.
Real happiness happens
when we are connected with awareness,
love and compassion, and wisdom.
Then we have real happiness.
Therefore,
through the style of my lineage of meditation,
the main focus is on awareness,
not on the object.
Thoughts, okay, no thoughts, okay.
Emotions, okay, no emotions, okay.
Mistakes, okay, no mistakes, okay.
Right is okay, wrong is okay.
Happy is okay, unhappy is okay.
Up is okay, down is okay.
Why? Because all of those are like clouds.
At the fundamental level,
you cannot be wrong —
there are no mistakes in awareness,
or in our love and compassion and wisdom.
So it is awareness-oriented.
This is really important. It is not object-oriented.
It is not based on the clouds.
It is based on the sky itself.
This is a very important
message.
Especially
at the beginning,
do not think that meditation is about
stopping thoughts and emotions.
Or that it is only to look for peace,
calm, and joy.
Meditation is
to really connect with the deeper
qualities within yourself, which are
awareness,
love and compassion, and wisdom.