Why Should We Meditate?
We all seek peace and happiness, but where can we find it? It's exactly what we lack.
In modern life, most of us live surrounded by an unprecedented level of comfort
and material facilities; however, this sophisticated exterior is often a mask to hide
feelings of insatisfaction, depression, and anxiety. Sometimes it seems that the more
material “development” we see in the world, the less satisfaction and contentment is
enjoyed by individuals.
We avidly seek satisfaction and harmony, which we seem to lack, for too often we
find only agitation, irritation, and imbalance, and, when afflicted by those disturbing
emotions, we usually direct them to others, even to our loved ones, affecting them. This
is the atmosphere around someone afflicted by such mental states.
Of course we all, without exception, aim to live in peace and harmony, sharing it
with those around us. We aspire to personal, familiar, professional and/or social
relationships, which are functional and good. But how do we find this kind of peace?
How can we live it and spread it around us?
Shamata and Vipassana meditation is about the discovery of the true happiness that
exists within us. It is a way to find fulfillment that we usually seek outside ourselves,
although that is our fundamental nature. Unfortunately, we are so familiar with the
relentless pursuit of happiness on external success, that we do not know how to access
this inner treasure.
And although every one of us, without exception, has inside ourselves this source of
happiness that does not depend on external circumstances, we do not know how to
discover it; reading or talking about this inner source of happiness and satisfaction is
not enough. We need practical methods that reveal our true nature and allow us to go
beyond cultural, social, and even religious barriers which continually tell us that we are
incomplete, insufficient and limited.
We can change our mindsets and eradicate habitual tendencies through Shamata and
Vipassana meditation. We can recognize natural states of mind, of lucid calmness and
wisdom: we can dissolve what disturbs the mind, so that it expresses its original purity.
Thus, changing our mind’s experience, we change our speech and movement. Once we
achieve the experience of mind, speech, and body in a state of peace and tranquility, we
can achieve the ultimate goal of practice: liberation and full realization for the benefit of
all.
Correct Vipassana and Shamata meditation can be practiced by anyone; we all face
the problem of suffering — it is an universal ailment. Thus, the “medication” must fit
all. When we suffer because of the distressing emotions, the emotions themselves are
neither Eastern nor Western. The suffering which comes from them have no religion,
creed, or partisanship. The basic feeling of anger or aggressiveness, for example, has
no religion; there is not a Buddhist anger, an Islamic anger, a Christian or Hindu anger.
Anger and aggressiveness are simply anger and aggressiveness. The suffering that
comes to oneself and to others, the experience of pain and instability, are also universal
and beyond labels. Thus the solution has also to be universal and beyond beliefs. In the
same way that suffering does not depend on beliefs, or lack of beliefs, the solution also
does not require them.
Vipassana and Shamata meditation is such a method. Nobody with good sense will
have anything to object to know one’s true nature, which is peaceful and harmonious.
Nobody will object to eliminate the causes of suffering and experience of a mind free of
negativity. Nobody will have any objection against a way to benefit all beings. We can
thus say that this is the Universal Way.
