ANSWERING QUESTIONS OF MEDITATION PART 1
1. Why do we need to accumulate merit and morality before practicing meditation?
Because our blessing is too little, and we are lacking in merit, then we are likely to face obstacles, and our practice will difficultly progress. If we purify our minds, try to do charity, live a generous life, create much merit, we will bring happiness to people.
People who have no enough morality and virtue are easy to make mistakes. Although their retributions have not come yet, they still get worried and un-restful. Their practice can hardly progress. Thus, while practicing meditation diligently we need to keep on with control of minds. It means that we should be modest, and consider ourselves as small as dust so as to destroy arrogance. We also need to be happy when seeing people's achievement so that we can get rid of selfishness, jealousy or evil.
2. How can we practice meditation diligently everyday while we have to work for usual living?
Everyday, when we contact to people or work hard or arrange something or take a rest, we should always check our minds and bodies carefully. Our minds need to reside in bodies, and the bodies must be known to be impermanent.
(Keeping the right mindfulness everyday is the most important.)
3. Why do we have to contemplate the impermanence of the body?
When we reside in the body we can attach to it. If we know it to be impermanent, we will no longer attach to it. We don't think it's real or it's ours. If we don't attach to it any more, then we can open the door of wisdom. We can go deep into mind and destroy self or bad habit. So, knowing the whole body is always to come along with knowing the impermanence of the body.
Thank to contemplating the impermanence of the body, we gradually wipe out our basic instinct. For example, we were once greedy, but now we are not greedy any more, or we used to grow angry more than often, but now we can control ourselves.
If we can destroy an attachment to the body, then our mind can be peaceful. We can easily have sympathy for people who make mistakes. We even hope they will change better one day.
Based on the doctrine of impermanence, we can never think that everything will last long or stable. When we achieve the significant increase in prosperity we don’t know for sure whether it can be maintained for good. Receiving love or a favor from the other, we shouldn’t subjectively think that they will love us forever. Facing adversity or obstacle, we must keep calm, not retreat from practice, not despair, and not be pessimistic, because we know everything won’t last long.
For this reason, when we practice meditation at the first step, we should know well the whole body, which will help our brain relax, and then it can return to its function.
If we don’t know our body to be impermanent, then we keep on loving it. Thus, our basic instinct still exists in mental formation.
At that time, though our brain relaxes, our selfishness, desires, anger, and greed will be never destroyed, and they can drive us to hell.
This is because our ego is untouched.
If we know well the whole body, and then we know it to be impermanent, then our selfishness, desires, anger, and greed will be gradually destroyed. That is why the Buddha taught us that we should contemplate the impermanence of the body that will be reduced to ashes one day.
4. Why do we know well how breath is but we shouldn’t control it?
Breath is to reflect all activities of mind. If it is interfered in, then it will be stopped. It means that our self will rise high.
We only need to know passively how breath is. It is long we know it’s long. It is short we know it’s short. It’s weak we know it’s weak. It is strong we know it’s strong. That’s all. We know it well but we never interfere in. Any attention to it or interference in it will bring practitioners tenseness, and chest pains, and tiredness.
Throughout a period of meditation, our breath will be unstable. Inner secret erroneous thinking can appear to control our breath. That makes our breath long or short, weak or strong at a time.
For example, when we try hard to concentrate on something, our breath will be strong. When our mind is tranquil, our breath will be softer and longer. If our mind is secretly shaken in mind, our breath will be strong and short. If we have feelings of fear, hatred, and love, our breath will be more rapidly. It means that all activities of mind are reflected by breath. So, knowing well our breath is that we know well our mind whether it is peaceful or disordered.
If we control or direct our breath, our brains will be tense even though our mind is tranquil.
It is likely that our self will be multiplied after that. Please note that our control of breath only multiplies our self more and more.
When our breath is strong, we know that our mind is disordered. Such knowing is meant that we realize our mistakes when meditating, and then we should repent of our mistakes. Soon after, owing of repentance, our erroneous thinking will be down, our mind will be down too, and then our breath will be calm without our control. Specially, our self has no chance to be multiplied.
The key point of controlling breath is that we know it well but we don’t control it at all.
That is why the Buddha taught us:
“Our breath is long we know it’s long. It is short we know it’s short. It is little we know it’s little. It is much we know it’s much.”