Meditative thoughts
A few days ago i took a day off to do nothing.Yes,nothing of the routine.Only to meditate under the guidance of the 17th Karmapa,Ogyen Trinley Dorje.
Meditate on what?Kensur Lekdon's book,Meditations of a Tibetan Tantric Abbot,lists a dozen topics that include love,compassion,joy,equanimity,cyclic existence,kindness and altruism.The Karmapa's lesson touched all these aspects with his own perspective and insight.
A day with a guru like the Karmapa could be good in the sense that one gets to understand that even gods suffer as much as we do.They are scared of their fall from grace to our level!
What i like most was the lesson on suffering.I am one who believes that suffering helps us in becoming better human beings.Suffering makes you realise other's sufferings,and the human being in you is awakened.
One needs to cultivate a compassionate mind in order to help reduce other's sufferings.We should,through meditation on compassion,be able to understand the pain and torture others have to go through.As the Karmapa said,even animals want to be happy and free from pain and suffering.Since they can't talk our language,we have to be able to read their body language and stoop to their level to feel their pain.Here the importance of meditation of equanimity comes in.
We should cultivate the sensibility to be strong enough to say,"i will attain the position of a completely perfect Budha for the sack of being able to cause all sentient beings to have happiness...free of sufferings."
That takes you to the Bodhisattva stage.Believe there is nothing impossible.Your mind is faster and more powerful than any other force.We don't care to make the best use of it and hence we remain in the "suffering zone," always having to go through the cycle of death and birth.
Shouldn't we pause and reflect?
