The physiological effects of Buddhist meditation is truly staggering. The actual act of meditation can be extremely elusive, yet simple at the same time. Often described as a state of bare attention in which your mind is extremely alert and in a skillful state of mind because your mind is literally within itself and only paying attention to that state.
Meditation is a greatly physical action in which one sits quietly, focusing on the internal breath, word or phrase. Generally a meditator is walking or standing nearby, helping guide the meditator throughout the process. It generally isn’t unusual to see a monk walking several steps and lying down over and over until he reaches that moment of his destination.
Generally there are many ways to perform meditation, but the one thing that really matters is whether or not you feel better in the end. James Hill often states, “If you are feeling better than when you started at the end, then chances are you are probably doing it right”
For most people meditation is difficult, even though its a very simple task. No matter how difficult it can be, try and push through it. Its often difficult to overcome the internal chatter, but generally there’s a moment in time when it all goes away and that’s the beauty of the experience.
Finding a method to reduce the internal chatter greatly helps reduce stress of the initial start of meditation. People often have anxiety when first trying meditation. Overall sticking with it is great as it helps facilitate a higher level of consciousness.
Mark Sumpter, a psychiatrist in the New York area mentions that meditation can actually raise a persons level of anxiety because of disowning feelings and thoughts. With meditation there is no where to hide those ideas, and for this reason its good and bad news for several individuals.
The person needs to be open and non defensive when performing meditations. You must be in the present and take away from these preexisiting thoughts and feelings of meditation. Push the ideas thoughts and feelings out for a moment and focus on the internal. Sumpter talks about comparing Zen to psychoanalytical theories and talks about how practitioners often become aware of the distorted aspects of overly individualistic views of our human experience. Understanding that the true nature of all individuals is actually non-individual is this moment of zen.
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