Why Meditate?

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Body – Computer Hardware . . . Feelings, thoughts – Software . . . Influenced Mind - Operator . . . Pure Mind, God, or Reality – Programmer

The body, or physical existence, has sense organs. . . Sense organs produce thoughts and feelings . . . Thoughts and feelings influence the mind . . . Pure Mind, God or Reality provide consciousness to the body.

Pure Mind or God is not in time . . . It is eternal. It is untainted . . . Therefore, it cannot be experienced in existence or in time . . It’s ineffable, or impossible to explain.

Body, with its thoughts and feelings, color this pure mind by its individuality or psychological idea of “me,” the “I” thought . . . Thoughts and feelings produce a “me.” . . . The idea of a “me,” or karma, in turn produces more thoughts and feelings, moment to moment, and lifetime to lifetime . . .It’s called the Circle of Existence.

Everything caught within existence changes constantly . . . Otherwise, it could not be experienced in time . . . Time is the record of change.
So, can the mind still itself and return to a pure, not-in-time state? A state of certainty? . . . This is what meditation is all about . . . Can the mind become utterly still, and only operate when absolutely necessary? . . . When it can, this is approaching enlightenment.

We have an underlying inclination to merge with pure mind, or God . . . Pure mind is our natural state, but it has been undermined by fear, which necessitates an “I” thought . . . We have therefore become separated from our Source -- and we long to return . . . We try to satisfy this urge with things of the world, but know intuitively that we can never find the constancy we are looking for within existence, because existence by its very nature is in flux, never stable.
So how exactly do we go about realizing that we really are the programmer, and not merely the software, the hardware, or the operator? . . . This is also what meditation is all about.

E. Raymond Rock is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center in Fort Myers Florida. His 28 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. He has practiced with Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Maha Boowa, Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Tui, Bhante Gunaratana, Roshi Kennett, Seung Sahn Sunim, Trungpa Rinpoche, the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco. His new book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books), is available at major bookstores and on-line.


By: E. Raymond Rock