2 Capitulo Hong So

Chapter Two: Why Meditate? The Benefits

            Meditation makes you aware of a better world. It is no dream world, but a world more real than any other. Owing to your awareness of that world, you will be able to cope far more effectively with things and situations that others around you insist are the world of reality. Peace will help you to solve problems that others, living as they are, hemmed in by cares and worries, find insoluble.

            Calmness will come to you as a result of daily meditation. In that calmness will come intuitive perceptions. Where, formerly, you may have felt paralyzed by the sheer enormity of life’s problems, intuition will supply you with simple, clear answers.

            You will find through meditation a heart quality developing that will inspire others to look at their problems, too, more constructively.

            Meditation will sharpen your concentration, and develop your will power. Obstacles of many kinds will simply vanish, and you’ll be able to accomplish in minutes what, formerly, might have taken you hours, days, or even weeks to do.

            A highly successful businessman of my acquaintance spent his mornings meditating. He went to work only in the afternoons. His associates sometimes chided him, “With all your responsibilities, how can you afford to be so late for work?”

            “Because of my responsibilities,” he would reply, “I can’t afford not to!” He had found that by coming to work with a clear mind he could solve problems on which others would have spent days, without ever being sure whether the answers they found were the right ones.

            For intuition, the natural fruit of meditation, has one supreme advantage over the reasoning faculty: It provides inner certainty.

            The rational mind can never be quite sure of anything. The best it ever does is decide on which, out of a variety of possibilities, seems the best choice. Great discoveries and accomplishments are the consequence, always, of some measure of intuition.

            Learn to look at life more with a sense of its underlying unity. Don’t analyze everything. Obviously, there are situations where analysis is necessary, but even then, cling to a deeper consciousness of the interrelationship of all things. For everything is a manifestation of a universal reality—even as waves, whatever shape they manifest, are manifestations of the same sea.

            There is a coherency in life, an underlying purpose and meaning. Know that, for every problem, there has to be a solution. See other people, not (to quote Sartre) as “that which you are not,” but as part of your own greater reality. Love them from that inward awareness which you are developing in meditation. All humanity is, in the deeper sense, your own self.

            All things are subject to the Law of Oneness. Everything has its compensating opposite. The pendulum, after moving in one direction, swings back in the opposite direction. For every up there is a down; for every left, a right; for every negative, a positive. Darkness and light, cold and heat, pain and pleasure, male and female—in all Nature we see opposites balancing one another.

            For every problem, similarly, there is a solution. Be solution-oriented, not problem-oriented. That is what it means to think superconsciously. Don’t dwell on difficulties longer than it takes simply to define them clearly. The solutions often come from seeing opposites as pairs in a single unity.

--From Meditation for Starters, Chapter Eight

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            Think how many things you do with the hope of attaining a condition of rest, once you’ve done them.

            You think, “Let me buy that zippy red sports car, or that shiny white compact model, or that beautiful big station wagon for the whole family. I’ll never rest until I get it!”

            Or perhaps you think, “I’ll get that new house with the shaded porch and the large master bedroom; that calm, spacious dining room so we don’t have always to eat in the kitchen with the cucumbers; that sunken living room. Oh, once I have all that I’ll be able to relax at last!”

            Usually, our mental image of an attained ideal is like a framed painting: static and never changing. It is an end in itself, not a passageway toward further beginnings and further challenges. Even when we see our goals as means to other ends, our vision of the future carries us to a time where rest becomes truly possible at last.

            Peace is the natural condition of the soul. People sometimes speak longingly of the peace of the grave—as in the term “requiescat in pace”—even if they imagine death as a descent into unconsciousness. The loss of consciousness itself seems to them, evidently, an attractive alternative to the ceaseless struggle of human existence. Meditation, however, poses an infinitely more attractive alternative, one that lifts the mind into a state of superconscious peace which, once attained, can be maintained through even the psychic upheaval of physical death.

            Peace can never truly be found outside ourselves. What passes for peace is a temporary lull, merely, in the battle of life. That new car, once you’ve bought it, will be only a prelude to new pursuits and fresh challenges. That lovely home will turn out to be an invitation to new responsibilities, further involvements, and perhaps even stronger attachments.

            What happens is that, in the process of pursuing one thing after another, forever in the hope of getting everything finally just the way you want it, you become accustomed to looking for things, for more and more ways of helping you to rest better. Someday, surely (you think), you’ll be able to enjoy life completely. The irony is that, in the very process of pursuing rest, you gradually lose the ability to rest at all. And in the process of pursuing enjoyment, you lose the capacity really to enjoy anything.

            Our very enjoyment of life begins with the simple ability to relax. The ability is simple: That is what makes it so difficult! Since our birth, our life-force has flowed outward to the five senses, and through them to this world of endless complexity. It isn’t easy, now, to reverse that flow.

            The more you seek rest through doing, the more restless you become. The more you seek happiness through the senses, the less happy you will be, for the simple reason that sensory enjoyment drains our capacity for happiness: It doesn’t nourish it.

            Why wait? Why wait for peace and happiness to come to you eventually? Will they come to you even after you retire from work? Hardly! If, having become safely ensconced in that rocking chair, you resist the tendency to keep on doing things no matter how unproductive, you’ll very likely die of boredom.

            Everyone, no matter how busy he is, needs to devote some time every day to practicing the art of doing things restfully. You’ll never find peace until you make peace a part of activity itself. Peace should be part of the very creative process.

            Hence the importance of meditation.

Questions and Answers

            Question: Are there other ways besides meditation to break a lifelong habit of restlessness?

            Answer: There are many ways. They are less direct, however, because their focus is not so much on peace itself as on creating those conditions which will allow one to feel peaceful. Peace is not merely a passive state, experienced when the turmoil around us has ceased.

            People imagine they’ll find peace in a peaceful setting—in that cottage by the sea to which they hope to retire; in that quiet life on a yacht. What they discover, if peace means to them a mere end to anxiety, is a life of steadily deepening ennui. True peace is never passive: It is dynamic. It emanates from a high level of awareness. It can be found only within, in the Self. Outward awareness, if over-stimulated, drains you of your peace; it can never give you peace.

            It is good to prepare the ground for higher awareness, however, by simplifying one’s life outwardly, and by reducing the quantity of your personal desires. It is important to hold an attitude of peacefulness. Without it, meditation will prove difficult for you.

            At work, concentrate on doing one thing at a time. Finish one project before proceeding to the next one. Try not to “gobble” life. Move in an aura of calmness, and you’ll find it easy to attain superconscious peace in meditation.

            Question: I find that in the welter of activity I become almost afraid of peace. Is there anything I can do to overcome this fear?

            Answer: This is one of the classic obstacles on the spiritual path: False notion, in the present case fearing the very thing you may desperately need and want.

            The fear you mention is quite simply the consequence of physical and mental tension. If you fight that tension, you’ll only become more tense. Concentrate first, therefore, on relaxation—physical, first, then mental. Later on, I’ll go more deeply into the subject of relaxation and how it can be achieved.

            Question: You said at the end of the foregoing section that peace should be “part of the creative process.” But isn’t creativity very often the fruit of mental and emotional anguish, not of inner restfulness?

            Answer: It is, yes—but also, no, it isn’t. Often it takes suffering to bring human consciousness to that level of maturity which produces deep insights. At the same time, a painting, for example, or a work of music cannot rightly be called “significant,” what to speak of “great,” if it only poses problems, and suggests no valid solutions to those problems.

            In science and technology, creativity is measured not by the “Rube Goldberg”-like complexity of an invention, but by its workability. The simpler, indeed, the better. It is not enough for an inventor to pose a problem: To be hailed for his contribution to society, he must provide answers to that problem. Creativity of all kinds is not a labyrinthine wandering in search of a way out of difficulties: It is the glad cry, “Eureka! I’ve found the exit.”

            Solutions are difficult to come by rationally. The reasoning mind is like a rudderless ship: It describes interesting patterns on the water, but it lacks a sure sense of direction. The rudder of inner guidance comes from superconscious levels of awareness.

--From Meditation for Starters, Chapter One