Compassion Kadampa Buddhist Centre

Meditation is a mind that focuses on a positive experience, and a mental action that is the main cause of mental peace. Whenever we meditate, we are performing an action that will cause us to experience inner peace in the future. Normally, throughout our life, we experience negative states of mind day and night, and these are the opposite to mental peace. Sometimes, however, we naturally experience inner peace, and this is because in the past we concentrated on positive objects. A positive object is one that causes us to develop a peaceful mind when we concentrate on it. The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and peaceful. If our mind is peaceful we will be free from worries and mental discomfort, and so we will experience true happiness; but if our mind is not peaceful, we will find it very difficult to be happy, even if we are living in the very best conditions. If we train in meditation, our mind will gradually become more and more peaceful, and we will experience a purer and purer form of happiness. Eventually we will be able to stay happy all the time, even in the most difficult circumstances. girl meditating WHY LEARN TO MEDITATE? Person Meditating Usually we find it difficult to control our mind. It seems as if our mind is like a balloon in the wind – blown here and there by external circumstances. If things go well, our mind is happy, but if they go badly, it immediately becomes unhappy. Such fluctuations of mood arise because we are too closely involved in the external situation. We are like a child making a sandcastle who is excited when it is first made, but who becomes upset when it is destroyed by the incoming tide. By training in meditation, we create an inner space and clarity that enables us to control our mind regardless of the external circumstances. Gradually we develop mental equilibrium, a balanced mind that is happy all the time, rather than an unbalanced mind that oscillates between the extremes of excitement and despondency. If we train in meditation systematically, eventually we will be able to eradicate from our mind the delusions that are the causes of all our problems and suffering. In this way, we will come to experience permanent inner peace. Then, day and night, in life after life, we will experience only peace and happiness.