The Way: A Guide to Living Your Life
By Dhammacaro
To lead a good life, we need to find a way of doing this. You might also hear this called the way of ‘good practice’. Once found, we need to learn it and put it into practice. Meditation is one way to learn to understand and accept whatever happens in life. Meditation helps a practitioner be confident to live life as it is. There is a story, which illustrates this well. Here is the story:
There was once a meditator who meditated in the forest near a lotus pond. One day while he was meditating he smelled a pleasant scent from the lotus flower in the pond. He thought he would pick one of them and place it near him. It would give a nice smell whilst he meditated. After considering this, he stood up and walked to the pond with the intention of getting one lotus flower. When he was about to pick it, he heard someone said, “Who are you? Stop stealing my lotus flowers!”
The meditator said, “I am so sorry, I didn’t think anybody owned this pond”, and went back to meditate. Not too long after this, another man came to the pond and said, “Wow! These lotus flowers are beautiful! I must pick them and sell them to pay for my liquor this evening.” He then picked the lotus flower and in so doing destroyed many stems and left the pond. The owner of the lotus pond said nothing however. This surprised the meditator so he asked him, “Why didn’t you tell that man off who picked and destroyed a lot of your lotus flowers? But you did scold me who intended to pick only one of the flowers for meditation.”
The owner of the lotus pond said, “I told you off because you are a meditator. Your mind is as pure as a white robe. So I reminded you and helped you to concentrate on your practice. That man I cannot help as his mind is clouded with greed, hatred and ignorance. I just left him to follow his way of life.” When the meditator heard this he thanked the man for reminding him of his practice, during which he knew he should not have been distracted by anything.
Yes, it is correct that we should not be distracted by greed, hatred and ignorance when we live our life. We should just keep the mind clear and clean and as white as a robe. When we know that it is stained with desire, we must clean it immediately. Don’t let it be stained because it will soon become a rag!
Believe it or not, meditation can help clean a stained life and help us concentrate on the right path.
Hallo,
I actually have a question about Vipassana meditation: I started meditating using the breathing mindfulness observation and think I am getting ready for transition towards thought/emotion observation, but I haven’t any clue how to do that.
- it seems to me difficult to know where to concentrate my observation point of attention since it should be no more the breathing – nostrils, etc.
- is there a special technique when you want to move on towards more spiritual meditation or you just sit and observe your third eye and follow whatever thoughts/emotions arise??
- i tried to find some info on the internet, in libraries, in vain.
Can you help? – Thank you !
Kind regards
-no more the breathing, you just acknowledge knowing, knowing, knowing, until your breath is back.
-no shortcut; ‘steady practice is keeping mindful in every posture’, whatever you are, you will have this attitude of practice with you constantly.
Hallo, I just put in practice today what you advised and things seemed to happen in a very new comfortable order for my meditation, order – which I was lacking for months. I don’t want to make it sound like a magic, but something really changed for better.
Since I cannot commute every week to the temple this webpage is very useful. Thank you!