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Wisdom of Living Masters: Heart Thinks Events Materialise

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  • Wisdom of Living Masters: Heart Thinks Events Materialise

    Sifu has been featured in a new book "Your True Nature: Wisdom of Living Masters" by Natalie Deane and Damian Lafont.

    Question by the Authors

    Meditation offers a variety of benefits. For example, it cultivates greater concentration and calm. But perhaps if too much attention is brought to studying the mental and physical benefits, the profound significance of meditation and practices may not be realized. How do we take the next step to the true wakening of spiritual consciousness?

    Answer from Sifu

    Before answering the question, it would be fruitful to have a clearer understanding of the term "meditation". It is derived from the verb “to meditate”, which implies thinking and intellectualizing.

    Thinking and intellectualizing are in fact the very factors many schools of meditation, including the one I am most familiar with, advice their practitioners not to be involved in. In other words, if you wish to be successful, during your meditation you should not think and intellectualize!

    Then, why is the practice called “meditation”? It is because of over-generalization as a result of mistaken translation due to insufficient understanding.

    As "meditation" is a Western term, logically it originated from Western culture, referring to a practice employed by early Christian monks in their spiritual cultivation. It involved four processes, namely reading scriptures, praying to God, pondering over God’s words in the scriptures, and reflecting the Truth.

    This morphological background is of much significance. It gives assurance to those persons who mistakenly believe that practicing meditation is against Christian culture, that early Christian monks practiced meditation to reflect on God.

    Later, various other practices to reflect on God or on Cosmic Reality spread from the East to the West. Although internally they were different, externally they looked similar. Hence, the term “meditation” was used for all these practices.

    It was also discovered that those who practiced meditation regularly had many mundane benefits, like reducing anxiety and improving metabolic processes. Soon scientific research proved that meditation enhanced physiological and psychological functions.

    This background information enables us to look at both the question and answer with better insight.

    We can better understand that if too much attention is brought to studying the mental and physical benefits, like greater concentration and calm, not only we may miss the profound significance of meditation, but also we may deviate from its original aim.
    Extract continues here: http://www.shaolin.org/general-2/wis.../wisdom01.html
    Sifu Andy Cusick

    Shaolin Wahnam Thailand
    Shaolin Qigong

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    "a trained mind brings health and happiness"
    - ancient wisdom

  • #2
    This is now a series of wonderful articles, which I only just discovered:

    George / Юра
    Shaolin Wahnam England

    gate gate pāragate pārasaṁgate bodhi svāhā

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