Reflections to strengthen your motivation to meditate.
Meditating every day alone and weekly in a group is not easy. It can be even impossible when our mind is restless for whatever reason. Every time you have difficulty meditating, turn your mind toward a gratitude reflection that will benefit you. By doing so, you will strengthen your motivation to meditate and practice every time even when the task seems overwhelming. The “ 4 great gratitude reflections” are the traditional Zen Buddhist contemplation tools for strengthening our motivation to practice.
1. Human life is a treasure & a gift
Think about it: You can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and think. You can love and be loved. How often do you realize that your life is a fragile, incomparable gift day after day,...and yet you take it for granted? So, before starting your formal meditation, stop and take a few breaths to contemplate the gift of life you have received in the past. Be grateful for getting it. It will help you meditate easier and better.
2. On the other spectrum, death is inevitable and unpredictable. Sounds pessimistic, bleak, doom and gloom but, unfortunately, it is only realistic and pragmatic. Life is brief and death unpredictable.. Every day, millions of people depart this life. One day, you don’t know when it will be your turn.
So, before starting your formal meditation, stop and take a few breaths to contemplate the gift of being alive at this moment. Be grateful for it. It will help you meditate easier and better.
3. Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. No one escapes pain—physical pain, emotional pain such as loss, dishonor, disrespect, loneliness, anxiety, panic, grief, anger, stress, fear, etc….. Not even the most fortunate among us can escape. In Zen, we recognize that all beings born into this world suffer in one way or the other at various degrees from attachment, greed, desire, hatred, illusion, and ignorance of reality. This is our basic condition that we have to accept.
So, before starting your formal meditation, stop and take a few breaths to contemplate this basic condition that physical/emotional pain exists and it will strike sooner or later on all of us. Be prepared to accept it. It will help you meditate easier and better.
4. The miraculous power of our awareness, and mindfulness practice
Throughout our lives till the time of death, the only thing we have is the power to control our thoughts and feelings through the practice of awareness, and more specifically the practice of mindfulness-based meditation. Awareness of the current moment, of our body, of our thoughts and feelings of our sources of suffering such as desires, hatred, and illusions opens the door to Awakening.
So, before starting your formal meditation, stop and take a few breaths to contemplate the gift of awareness, that is being able to control your mind, words, and deeds because nothing else, outside yourself, is under your control. Be grateful for it. It will help you meditate easier and better.
You may choose one of the 4 gratitudes before starting, and then alternate. THANKS
