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| Meditation and the Feel-good Factor | ||
| 作者 | Goodson, Martin |
|---|---|
| 出處題名 | The Middle Way: Journal of the Buddhist Society |
| 卷期 | v.79 n.1 |
| 出版日期 | 2004.05 |
| 頁次 | 13 - 19 |
| 出版者 | The Buddhist Society |
| 出版者網址 | http://www.thebuddhistsociety.org/ |
| 出版地 | London, England, UK [倫敦, 英格蘭, 英國] |
| 資料類型 | 期刊論文=Journal Article |
| 使用語言 | 英文=English |
| 附註項 | From a talk given at the Buddhist Society in February 2004 |
| 摘要 | A visit to the local bookshop will reveal a growing section called 'Mind, Body, Spirit'. Among all the subjects covered by this title we can usually find a section on meditation. There will be whole books devoted to this subject, and many other books in the section will have chapters on it. If we read some of them, we shall encounter a vast range of methods, techniques and objects of meditation -- so much so that we might wonder how they can all be covered by the same word. There are meditations involving the use of imagination for visualizations, others for reciting mantras and others based on breathing. Some meditations are done silently. Others are 'guided': an audio cassette is used and a narrator guides the meditator through the various stages of the process. The mushrooming New Age movement has developed a number of its own systems of meditation. A popular method is called pathworking. Here a narrator guides the meditator through a mythological or myth-like landscape, following a story to its conclusion. St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order, used a similar method, only drawing upon stories from the New Testament, and he based some of his spiritual exercises upon that method. St Ignatius had an incredible imagination, and used to compose long dramas, usually with him as the hero in a tale of darring-do saving damsels in distress. These dramas were imagined in great detail, and he whiled away many hours. Another theme he pursued was of himself as an apostle of Jesus. He would imagine that he was there in Palestine listening to Jesus talking to the people. He became aware of a qualitative difference between these two kinds of fantasy: they had different effects. After several hours of fantasy about himself as a soldier of fortune, he would feel drained and exhausted. However, after several hours of imagining himself as a participant in the New Testament stories, he would be full of energy and be uplifted as well. Later in life, St Ignatius instigated spiritual exercises based on this insight that are still in use today. Different meditation techniques lead to different states. In visualization, attention on internal images produces a trance. This is a state of focused attention that can happen often, but mostly we are unaware of it. For example, when travelling by train we may become so absorbed in a book that we miss our stop. It is the same in the cinema: we forget the popcorn in our lap, our surroundings and become absorbed in the story -- that is a trance as well. Meditations using visualization produce trances that make the practitioner open to suggestion. We should not underestimate the power of suggestion: a very tense person can we be made to relax by a therapist and St Ignatius so identified with the crucifixion that he experienced the stigmata. Trances can produce changes in our consciousness, our emotional states, as well as in our physical state. It is not just meditation that brings about altered states of consciousness; drumming, dancing and chanting can also be used to bring about these states. In altered states of consciousness people experience whatever their culture says they will experience. For example, voodoun initiates can become possessed by the Loa deities of the voodoun pantheon. They will not experience the great Seal Mother, which an Innuit shaman might experience. Nor will the Innuit shaman become possessed by Odin's berserker rage from Viking culture. They will experience in accord with their own cultural expectations: some have visions; some become possessed. I have introduced this article on meditation with these examples in order to show how diverse are the aspects of this subject and to show that they all have different results. The method used in Buddhist meditation is the cultivation of awareness and this leads to at-oneness, or samadhi. However, it usually begins with the practice of quietening the heart-mind (samatha). Then there is some form of |
| ISSN | 00263214 (P) |
| 點閱次數 | 763 |
| 建檔日期 | 2009.09.30 |
| 更新日期 | 2020.11.04 |
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