Selflessness

The more one meditates and the more one is more mindful in daily life, the greater the sense of “connectedness” to all other things. The experience of self becomes inclusive of all things rather then exclusive. What is self anyway? Ponder that question; it is a good analytical contemplation.

A useful way of developing the sense of selflessness further is to consider whom you love and respect, and gradually widen the net. Probably you love yourself. If you think you do not, contemplate that notion and you should find that what you really mean is you dislike certain traits about yourself. at heart you want to change those traits. Why? Because you love yourself; if not, why would you brother wanting to change?

Next, consider who else you love and respect. Probably they will be your parents or children and other close friends. You dislike your parents? No! it just hurts to know that you do not get on with them, or they have favored someone else rather than you. If you did not love them, their indifference to you would brother you so much.

When you look closely, you will see that you categorize people into three groups: those you love and/or respect (in varying degrees), those you dislike and/or do not respect (in varying degrees), and those to whom you are completely indifference. In a way, people in the latter group are the ones who exacerbate your isolation, because at least you have some connection with and acknowledgement of the people in the other groups, whether in a positive or negative way.

Actually, another other contemplation exercise is to consider why you dislike certain people. Most people find that they dislike certain people mainly because they have the same irritating traits they see within themselves. In other words, they cannot bear to be reminded of themselves. Once again, the long-term solution is acceptance. Once accepted, things usually seem to improve. Try it and see.

So, widen your net to include those people you quite like. Add in those you dislike and reflect on the certainty that they are somebody’s son or daughter .
They could just a easily have been your son or daughter if time and space had worked out differently. Lastly, include all those to whom you are indifferent. That is more difficult, because you do not have such a strong point of reference about them on which to latch your mind. This is a classic technique and it works well. It gets easier the more you do it. You could call it a love and compassion meditation.

Now you know another kind of meditation love and compassion. As I’ve written formerly, you should know the other two meditation,
We can be happy and contented for very long periods of time, but in a way, that can add to our problem. Being too comfortable makes us complacent. Why strive for anything, if it is all there at hand? That is fine if it will always be there, but we need to realize that the good times will not last forever. They may not even last into the next second, because the future is completely unpredictable. We have three choices:

· We can become completely paranoid about our situation and life in general, worrying about suffering all the time, and feel guilty about any form of pleasure and happiness that might creep into our miserable existence.

· We can turn a blind eye to all sufferings and levels of discontent while things are going well, and deal with any pain when it ’unexpectedly’ arises.

· We can do what it takes to truly understand the nature and inevitability of suffering, so that we can deal with it with equanimity.

On the surface, this whole concept seems a bit gloomy. We re going to die”; “ death is probably painful”; “ life itself is full of anguish; if not now, sooner or later it will be”. The point is, life does contain suffering. Pain and disappointment do not hurt less just because you did not see them coming. worrying about their presence and inevitability also does not help. Quite the contrary. So what can we do? We can learn to understand and accept them, and meditating on the nature of suffering is a good way forward.

Meditation does not aim to reject or anaesthetize pain, or help us escape form life. Rather, it gives us a deeper understanding so that we can accept life with grace. Certain sufferings are inevitable for all of us: grief, illness, death, separation, rejection and so on. other sufferings arise out of our narrow vision of life: our lack of wider understanding, which give rice to fear, anger, envy and other emotional states. Mindfulness of suffering is not about dwelling upon discontent, but a means to help us understand that both avoiding and grasping create suffering for us. Meditation can therefore can help us to learn about the nature of suffering and the means to reduce its impact on ourselves through the development of balance, understanding and compassion.

As an analytical contemplation on suffering, just remind yourself that everything is cyclic. Therefore, if you are suffering a painful low, it has to be balanced by euphoric high, and vice-versa. Part of problem is the contrast between a high and the low. Meditation will encourage us to dwell more in the mid-point between those extremes, which, on balance, is much more ’satisfactory’.

The ultimate goal of meditation Practice in eastern philosophical tradition is to get out of the cycle of suffering and euphoria altogether; to reach a state of ‘liberation’ from it all.

Whether or not you achieve that ideal in this life, the practice of meditation clearly leads to a deeper sense of content. You need to do it regularly to experience what this means. Also, observe those who are really doing it wholeheartedly and extensively. They generally exhibit more sustained joy and contentment than the average person.