by Joseph Wardy

Created on: August 05, 2009   Last Updated: August 07, 2009

Meditation is a misunderstood activity in Western culture. Zen teacher Dennis Merzel taught in public schools for eight years and was unsuccessful in bringing meditation to his classes under that title. To be accepted by the local officials, he had to call it Concentration while he was offering meditation.

Let me begin by explaining what meditation is not. It is not a religion as it can be practiced by the lay person. Meditation is not about religious beliefs as the practice is without a belief system. it is not about doing nothing but about spending time in being rather than doing.

I will frame the title of this article by what the purpose of meditation is for me. Please bear in mind this is a personal issue and the purpose is different for each practitioner. I practice Zen meditation introduced to the world by the Buddha over 2,500 years ago. It is a relatively new practice in the United States as it was introduced by a Zen Roshi named Shunrai Suzuki in the 1960's in San Francisco. Here are four reason for the purpose of my meditation practice:

1. Meditation allows me to experience being through stillness, solitude and silence. The premise is to follow the breath as the breath is always in the moment whereby our thinking is always in the past or future. Meditation does not try to eliminate thinking but to use the breath to get back in the present but to also observe what comes up when we are thinking. These are the places we are stuck that enable us to transform when not meditating..

2. To me, meditation is a form of contemplative prayer as God is the breath within their breath. So, when sitting in meditation God is there in each moment of breathing.

3. The purpose of meditation sets up how I try to live my life. In other words, Zen is a 24/7 practice asking us to always pay attention to what we are doing at all times and not restricted to sitting and meditating.

4. When I am practicing effectively, meditation serves as a way to see the extraordinary within the ordinary. When effective , I observe and become aware and avoid judging, When I look at a flower, it enable me to look at its extraordinary stillness and its sense of surrender.

I close by offering the following books for you coniseration: Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat Zinn, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunrai Suzuki and Gradual Awakening by Stephan Levine.

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