Skip to main content

Meditative Inquiry

Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living". About the same time, the Buddha started teaching a way towards  Socrates examined life, attained through the practice of meditative inquiry.

Meditative inquiry is the practice of dropping a question in the mind in such a way that it causes the mind to distance itself from conditioned thinking, making space for our own innate wisdom to arise.

As the Buddha said, "there are wise questions that help free the mind from suffering — and unwise questions that keep us mired in confusion."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Making Space to Respond with Intention

When practising mindfulness , we cultivate and strengthen awareness enough to take a step back and not merely react. With  mindful awareness , we can insert a gap or a pause between us and what we experience so that we are no longer carried away by our reactive patterns. In that little gap, there exist the freedom to respond in a fresh and less predetermined way.

Turning on the light

Only by turning on the light, you can instantly destroy the darkness. Meditation can be the light shining awareness onto our attachments and afflictive emotions. As turning on the lights in a darkroom instantly removes the darkness. Likewise, through meditation or even, a rather simple analysis of our patterns of ego-clinging and afflictive emotions can make them collapse.  Such collapse sees through our attachments and how these can be the cause of our suffering.  Such can lead to liberation from the cycle of Samsara and the transcending of suffering .

Meditation is More Than "Just Sitting"

When in mediation practice, we use the phrase “Just sit”.  It does not mean to sit passively and do nothing.  It is sitting with an Equanimeous stance based on deepening both your intellectual and experiential understanding of your existence.  It is an endeavour at deepening of our understanding of how our cravings, desires and attachment to material objects can be the roots of our sufferings.