Meditation and Contradiction

Life is always full of contradictions.Nations build weapons to maintain peace.The other day when I visited Vipasanna meditation center (www.dhamma.org) in Georgia,I witnessed a contradiction of ideals.

Buddha gave his first discourse on Vipasanna meditation in a deer park.The deer is used as a symbol of initiation (of disciples)and the wheel of dharma was made to roll from that day.The property which lies beside the meditation centre is a hunting ground.In the western culture hunting is an essential sport.During the hunting season everything that moves is killed(No exaggeration here)
On one side there are people who try to save insects and not harm them.Then on the other side of the fence there are people who kill for fun.

Our maturity lies in accepting the various contradictions which rise up in our lives.By ignoring one side and supporting the other turns us into a (ideal) fanatic.

One step away from fanatism

Every method ,every theory,every belief and every experince ,which we follow can become a bondage.A method may liberate you and the next second you own it.. it creates its own bondage.
According to Osho we may give up attachment to worldly desires and become attached to other worldly objects such as a kind of meditation,a personal God .....

Once we use a technique to achieve something lets remember to throw it away and forget it.If we are not careful we also fall in the same class of religious fundamentalists.Once the inner world gets impure it slowly manifests itself in the outer world through out actions

The transformation

The hardest part for any person trying to contemplate the truth is that they have to shift from the state of meditation to the state of reality.For people who have reached truth have no problems.Every moment for them is the one moment of truth.But if we have to function as mortals in the world it is so hard to shift.The calmness which we reach when we let go and the next moment when we have to drive our self into work to meet a deadline seem contradictory.May be this is one of the reasons that isolation has been the first medicine given to a patient when they are going crazy.Getting used to silence is quite difficult but after you discover silence ...the noise becomes unbearable.In essence it should not disturb us because we hear noise because we have experienced silence.Buddha used to say if their was no illusion then there would be no enlightenment.So its a reverse process we should get used to.First accept silence and then accept noise.If you say one does not exist or you won't surrender to it,then we are not growing,we are not transforming.