Human minds are full of thoughts, both negative and positive. When you go through a traumatic experience or an accident, the overwhelming negative thoughts completely suppress the positive thoughts. As a result, you start suffering from depression, anxiety, or acute post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
You must be wondering how to reinstate the positive thoughts that can help you to restore the balance of your mind and body. The true answer lies within you. It’s you, who can change your thought process and heal your mental wounds. Practicing mindfulness will help you to focus inward on yourself instead of suffering from stress owing to the various triggers.
- Jonah Engler believes that mindful meditation is the most important activity that will help you in the most demanding and stressful periods of life. It has a deep connection with Zen meditation, also called Zazen, which is a technique of meditation in Buddhist traditions.
- Zen meditation is an ancient form of Buddhist meditation that aims to regulate attention. It is mostly connected to the practice of thinking about not thinking.
The process involves sitting in the lotus position and focusing all your attention inward. It is possible for both the new as well as seasoned practitioners to try this form of meditation. Ir will surely help you to heal yourself from within.
Understanding the impact of zen meditation
The Buddhist form of meditational practice is more of an open-monitoring meditation where you have to use your monitoring skills. Then the procedure will involve transforming these skills into a state of reflexive awareness with a wider scope of attention and without any focus on any particular object.
It is similar to mindfulness in that you have to focus on the presence of your mind. But in mindful meditation, you need to focus on a single object. In the case of zen meditation, you have to apply general awareness. In this form of meditation, you will not chant any mantra or won’t concentrate on cultivating compassion. Instead, you will try to concentrate on the ongoing physical and self-referential conditions.
It will be an attempt to expand your attentional scope to incorporate new perceptions, thought processes, emotions, and subjective awareness.
Find your teacher
There are certain things that you need to learn for doing meditation.
- For instance, you have to keep your eyes semi-open during zen meditation, which is quite different from other meditation forms.
- There is no need to focus on one thought, and the focus will be on removing every thought from your mind and achieving a blank state of mind. It is more of thinking about nothing.
Thus, you will need guidance from a teacher who regularly performs traditional Buddhist meditation. You can also find a community where the others share the same life principles as yours.
It’s a gradual process
If you think you can achieve a thoughtless state of mind on the first day of meditation, you may be expecting too much. There is no need to try too hard at once. It’s best to start small and then gradually increase the amount of time that you set aside for practicing the process.
You can start with a five minutes meditation on the first day and gradually start spending one hour of a day reading about Buddhist cultures and deeper meanings of the meditation techniques.
According to CTN News, once you start getting more comfortable with the procedure, you can slowly increase the amount of time and effort to make sure that you succeed in relieving the mind from every thought.
Patience is the key to success
Whenever you talk to the monks or philosophers of Buddhism, you will notice that everyone regards Buddhism as a lifelong journey instead of a concept. That is why it is essential to remain patient. You can’t expect yourself to achieve enlightenment overn8ght. You must put in the time and dedication to mark the progress.
- Once you start practicing mindfulness, you will be amazed to see that your perceptions related to pain are reducing significantly. As you start freeing the mind from all types of emotions, thoughts, and perceptions, you are consciously eliminating the perception of pain too from even the subconscious state of mind. And that’s the power of this meditation.
- As you are now trying to control the thoughts that come to your mind, you start gaining more restraint over your thoughts and actions. This is an incredible achievement through the patient practicing the zen meditation.
Many scientific studies have supported the idea that people practicing Zen meditation always have more tolerance levels than those who never meditate.
Sleep well
When you are under stress or suffering from anxiety, there will be tremendous disturbances in your sleep cycle. You will face problems in falling asleep and may even suffer from insomnia. But the mindful meditation will be the solution to all your sleeping problems.
- According to various researches by Jonah Engler, the practice of Zen meditation will improve sleeping patterns. If a senior is suffering from sleep disorders, meditation will bring about considerable improvement in the sleeping pattern and quality of sleep.
- How easily you fall asleep does not always control how you are sleeping. Is the sleep deep enough? Or are you dreaming all the time, having nightmares, indicating that you are in the subconscious mode? The experts believe that people who have increased mindful practices have better control over the quality of sleep.
Thus, a deep sleep every night will help you stay healthier and concentrate better at work or during meditation.
Reducing stress levels
A fast life makes you robotic. You keep following the daily schedules until you can’t drag yourself mentally or physically anymore. Zen meditation will be the ultimate way to boost social, mental, and spiritual health at such points of complete collapse.
Once you can clear your mind from all sorts of thoughts, you can realize those thoughts can’t control you. Rather, you should control and harness your thoughts to achieve the goals that you desire to fulfill. It will make you lead a happier life.
