The Buddhist Perspective - Essay Example

Mindfulness of breathing by Jon Kabat-Zinn is a highly informative and enlightening lecture for beginners because I believe that a person’s own breath is the first place where one can start experiencing being mindful. As simple as this meditation technique sounds, in reality, it is quite the opposite. This is because once engaged in this particular meditation, one would be amazed at how often one’s mind wanders away from focusing on breathing. It can be quite tough to keep the mind actively engrossed in the process of breathing feeling the air gently and subtly moving in and out of one’s body. Before meditating this way, I had often heard about intense meditative absorption which controls the restless nature of the mind and makes a person increasingly peaceful. This meditative experience turned out to be my first encounter with intense meditative absorption. As time began moving on, I practically became increasingly aware of how frenetically my mind jumped from one thing to another. It felt like hopelessly trying to chase and get hold of a high-speed car. Gradually as the shock of my mind’s restless tendency subsided, I became better able to concentrate on the simple and most beautiful phenomenon of breathing. I practically felt the knots in my neck and shoulders untying as I came to realize how much beauty is incredibly and impossibly held by one simple thing as breathing. There is so much potential held by breathing to make a person feel more aware, peaceful, content, and blessed. The warm and liquid sensation of sensitive awareness which I felt coursing through my veins and warming my peripheries during my experience of meditation is utterly unforgettable.