Modern Religious Experience: Reflection #4: Buddhist Meditation

Modern Religious Experience: Reflection #4: Buddhist Meditation: "Spend 20 mintues in a silent meditation; a place you won't be disturbed, your own 'fig tree' as was Buddha's inspiration. In those 20 mintue..."

During the twenty minutes, I meditated sitting down silently under my quiet “fig tree.” For the first few minutes, I focused only on my breathing. It was quite hard to breathe using my stomach muscles instead of my chest ones. While I was breathing in and out slowly, I found myself calming down and relieved from the stress of trying to do my school work everyday. I had time to feel the good weather with a breeze blowing past and hear some boys playing soccer below in the apartment grounds. After a few minutes, I started to think about my future and college. Some of the upper classmen friends I know were worried about entrance tests and college applications. Talking to them made me worry too. I was setting out my goals and deciding what to do at university and in my career. That was one of my greatest concerns these days, strangely, even though a career seems such a long way off. My concentration, trying to feel nature and the peace in mind, began to break. Focusing just on emptying my mind for twenty minutes was difficult. Since I usually don’t meditate for such a long time, I am not yet trained to focus for that long. However, through the meditation, at least for a few minutes, I could calm my mind and reach a strange and unfamiliar mental state. I was trying hard not to think of anything for a change.