Meditating as a Buddhist Monk or Nun

I’ve been getting lots of interesting questions on Quora. And usually, though I avoid talking about enlightenment, I decided to address this one.
Question was: ‘What are Buddhist monks looking for? Why do they meditate for so long?’

And my reply?

Aside from the monks and nuns who seek to serve as devotees, functionaries and teachers, many seek enlightenment. And meditation and mindfulness are their main tools. Unlike those of us out in the world, who meditate to be able to live more efficiently, monks and nuns who seek enlightenment use meditation in a different way.

They use meditation to deconstruct the conditioning that we regard as ‘normal’ – all the drives and desires that keep us running in the marathon of modern life. They use meditation to distil their life force down to the most pure, something that’s otherwise impossible in the hyperactive, hyper-competitive and information clogged culture we live in.

So they go to the monastery, where they give up all the things we take for granted – money, possessions, sex, entertainment – everything. Stripped of all the ‘stuff’ of contemporary life, they are profoundly alone.

And that’s when the work begins.

They focus on meditation and mindfulness in every moment of their daily lives, conditioning themselves to let go of everything their mind and body have been conditioned to cling to. They let go of needing pleasure. They let go of fearing pain and death. They let go of hunger and yearning. They let go of needing to achieve. They let go of needing self-importance, status and wealth. As each of these conditioned addictions are let go of, they are gradually freed from the anxieties and tensions that we in the outside world have learnt to live with.

Then they go to the hardest part – they work to let go of their sense of self and their conditioned need for reality to be one way or another, or one thing or another. At that point they enter free flow – their awareness finally freed from the prison of conditioned self. Beyond that point, I can’t describe any further because there is no way to describe it – it’s an experience and experience alone. Put simply, the journey these humble men and women are taking is one of the greatest adventures a human being can make – yet to the outside observer, they just look like faceless monks and nuns.

Last word to the Buddha himself, who saw that enlightenment is our true nature, only obscured by the conditioning we live within. He said:

“Enlightenment exists solely because of delusion and ignorance; if they disappear, so will Enlightenment … so be on guard against thinking of Enlightenment as a “thing” to be grasped at, lest it too should become an obstruction. When a mind that was in darkness becomes enlightened, it passes away, and with its passing, the thing called Enlightenment passes away also.”

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Roger’s book, ‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’  is available now. Just click on the links below:

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