Meditation is a waste of time! It surely is if you sit hours upon hours, day after day wasting your time when other things can get done. This was my take before I saw a YouTube channel by a meditation monk from Nepal called Yongey Mingyur who explained that the essence of meditation is awareness.
Other meditation teachers used other words in lieu of awareness. Paying attention and being mindful are the other words used to explain the essence of meditation. However, I like the word awareness. His teaching was short and to the point. In short, when you are aware of your thoughts and feelings, you do not "drown" in it and get swept up losing control.
Normally, before we act on something or say something, we feel. Prior to feelings are the triggers that conjure up feelings. The flow of events would be as follows;
1. Triggered by our 6 senses
2. Develop feelings
3. Our reaction
For example, if you see a horrible comment on Twitter. You will naturally feel upset and will take action to reply in a negative manner.
The above reaction is normally very quick and we don't take time to consider the consequences of our actions.
In Buddhism, our Karma is our actions. Like the butterfly effect, our actions could lead to horrible consequences.
As such, putting aside the scientific benefits to our brain from prolonged meditation, an increase in awareness is no doubt very beneficial.
Lack of awareness made a man I know who lost most of his money and assets, a very irritating person. It's very obvious that he lost his confidence when he was made a bankrupt. In order to build his confidence back he decided to psych himself up with positivity. Every opportunity he gets he will self praise. He will list his achievements and his past successes, he will recall stories of his parents praising his intelligence and cunning. He will tell and retell the same stories over and over again, until all his friends avoided him and he lost most of them. He expects his friends to reaffirm his behavior and agree with him. He did not know how irritating he was.
At the beginning most people would listen because in psychology it's well known that listening will help people in distress. So one day I had enough listening to the same stories, I interrupted his story telling and asked him whether he knows of anyone who continuously praises themselves every single time they meet up. He awaken!
Lack of awareness does not mean a person is stupid. I was asked by my hiking buddy while on a hike whether I know the location for lunch at a restaurant she suggested that we go after the hike. I took out my mobile and discovered that there was no telecommunication signal, as such I put the phone back into my bag pack. She asked me three times and I said there is no line and I can't use Google maps. On the forth time of her asking again, I replied that there is no line. She looked at me and said, "But I saw you using your phone!". I got upset, stood right in front of her, looked into her eyes and I said, "If I did not take my phone out, how do I know whether there is a signal or not?" She then woke up!
Both the above examples are indication of a lack of awareness in their actions. It is like they were both sleep walking.
Admittedly, there is no scientific research on the correlation of the state of awareness and bad consequences at this point.
However, if meditation is the essence of awareness, then meditation is beneficial to our conduct in our day to day life. Our good conduct will then lead to good Karma.
