How Meditation Cultivates Appreciation BY: PREMADASA GANGADEEN
Whenever I meet someone and they find out that I practice and teach Yoga and meditation, the most common response to these two things typically are, “I’m not flexible enough to do Yoga” and “my mind is too busy to meditate.” Unless you are a baby, a gymnast, or in any major athletic practice, the majority of us are not flexible and unless you are a baby, the majority of us have very busy minds, especially in today’s global climate. This demonstrates the need to practice Yoga and meditation - to cultivate the flexibility or acceptance to the present moment without too much tension or looseness or in other words, finding the middle path. These practices bring us to our centre like being at the hub of a universal wheel with all the spokes of life and life circumstances whirling about the centre. Within the centre of the hub is stillness and going out from there, things appear to get busier and busier the further away that one moves. The rebuttals above for Yoga and meditation are all part of the human condition. According to the notion of reincarnation of which Yoga and Buddhism stem from, it is the soul which journeys from its inception through many physical incarnations as it goes back to its source; the centre within the centre going further and further inward to the still point.
