Meditation - A Reaction to a Constantly Changing Society
'Computers are useless. They can only give you answers' (Pablo Picasso)
Is not it strange that on one hand we are wealthier and more technologically advanced than ever before but on the other hand we find it harder and harder to achieve a feeling of satisfaction? We have passed through a period of unparalleled economic and technological growth, welfare, full employment and in spite of all this we hear more and more people complain. We are faced with a quality crisis. Bridget Jones and Sex in the City are hugely popular, we have heard of new diseases like RSI and burn-out and news about crime, senseless violence and terrorism fills up our newspapers. Should not the technological developments make our lives easier? Should not our wealth make us more civilised? Of course we have made a lot of progress during the last few decades and we certainly do not long for a return to the olden times, but on the other hand it is only sensible to wonder if things have really got better as regards the quality of our lives.
The Dalai Lama spoke the following magnificent words about this:
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The Paradox of Our Age
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| We have bigger houses but smaller families; |
| More conveniences, but less time; | |
We have more degrees, but less sense; | |
More knowledge, but less judgement; | |
More experts, but more problems; | |
More medicines, but less healthiness; | |
We've been all the way to the moon and back, | |
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour. | |
We built more computers to hold more | |
information to produce more copies than ever but have less communication | |
We have become long on quantity, | |
but short on quality. | |
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion; | |
Tall man but short character; | |
Steep profits but shallow relationships. | |
It's a time when there is much in the window, |
but nothing in the room
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| His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. |
Perhaps it is like the Dalai Lama says: it is the inner poverty that makes people more and more restless. We feed our happiness and our needs more and more with outward matters instead of inward matters. Happiness caused by doing something instead of being something is often temporary and demands a constant renewal, improvement and change to stimulate us sufficiently so that we do not get bored. Patience becomes harder and harder to get end everything has to go faster and easier. The Dalai Lama's message is one of many such messages. Society has changed during the past few years and this has drastically changed our way of living. Globalisation has decreased the attention given to individuals. Revolutionary developments in communication and information have resulted in a situation where we can communicate one hundred times more easily. However, it is doubtful whether the quality of our information has increased. We often hear the meaningful words: "The faster we communicate, the less we connect." With the coming of welfare, education, emancipation and new technologies we have all become much more independent and we can deal with our own problems. Look at the large numbers of single men and women we have these days. In the past people used to live in the same village all their life, they had a job that lasted a lifetime, went to the same church as long as they lived, were lifelong members of clubs and organisations instead of watching TV or playing with your playstation. We are becoming less and less dependent on our relatives and social circle and more dependent on our job and our career for safeguarding our possessions. Most of us no longer work in the fields, but sit behind computers. In the commercial field shareholder value is the most important aspect and the pressure exercised on people to achieve becomes harder and harder.
We can choose from dozens of schools, courses, kinds of job and towns and countries to live in. On our TV sets we do not find one but twenty-five different canals, for each aspect of our existence we have a separate magazine, at the travel agency we can book a trip to any place on our planet with a push on a button. You can decorate your house in dozens of ways: art deco, Scandinavian, retro, purple, green or yellow. We have CD's in all sorts of styles: from classical to house, from 20 to 200 beats a minute, etcetera. We can become a programmer, a lawyer, a doctor, a designer or a tax consultant. In our spare time we do kitesurfing, carting, skating, have fun with our playstation, rap, and climb the Mont Blanc. In our lifetime we can choose from an immense variety of options and this becomes worse and worse. A situation where people have to choose among so many options often leads to stress, according to doctors.
All of us are busier and busier. We are more often caught up in traffic jams, we often do the same things at the same time (beach, holidays, parties, etcetera) and we live closer to each other. The population growth and urbanisation have made it more and more difficult for us to find rest. On Sundays the city centres are busier than ever, the beaches are crowded when the sun shines, it is harder to find peace and quiet in nature and so on and so forth. Wherever we go we hear music, cars, planes and ringing mobile phones. It seems that Mozart's piano music stimulates our intellect but it is doubtful whether modern pop songs have the same effect. But not only has life become busier on the motorways. Also in their private lives most people are extremely busy nowadays. We have to play sports to keep our bodies in shape and to unwind. Many of us go from one partner to another and we get our children at a later age. We have to go to pubs and parties to make new friends, to find a new partner and not to miss out on our social life. We often go shopping to buy the latest fashion and the newest gadgets. We want many holidays a year. Our braincells and our nervecells are bombarded with information, the internet, the media, longer periods at school and college and all sorts of advertisements. To deal with all these things we also need all sorts of skills. Finally we also want an income that is above average. When you read all this it is little wonder that we all need a mobile phone, take away meals, medicine to help us slim down, and internet because without these things we cannot cope with life any more. Our lives are busy, and our lives become busier because we have to deal with all sorts of information and stimuli that we meet from day to day.
Our society changes at an ever increasing speed. We want to keep abreast of everything, we want to come up to all expectations and at the same time we want to feel good. Scientists say that our nervous system has the greatest difficulties with stimuli that we cannot control. No wonder that we become more and more sensitive, suffer from stress more often, suffer from depressions more often and see more and more stress related diseases around us. 60% of all diseases that make people unfit to work are stress related. We must learn how to relax. And with this we do not mean playing with your play station, watching TV, jogging with a walkman on your head, sitting behind your computer and consume more alcoholic drinks. More and more people say that in the next few years all of us will have to do something about their inner development to get sufficiently well-balanced. Maybe we can get our yin and yang well balanced again if we can bring together a cocktail of Western technological know-how and the wisdom from the East in the field of inner development. If you look at the growing popularity of yoga, Meditation, massage techniques, tai chi and the increased desire in the scientific world to test the effectiveness of these techniques it looks as if this development is already in full swing.
If you look at the pyramid of human needs by Maslow it is only logical that it is becoming more and more trendy to work on yourself, to take a sabbatical, to make a drastic career switch, etcetera. According to Maslow all of us first need safety, protection against danger, deprivation, threats and uncertainty. When we have come to grips with these needs we want love, company and friendship. Then come needs like respect and attention. At the top of the pyramid you find self realisation and personal development. No wonder that all of us in the West are looking for exactly these things because our first necessities have all been dealt with and consequently self realisation occupies a much bigger place in our lives than in the past. We would like to remark that Maslow's investigation is a few decades old, that most of it still holds true for today but that we should also consider the great social changes of the last few decades.
The pyramid of Maslow, our inner poverty as sketched by the Dalai Lama, the unending quantity of choices we can make, overtaxing of our nervous system all lead to an increasing demand for inner rest, relaxation and quality of life. It becomes more and more difficult for us to live in the NOW. We waste a lot of time and energy rethinking the past and worrying about the future. Such moments are never satisfactory, they cause stress, irritation, anxiety and unrest. By going to the NOW once in a while we can break this negative tendency to pieces. It is no wonder that many of us already do this unwittingly. We go snowboarding, car racing, walking, climbing, listening to music, or we go to the theatre. All of them activities in which we can experience the NOW and our anxieties and worries are gone for a while. The disadvantage of these activities, no matter how pleasant and good, is that the relaxation they bring is often temporary and we need stronger and stronger stimuli to experience the same degree of pleasure again in the future. Mediation is the art of being in the NOW and it is exceptionally effective to find more rest, more quality, more balance, more pleasure in your life. Meditating is a healthy way of relaxing and its strong effects amaze more and more people. Time Magazine (8/4/2003) puts it like this: 'For upwardly mobile professionals convinced that their lives are more stressful than those of the cow-milking, soapmaking, butter-churning generations that preceded them, meditation is the smart person's bubble bath' . According to Time Magazine science and the many positive experiences of people clearly demonstrate the usefulness of Meditation. Meditation is something that we cannot do without if in our present society we want to find the peace to really enjoy our progress and to function to the best of our ability. Please, read on our site about the many advantages and the simplicity of Meditation and give it chance. You have nothing to lose. If we can combine our new wealth, knowledge, easier ways of getting along with each other and our modern technology with a certain amount of spiritual development we may be sure that this makes our way to a life of great quality a lot easier and we may well reach the point where we can consider the Dalai Lama'' poem history….
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