There's so much one can say, and I wanted to share that what I'm reading from Tich Nhat Hanh is that meditation is to help you reintegrate into society. Gurunath proclaims, "self peace for earth peace." So one may say we meditate to know Peace and in so doing, we share that with the world.
This is an excerpt form Being Peace-
We have many compartments in our lives. When we practice
sitting meditation and when we do not practice sitting, these
two periods of time are so different from each other. While
sitting, we practice intensively and while we are not sitting, we
do not practice intensively. In fact, we practice non-practice
intensively. There is a wall which separates the two, practicing
and non-practicing. Practicing is only for the practice period and
non-practicing is only for the non-practicing period. How can we
mix the two together? How can we bring meditation out of the
meditation hall and into the kitchen, and the office? How can
the sitting influence the non-sitting time? If a doctor gives you
an injection, not only your arm but your whole body benefits
from it. If you practice one hour of sitting a day, that hour should
be for all twenty-four hours, and not just for that hour. One smile,
one breath should be for the benefit of the whole day, not just for
that moment. We must practice in a way that removes the barrier between practice and non-practice.
When we walk in the meditation hall, we make careful steps,
very slowly. But when we go to the airport, we are quite another
person. We walk very differently, less mindfully. How can we
practice at the airport and in the market? That is engaged Buddhism. Engaged Buddhism does not only mean to use Buddhism
to solve social and political problems, protesting against the
bombs, and protesting against social injustice. First of all we
have to bring Buddhism into our daily lives. I have a friend who
breathes between telephone calls, and it helps her very much.
Another friend does walking meditation between business
appointments, walking mindfully between buildings in downtown Denver. Passersby smile at him, and his meetings, even
with difficult persons, often turn out to be very pleasant, and very
successful.
We should be able to bring the practice from the meditation hall into our daily lives. How can we practice to penetrate our
feelings, our perceptions during daily life?
