Meditation Articles Series

Are you familiar with an inspiring website called, www.ted.com? 

On it I found a talk by Mathieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, author and photographer.  His talk takes around twenty minutes and is well worth listening to.  It’s about what makes us happy.

Meditation, Happiness, and Well Being

He defines meditation as mind transformation.  To transform the mind requires mind training.  The question is, why bother training the mind?  When the mind is full of hatred, strong grasping, or jealousy, for example, a person will feel tormented.  These states of feeling arise from thoughts.  All emotions are fleeting, and that makes it possible for the basis of mind training. 

Mathieu Ricard says that we spend a lot of time in doing other things to improve ourselves, but little time in taking care of how the mind functions.

Mind training, going within, is the direct route to happiness.

Listening to someone like him gives me encouragement and inspiration in my meditation practice.  There may