Give your heart to what matters

Author: Corrado Pensa, Neva Papachristou.

The theme of the present moment is central to all great spiritual traditions and concerns the ability to stay as much as possible in the here and now. This ability develops and trains through meditation. But what does 'meditate' really mean and in what sense does one become 'aware'? The authors, teachers of Dharma and “vipassana” meditation, offer in these pages an answer to these questions, illustrating the cardinal principles of Buddhism with an accessible language but no less rigorous and faithful. It will then be better understood how, by virtue of meditative practice (applied not only in a formale but to everyday life) it is possible to make the mind flexible and aware: that is, to make it capable of seeing mental suffering, recognizing its significance in life and, above all, understanding how it is continuously generated and fed by the so-called 'pollutants', that is attachment, aversion and ignorance. Meditation, therefore, not only helps to pacify the mind, but also and above all to educate the ability to be present in the here and now and to see things as they are. In the absence of this capacity, in fact, one tends to consider real only one's own construction of reality, inevitably remaining victims of confusion and suffering.