Meditating on Meditating?

In meditation class, the beginning is a concentration of the stabilizing (breath) meditation, followed by the analytical.  Often the analytical meditation is much harder: for example the meditation in which we are asked to visualize several people and analyze how we designate with labels like “friend” or “enemy.”  So why is this type of meditation, the analytical, important to our spiritual journey, our learning?  I think the answer is in the quote below …

From His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s book, My Spiritual Journey…

“To free ourselves from suffering, we must understand what happens before suffering.  For nothing appears without causes or conditions.  It’s up to us recognize the causes that increase suffering or diminish it.  That is part of the analysis of the mind, an indispensable preliminary to spiritual practice.

The mind is subject ot circumstantial pressures; it fluctuates with them and reacts to the impact of sensations.  Material progress and a higher standard of living improve comfort and health but do not lead to a transformation of the mind, the only thing capable of providing lasting peace.  Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual by nature.  It depends on the happiness of others, and is based on love and tenderness.  We would be wrong to think that being happy consists of grasping the best at others’ expense.  The lack of altruism, which causes family discord and disturbance, causes solitude.  We should take care not to be excessively concerned with the external world, realizing that grasping and owning material goods reinforce self-centeredness. 

The key to happiness lies in strength of mind, inner serenity, and a quality like steadfastness.  We can approach this by developing tenderness and love, which correspond to the profound nature of every human being.  The mother-child relationship is probably the best example of the non-ordinary love of loving someone else more than yourself.  The first word that each of us has uttered is “mama,” and in just about every language, this word contains the syllable “ma.”  Another monosyllabic word in most languages of the world, with the exception of Japanese, designates the self “me” (or mine) indicates the extreme attachment we have for out own person.  It is an attachment we must fight in order to spread altruistic qualities. 

Of course, one can cultivate human qualities without having a religion.  But as a general rule, religion allows us to increase these qualities more effectively.”