Self Awareness Through Meditation

Author(s): Ranjitsingh Kumat
Publisher: Ranjitsingh Kumat

Page 43

ENLIGTENMENT AND BLISS THROUGH MEDITATION
We all want peace and bliss yet find ourselves in pain and suffering. Lord Mahavira observes, “Every being wants ‘nibbana' or eternal peace and all beings are terribly afraid of pain and suffering."45 Lord Buddha also observed suffering all around which prompted him to go in search of the eternal truth. After great penance and meditation he got enlightenment and found four noble truths regarding suffering and the way to end it.
CAUSE OF SUFFERING
The enlightened ones have pronounced that we suffer due to our ignorance or wrong beliefs about ourselves. The obstacles to clear perception of one's true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way of attaining enlightenment and bliss.
Pleasure and pain motivations drive and keep us moving in the vicious circle of suffering and we never find freedom from it. Pleasure and pain are felt or perceived through sense organs which are capable of perceiving sensations through material things only. Mind and body, driven and controlled by sense organs, keep on wandering in search of pleasure through collection of material things and thus the energy is wasted all over. Desires are never ending; satiation of one gives rise to innumerable new desires. The target of satisfaction is always receding on the horizon. Desires drive us further and further with no end in sight which gives rise to frustration and unhappiness. The desire to collect men, materials and all worldly things make us transgress all limits, making the vision too blurred to discriminate between the desirable and the undesirable. We also cause hurt and inflict injury on others. People are enslaved, wars fought and massacres committed on large scale to fulfil one's