I recently read a book that came from the Buddhist persuasion which described the Western way of life as lazy. This laziness it was describing didn’t immediately strike me as true but as I read I understood where the author was coming from.
He described the laziness of the Eastern world as being those who lounge on their porches with a cup of tea nattering to neighbours and sharing idle gossip. Now we know that doesn’t account for most of the Western World, so I particularly wondered how he would link this to our lives here in the UK.
His idea of laziness was far from only encompassing those who were idle and slothful, it also included those whose days were as busy as anyone else on the planet. So how does he see this as lazy? Well, the author explained that these people are lazy about caring for the health of their minds or souls.
On this point I completely understood and agreed with the author. It seems we in the Western World, and particularly in the UK, fill our lives up with social, work and ‘quality time’ activities, but ignore some of the more fundamental activities we should be concerned with; such as spending time discovering who we are, where we believe we have come from and discerning what is mortal and what is everlasting about us.
Meditation can help us come to our own conclusions about these exceptionally important, life changing questions. I’m not saying meditation is the most important thing we should spend our time doing, but if it is excluded from even being a daily ten minute exercise, then our priorities are muddled.
If we fill up all our time with work, rest and play – the three things our secular world declare as important – and miss out the time for self-reflection and meditation, then when we finally come to our last few hours on earth, what of those distractions will fill our minds?
We need to make sure that we are prepared for those last few months, weeks, days, hours or even moments. Death can seem a terrible ordeal to those who have not already faced it in meditation. To those who have meditated often and experienced death through meditation it can be an accomplishment; the successful ending to a beautiful life of love, peace and inner calm that comes from experiencing the the Holy Spirit within us all.
With this in mind I urge you to begin a new regime where meditation features in your daily life. Even if you spend just ten minutes in meditation upon waking or just before rest this will indeed bring you closer to experiencing the inner you with every day you practice.
With every blessing,
Fr Kevin Humphrys' Blog 