The Stages of Meditation
July, 2003
The Buddha’s teaching can be called a serious pursuit of true happiness. Remind yourself of that every time you sit and meditate. This is why we chant the passages for metta, or goodwill, before we meditate together: to remind ourselves that we really do wish for happiness, true happiness. Everyone wishes for happiness, but when you look at the way people go about looking for happiness in their lives, you wonder exactly how much serious thought they give to what they’re doing. True happiness has to be something that doesn’t change, that doesn’t depend on conditions, which means you can’t look for it in ordinary places. You have to look in an extraordinary place: your awareness of the present moment, something that’s right here all the time but that we tend to overlook. When we’re meditating we’re turning inward to look for true happiness right here, to see what we’ve been overlooking for so long.