BY URVIL JAMES VILLARUEL
Feb. 2, 2016, Toronto, ON - Like pushups for the martial artist, so too is stillness for the meditator. The body, like the mind, does not enjoy cessation. Still the body and you still the mind. The mind requires movement. It requires stimulus. It is through the body that the mind is able to engage in this stimulus -- thus, in order to master the mind, one must first master the body; stilling it of all of its movement.
One of the hardest actions for anyone to undertake is to remain still. It’s uncomfortable, it’s uneasy, and it fills the mind with an abundance of silence that it is not yet used to. In stillness, the mind begins to scream out at you -- Move! Talk! Jump! Shout!
As a modernized society, we have become so bombarded with sensory input that this abundance has also caused us to come to crave it. We have come to expect it. We have all become so attached to it that the majority of us are instantly attracted to anyone or anything that is able to entertain our mind; keep it engaged; and keep it moving forward. Because of this, when we provide the mind with the one thing it hates the most - silence - we can begin to train it. We can begin to master it. We can begin to understand it. And we can begin to enter into a state of no-mind. Finding the you that is in control.
Stilling the body, in turn stilling the mind, is the quintessential method for finding both inner peace and inner strength. For, when we are truly still, what inner peace and strength are there to be had when there is nobody there left to have it? By mastering the body, through the mind, with the breath, we can begin to control not only ourselves, but the world around us. Rather than being directed by the world, we can begin to direct the world.
All of this, stemming from a centred place of becoming still.