Meditation

The Chinese character shown the picture means meditation.

Stories I heard recently urge me to write about this topic and to explore the subtle relationship between the eastern culture and western civilization.

The first story is related to a lady. Recently, she left her home and plans to live in a simple cottage—a one-window room with a single wooden bed and a desk—for meditation, until—thirty-nine months later—back to her home, which is a pretty house located in Washington D.C.

She is a Chinese ambassador’s wife. The reason urging her to take action is that she has met a Master of Yoga before, and she believes what the Master told her: thirty-nine-month meditation will bring the peaceful and harmonious mind for the rest of her life.

The Master was born in Nepal, in which she cured her panic disorder when she was thirteen years old. The secret was thirty-nine-month meditation.

Living in a tranquil place for one and half years, without any disturbance of an outer world, focusing on one’s heart until find out the peace of mind, is the philosophy of this kind of particular meditation. It seems impossible for people existing in a modern society.

However, it is worthy of trying.

Nowadays, the Master became the youngest Yoga practitioner in the world, advocating people all over the world to find peaceful heart by practicing the meditation.

Without enough evidence, the story sounds weird. Fortunately, in 2005, one of the universities of America conducted a scientific test, in which the researchers try to explore how the meditation affect human’s body. And the Master was one of the attendees participating in the investigation.

The result was surprising.

In a simulated dreadful environment, the Master concentrated on her peaceful mind, she transcended her phobia, and the data shows that she is the happiest person in the world.

Recently, meditation is prevailing in the western countries. Steven Jobs, the co-founder of the Apple Inc, was one of the examples of this. It was said that Jobs had fascinated with meditation many years in his lifetime. Practicing contemplation caused him to realize that practicality must be given top priority for any personal computer design; as a result, he invented the iPod, iPad and iPhone, which are fashionable worldwide.  However, the bad news was Steven Jobs was so captivated by meditation that he delayed his cancer treatment in time. 

Controversial though the meditation is, more and more people still assume that meditation has positive influence on the human body.