These reasons have changed for me over the years as life keeps unfolding.
It can be a check in to see where my heart and mind are at. No matter if I am sitting down to meditate for a short period at home or a long extended multi-day retreat, I bring into my meditation practice the accumulations of happenings of everything I have done prior to that exact moment. It offers a mirror to the current weather of my heart and mind, so I can get clear on if there are any changes I need to make.
When you are on a meditation retreat, the container is a supportive one with talks and inspiration and wisdom about how to live life in a way that brings happiness, peace and ease. Then your mediation practice and in turn your life may be easier and have more peace and happiness. The training grounds of a multi-day retreat offers a lot more understanding on a somatic level to what meditation can do for enhancing tranquility in your body.
I love how meditation brings two things into being for someone. The first being, a broad expansive, tranquil unification of heart and mind- one where the conditions of the relaxed, happy body penetrates the field of the mind as well. The second is seeing clearly into reality and not the reality we believe we shape or wish to see. Both the samadhi, or unification of heart and mind, and the vipassana, or seeing things clearly, bring a well spring of heart openings and the wisdom of emptiness in everything that exists; thereby, clarifying for someone that if there is nothing solid we can hold on to, then clinging, grasping, or craving that takes over the human experience is just not worth it and ultimately creates more suffering.
The sublime realization of this, shifts life into one that is worth living in harmony with in every moment no matter the pleasant or unpleasant things that come our way. We learn how to not react to life’s sensory overload of experience nor “thing-a-fy” the world making things so concrete, but rather witness it for what it is, streams of dependently arising processes interacting. This kind of liberation is only understood through an intuitive knowing. I can put words down on the page that point out the experience cognitively, but this is a come see for yourself kind of a thing. It won’t be experienced by reading a book.
At first you may meditate to reduce anxiety, sleep better, feel calmer, improve your relationships or something of this nature. I started mediation for these reasons as well, but the depth of where these practices go, is the deepest happiness and contentment one could experience as a human being. The kind that doesn’t fade; maybe these degrees of good feelings have a range of a little or a lot, but they no longer become brittle when something “bad or wrong” happens. The heart is still there, it still remains open, even if just ajar after more of life’s unfortunate circumstances. At least the door remains open anytime you choose to walk through it, one can.
