English

Mind has the nature of a soft element. It will be easier to concentrate it at your center when you deal with it softly and gently. We don't like anyone to force us to do something. We appreciate it so much more when people ask us kindly.

To remind oneself of any good deed that you have done in the past can be also a very good way to start to meditate. In each and every life there are always some moments that we appreciate ourselves very much.

Some of us feel very pleasant just to imagine being at home. it can be your comfortable living room or the beautiful garden behind your house.

After you relax your body well and you feel really peaceful, you can imagine you are sitting in the middle of a vast space. For example, imagine you are sitting far away from the earth.

Please keep in mind that now is your resting time. It's your private moment. We are letting the body and mind take a rest.

It's a good idea to spend a few minutes to really relax our body because only a well relaxed body allows the mind to be guided to and stay still at the center.

Please pay attention to your eyes closing. Close them as gently as you can. Let your upper eye lids fall down slowly and naturally.

There is another important principle. To meditate, you need to know how to be comfortable. Any uncomfortable condition will not support our mind to be still. To persevere against any uncomfortable condition such as pain, heat, or cold is not the way. If you have to fight, it will not be peaceful.

Education is a way to develop people. We start to be developed since we were so young. Parents send us to school. We are in school to learn. The higher we learn, we more we develop our thinking so it becomes more and more complicated and more sophisticated.

In physics, we first learnt about Newtonian physics and later about quantum physics. Sir Isaac Newton was the one who could start to explain the universe with logic. It has become a foundation of our scientific knowledge.

When you focus your mind at the center, please appreciate that you are not looking with your eyes anymore. Whenwe see with our eyes, the world in front of us is a 3 dimensional world. We can measure the size or distance of everything we see. When you close your eyes, it's different.

We would like to introduce 'The Middle Way' technique. In our school we consider that meditation has the objective to calm our mind or even to let it become still, or to 'stop' our mind. It is better if we focus to a still point. If we focus to something that moves, it can help us in the beginning.

Meditation can charge our mind. It's the action or activity in which we turn the direction of observation of our mind within ourselves. There are many techniques of meditation. The most popular one is breathing meditation. We observe our breathing in and out.

Why do people play games, listen to music, read or find something else to do even when we are free? Because we need something to focus on - something not serious and that we enjoy. If we have nothing to do, it's very easy to have a thousand thoughts in our mind.

Meditation can be in the recreation category, as opposed to the work category of human activity. And it's the best form of recreation if we consider it's quality and effectiveness of charging our mind. It has some differences to a lot of other forms of recreation.

Then we can assume that some of the time we spend our mind energy and other times we recharge it. We use our mind energy during our studying or working time. We simply recharge it when we are free from our work or study commitments. From this we can summarize: When our mind is concentrated, it consumes energy. When it is relaxed, it gets recharged.

In the morning when we wake up, we feel fresh. Then we go I forwards to do some form of work during the day. Young children spend time in school, young adults may study at college or university, but it is still work of a sort. Each day at our study or work place, we will feel tired by the evening. Then we know it's time to be out of our working place. At this moment our mind meter reads a lower level.

If we imagine a meter which showet, sum of ture and energy. sometimes it will show a high level, and sometimes a low level. When you drive a car and the petrol gauge shows an empty tank, you need to find a petrol station.

Once we know nature of an element or energy, we can use it. Techniques can be developed until eventually it becomes technology. We can use water power to generate electricity. Likewise we can use sun to create solar energy. If we know the nature of our mind and know how to handle it, we will use it in the right way and this will allow us to have a better life.

The mind can be considered a kind of energy. It's the same as the sun, wind, flowing water, electricity and so on; it moves. The body is the material part which is fixed and concrete.

Meditation is an activity we do with our mind. It's 100% a mental activity.