Modern style of meditation

Nowadays, meditation has been a boom in Western countries.

According to the media, meditation has been spread to executives. Since business executives tend to have a pragmatic thought, and most of them are extremely busy, it sounds strange that they are fond of staying for a while without any action, at a glance.

The LA Times:  MEDITATION BOOMS AS PEOPLE SEEK A WAY TO SLOW DOWN

In fact, several studies suggest the effect of meditation to enhance your productivity and reduce your stress. There is a total of 3,413 articles extracted with the search word "meditation" in Pubmed, a popular database of medical articles, of which 1,513 articles were published in these five years. It suggests that meditation has been considered as a solution to medical problems.

Recently, the effect of meditation is examined using neuroscience technology. Individual difference in the patterns of brain activity during meditating is also explored.

My past entry: Paradoxical effects of Buddhist meditation

In Japan, meditation is still attached to a religious image. I know few persons who frequently meditate. In contrast, there are lots of opportunity for meditating activities in the UK. Activities are held at some conference centers, Yoga centers, and Buddhist temples. Participants include people with various background.

To be honest, I began meditating very recently. I meditate for only five minutes a day, occasionally. The first thing I noticed after starting was that it was intolerable to wait for five minutes without any activity. I felt these five minutes as if an hour passed. I was irritated to myself with nothing to do. But after a while, I wondered if I was so energetic that I missed five minutes in a day. Indeed, I waste the time for silly things everyday. I thought it was quite poor not to spare the five minutes to meditate.

I wish that continuous meditation will strengthen my concentration. The ability to concentrate something is gradually weakened as I get old. Being keen to the time is consistent with the concept of mindfulness, perhaps. But, as I am an amateur, it may be far from the truth of meditation.

The fact that activities focusing spirituality like meditation have become common in the developed countries is quite symbolic. Modern people have lots of items to possess and things to do. Many people feel tired in the prosperity. The society is rapidly changing. It is quite natural that we want to seek the truth which will not change against the time flow.