Sati

excerpt from Mindfulness in Plain English by Venerable Henepola Gunaratana

Mindfulness is the English translation of the Pali word 'Sati.' Sati is an activity. What exactly is that? Well, this is one of those questions without a precise answer, at least not in words. Words are devised by the symbolic levels of the mind and they describe those realities with which symbolic thinking deals. Mindfulness (Sati) is pre-symbolic. It is not shackled to logic. Nevertheless, Mindfulness can be experienced - rather easily - and it can be described, as long as you keep in mind that the words are only fingers pointing at the moon. They are not the thing itself. The actual experience lies beyond the words and above the symbols. Mindfulness could be described in completely different terms than will be used here and each description could still be correct.

How would you like to spend your later years? Do you want to be in a nursing home, totally dependent on others? Or would you like to travel the world, ski in the winter, golf in the summer and generally enjoy the many benefits of a strong and youthful body well into your seventies, eighties and beyond?

First of all why should we meditate at all? Why do either classical meditation or brainwave meditation?

One very good reason for me was the ability to raise the threshold to stress (do you imagine the Dalai Lama angry or frustrated?).  What used to anger, upset or frustrate me, no longer affected me. I detached from these events. It was like I was watching a movie, starring ... me.

Brainwave meditation has its beginnings in the seventies, when Transcendental Meditation (TM) was in vogue (remember the Beatles - Maharishi connection?). At that time many studies were performed in order to substantiate from a scientific perspective the amazing effects credited to meditation. The results were intriguing to say the least.

OK, so if you got to read this, it seems that I convinced you to some extent that brainwave meditation is worth trying. So how to do it without turning your hectic schedule up side down?

Before telling you how to, it is important to tell you, I think, what brainwave technology I use. Because for me it is important, you know, to use the good stuff. The last thing I needed, was to put up the time and energy into an useless technology. There are many out there. You can even buy some software that allows you to create your own brainwave sounds. Very cheap. You can see why many people are selling brainwave sounds that you can buy on the cheap side.