Dhamma Wheel Buddhist Forum

[Sitting] meditation is like a concert pianist practicing scales.
The 'performance' is life.

(I think it might have been Shinzen Young who used this analogy first)

Meditation is like going into a cocoon to transform self identities into thin air.

About two years ago I went through a phase where I felt like I was mourning my own death. Shortly afterwards, I thought of meditation as returning to the womb, waiting to be reborn, and eventually (hopefully) realizing there is no more birth.

Just thought of this:

Meditation is like digging a well. You have to remove the dirt and break up the stones before it will fill with water.

Meditation is like this:

Greetings David,

David N. Snyder wrote:[Sitting] meditation is like a concert pianist practicing scales.
The 'performance' is life.

(I think it might have been Shinzen Young who used this analogy first)

It's a good one... and it's a reminder of what the purpose of the meditation is in the first place, and where its benefits will come to fruition.

Metta,
Retro.

The sea gathering waves.

Apologies for butchering a Magnetic Fields song...

Meditation is like a violent crime
If you do it wrong - you'll do time,
But if you do it right it is sublime

To borrow the writings of a French philosopher, for me meditation "unfolds in the pureness of the wait. Waiting is directed at nothing: any object that could gratify it would only efface it. Still, it is not confined to one place, it is not a resigned immobility; it has the endurance of a movement that will never end and would never promise itself the reward of rest; it does not wrap itself in interiority; all of it falls irremediably outside. Waiting cannot wait for itself at the end of its own past, nor rejoice in its own practice, nor steel itself once and for all, for it was never lacking courage. What takes it up is not memory but forgetting. This forgetting… is extreme attentiveness."

Meditation is like purposely putting myself in fire so 'I' burn faster.

Meditation is life.

Meditation can get up off the cushion, can open its eyes, and can travel with you constantly. But remembering to meditate is a skill that must be learned through vigorous intention, attention, and never giving up. Anything, you do daily, can become a meditation.

In this way, everything in your life is there to help you, to teach you, and not seen as some kind of an obstruction to meditation…even ‘the terrible routine violence of jail meditation’ can remind you of calming breath. Perhaps even ‘fighting for your life meditation’ can work to strengthen your resolve to be free.

The Buddha's final admonition to his disciples on his death bed is this: "Transient are all component things. Work out your deliverance with heedfulness!" (vaya-dhamma sankhara, appamadena sampadetha). And the last words of the Venerable Sariputta, the foremost disciple of the Buddha, who predeceased the Master, were this: "Strive on with Heedfulness! This is my advice to you!" (sampadetha appamadena, esa me anusasana).

In both these injunctions the most significant and pregnant word is appamada, which literally means incessant heedfulness. Man cannot be heedful unless he is aware of his actions — whether they are mental, verbal, or physical — at every moment of his waking life. Only when a man is fully awake to and mindful of his activities can he distinguish good from bad and right from wrong. It is in the light of mindfulness that he will see the beauty or the ugliness of his deeds.

Meditation is like a holy attachment.

My meditation smilies: or or sometimes more like

Or perhaps you meant to say "Simile."

A meditation session is like taking a break.

Meditation is like this.

(In an attempt to follow the style of Ajahn Sumedho)

Best wishes
Cal

For me presently:
Meditation is becoming patient at impatience

Or add any other word and it's antonym to follow

Meditation is like watching trash on an assembly line (i.e. the time) that's moving by.

The task is to just watch and to not crave for more trash of some kind, and to not have aversion for another kind of trash -- trash is trash.

To not think of the trash as "mine", controllable or substantial, to not think of it as permanent, to not think of it as satisfactory - how can trash be satisfactory?

The less we crave, the easier it becomes to watch the trash and to see the trash-nature: Empty, impermanent, unsatisfactory.