Meditation and the Unix Operating System

Meditation and the Unix Operating System

Meditation is a good way of learning to master control of one's thoughts. Most of the time, in our everyday mode of experiencing the world, we are barely aware of our thinking process--we tend to react to external stimulus. Only on very rare occassions do we introduce thoughts deliberately into our minds.

By learning how to meditate, we seize the initiative; we learn to flex our mental muscles and we actually let thinking reflect on itself. We inject a quantum of thought into the mental screen and watch its effects. We see how thinking germinates from very tiny seeds and impulses, into something bigger that gathers in momentum as we dwell further upon them.

When thoughts have swelled to a critical mass, we lose control of them--they begin to have a life of their own. They seize us, overwhelm us and carry with them an emotional cloud. That's how anger, love or hatred arises. Every emotion has a humble beginning.

Some people get angry very easily because they are not conscious of the early lifecycle of their thoughts. You see, we are all imperfect. Our innate ego, lust and selfishness generates unwholesome thoughts constantly. These thoughts can be checked at a very early stage if we are conscious of them. But because our minds are not well-developed, we are only vaguely aware of their germination stage. And when we do notice them, it's already too late--they have become monsters, ready to take over our entire beings.

Basic meditation shouldn't be associated with something mystical or religious. It is just self-awareness. Thoughts reflecting on thoughts. It is just like someone typing "ps -ef" on a Unix operating system (or "ps -aux", depending on the flavour of Unix that you are using)--you check what are the processes running, and you do a "kill -9" to get rid of things that you don't want.