You can still meditate when your body becomes sick

“Even when your body becomes sick, you still can have this kind of pleasant feeling. You can still meditate.”

“…Basically what you have to do first is to develop your ability to focus or concentrate. This is something you have to do all day long, from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. And when you have time to sit down and meditate, you need to find a quiet environment, such as a place like this where there are no sounds, sights, smells, or tastes to distract you when you sit down and focus your mind on a particular object.

If you use your body as your object of concentration as you go about your daily activities, when you sit you have to switch your focus to your breathing. This is because when you sit down, your body becomes still. It is not moving, so you switch your object of concentration to your breathing by focusing your attention at the tip of the nose where the air makes contact as it comes in and goes out.

Just focus on that point and do not allow your mind to think about other things. If you can persist in focusing on your breathing, your mind will eventually drop into calm. It will become still, peaceful, at ease, happy, and contented. Then once you are in that state, you want to stay there as long as possible. Normally, when you first do it, the mind won’t remain in that state for long because your ability to concentrate is not strong enough.

It may just stay for a few seconds, or maybe a minute or so, after which it will withdraw. But once you have experienced this state of mind, you will become attracted to it. You will know that this is the real kind of happiness that doesn’t require other things, other people, or even your own body.

Even when your body becomes sick, you still can have this kind of pleasant feeling. You can still meditate. For instance, when you get sick and have to remain in bed, you can still meditate and enjoy good feelings. This is because the mind and the body are two separate entities.

When the body gets sick, it doesn’t mean that the mind has to get sick with the body. They are like two different people, but we normally tend to couple the mind to the body. When the body feels bad, the mind feels bad along with the body. The reason why the mind feels bad is because the mind cannot use the body to make itself feel good. But if you can meditate and calm your mind to have good feelings, then you don’t need the body.

Whatever happens to the body becomes irrelevant. The body can be strong or weak, it can get sick or die, and the mind won’t be bothered. It doesn’t matter to the mind. The mind doesn’t die with the body; the mind is eternal. The body is temporary. That is why you keep changing the body all the time without knowing it.

The body that we have now is just another body; just like the bodies that we have had before in our previous lives. When we lose this body, we go find a new one. It is like changing your clothes: When you can no longer use a set of clothes, you throw it away, and get a new one to put on your body. The mind is also like that. The mind has been changing the body for a long time, many years, countless of years, because the mind has no beginning and has no end…”

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto