Meditation increases pain tolerance, even a little practice everyday helps , new research shows.

Very brief training in mindfulness meditation had a positive impact on pain perception on humans in the study, conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA.

They recruited college students who had never meditated before and gave them a single hour of meditation training, spread out over three consecutive days.

Over the course of three experiments, all the study participants were subjected to harmless, but somewhat painful, electric shocks of varied intensity as the session progressed.

The researchers measured the participants rating of pain at “low” and “high” levels, and they also measured changes in the participants’ general sensitivity to pain.

They found that the meditation training appeared to influence pain perception even when the trained study subjects weren’t meditating.

Regular meditation is good for mind, body and soul.

There is a Temple built at the foot of Arunachala, off the pradakshina route, on a rock dedicated to Sri Kannappar. Kannappar who was one of the sixty-three Nayanars (Tamil Poet-Saints) whose lives are recorded in the Periya Puranam (Lives of the Saints). The actual story of Kannappa Nayanar is supposed to have taken place at a Hill Temple in Sri Kalahasti, near Tirupathi.

The story goes that there was a forest place called Uduppur. It was an isolated area populated by fierce villagers. Nagan and Tatthai had a great desire for a child but as they were old had to go to a shrine of Lord Murugan to receive his blessings before they were able to conceive. A son was soon born to them who they named Thinnan (meaning strong), because he was so powerful and heavy that even his father could hardly hold him up.

When the boy reached 16 years of age, he took over the position of leader of the hunters. During a pig hunt, Thinnan and some companions had to go deep into the forest. It was there that the youth saw the hill of Lord Siva. Kindled by an unexplainable emotion he went towards the hill.

The culmination of austerities he did in previous births came to him and he proceeded towards the Lord. He saw Him and drank through his eyes the wonderful sight; It flowed over his heart; He lost all control and ran towards the Lingam to embrace and kiss the Diety.

Thinnan started performing service by bringing water from the river in his mouth and bathing the image of the Lord by emptying the water he carried in his mouth onto the Lingam. He would chew meat to ascertain its suitability before offering the choicest bits to his deity.

When he left for hunting, a sage came who was shocked at the sight of strewn bones and flesh in front of the Lord. After prostrating many times the sage cleaned the altar and performed his own puja before returning to his hermitage.

This continued for many days. To explain the love of his huntsman devotee, God appeared to the sage and told him, ‘Don’t think he is a scoundrel. His form is full of my love, his mind thinks of me only and his deeds are delightful for me. The water he spits on me is more sacred than Ganga, the flowers he offers taking from his head are holier than that are offered by Devas. It is all because of His love. You can see the excellence of his devotion tomorrow, if you hide and watch’.

It was the seventh day of Thinnans worship. When he arrived at the Lingam he was shocked to see that one eye of the Diety was bleeding. While worrying about his inability to find a solution, he remembered an old saying flesh for flesh. So, immediately Thinnan plucked out one of his own eyes with a sharp arrow and placed it onto the bleeding eye of the Lords. Thinnan jumped up and down in excitement when the bleeding from the Dietys eye stopped.

But as it stopped in the right eye, it started from the left. After a moment Thinnan told himself, ‘I know the medicine. I have one more eye. That should cure this’. But when he was about to pluck out his remaining eye, he realised the difficulty of placing the eye in position once he took out his remaining eye. So he held his foot on the Dietys eye as a mark, and raised the arrow to take his remaining eye out.

The Lord Himself was not able to bear this great action, and appeared and holding the devotee’s hands to stop him from plucking the remaining eye, called out:

‘Oh halt Kann Appa, Kann Appa Since you gave your own eyes for me, you will be called Kannappan (the person who gave eyes to the Lord) hereafter.’ And with that contact the devotee’s sight was fully restored and the Lord pleased with his devotion granted him eternal bliss.

“If one watches where the notion of ‘I’ springs, the mind will be absorbed into that. That is tapas. If a mantra is repeated and attention is directed to the source where the mantra sound is produced, the mind will be absorbed into that. That is tapas.”

Happiness
All beings desire happiness always, happiness without a tinge of sorrow. At the same time everybody loves himself best. The cause for this love is only happiness. So, that happiness must lie in one self. Further, that happiness is daily experienced by everyone in sleep, when there is no mind. To attain that natural happiness one must know oneself. For that, Self-Enquiry ‘Who am I?’ is the chief means.

Consciousness
Existence or Consciousness is the only reality. Consciousness plus waking we call waking. Consciousness plus sleep we call sleep. Consciousness plus dream, we call dream. Consciousness is the screen on which all the pictures come and go. The screen is real, the pictures are mere shadows on it.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi

More at :- http://www.sriramanamaharshi.org/teachings.html

” Everyone in the business : the on who abets, the one who cuts, the one who kills, the one who sells, the one who prepares, the one who eats … all are killers ! ”
Sri Krishna

” And the flesh of slain beasts in his body will become his own tomb. For I tell you truly, he who kills, kills himself, and who so eats the flesh of slain beasts, eats the body of death ! ”
Jesus Christ

” People who eat meat are responsible for all the pain that grows out of meat-eating, and which is necessitated by the use of sentient animals as food ! ”
Annie Besant

” As long as there are slaughter houses, there will be battle fields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism ! ”
Leo Tolstoy

” To feed on death is to become food for death. To live by other’s pain is to become a prey for pain. So has decreed the omni-will. Know that and choose your course ! ”
Mikhail Naimy

” For fear of causing terror to living beings … let the Bodhisatva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion refrain from eating flesh ! ”
Gautama Buddha

” God doesn’t like the flesh and blood that you offer as sacrifice. He expects nothing but your absolute faith ! ”
Quran

” It is both auspicious and peaceful for people to choose vegetarinism. ”
Albert Einstein

” The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. ”

Mahatma Gandhi

Arthur E. Powell … of the Theosophical Society … has beautifully said the following:

” A physical body nourished on impure food will produce a correspondingly impure astral body, whilst a physical body fed on clean food and drink will help to purify the astral vehicle. ”

” It is impossible to make the physical body coarse and at the same time to organize the astral and mental bodies for finer purposes … neither is it possible to have a pure physical body with impure mental and astral bodies. All three bodies are thus inter-dependent. ”

” Carnivorous diet is fatal to anything like real occult development, and those who adopt it are throwing serious and unnecessary difficulties in their own way, for flesh blood intensifies all the undesirable elements and passions of the lower planes. ”

Rashmi Uday Singh wrote in ” Times of India ” the following:

” Medical studies prove that a vegetarian diet is easier to digest, provides a wider range of nutrients and imposes fewer burdens and impurities on the body. The vegetarian elephant and horse demolish any apprehension about veggies being mental or physical weaklings. Other muscular and intelligent animals … the cow, giraffe, zebra, rhinoceros, the apes and more … are vegetarians too. ”

” In a large measure, the destruction of ancient rain forests, loss of top soils and the consequent increase of water impurities have all been traced to the single fact of creating pasture lands for livestock being reared for meat. Millions of animals are bred for meat production. If they were not bred and the vegetation was used to feed people, there would be no poverty in the world. ”

1) “All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births, in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisition and heaping up, and building, and meeting; and faithful to the commands of an eminent guru, set about realizing the Truth (which has no birth or death).”

2) “If you do not acquire contentment in yourselves,
Heaped-up accumulations will only enrich others.

If you do not suppress the Demon of Ambition,
Desire for fame will lead to ruin and to lawsuits”

3)“If you lose all differentiation between yourselves and others,
fit to serve others you will be.

And finding me, you shall attain to Buddhahood.”

4)“Life is short and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourself to meditation. Avoid doing evil, and acquire merit, to the best of your ability, even at the cost of life itself. In short: Act so that you have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves and hold fast to this rule”

5)“Maintain the state of undistractedness and distractions will fly off.

Renounce all worldly goals and you shall reach the highest goal.”

6)“The Guru, being like the Dharma-Kaya (aggregate of all enlightened beings) is like the expanse of the sky

These falling on the Earth unceasingly, nourish and ripen the harvest of Saved Beings ”

Milarepa’s Initial Realizations

I have understood this body of mine to be the product of ignorance, composed of flesh and blood and lit up by the perceptive power of consciousness. To those fortunate ones who long for emancipation it may be the great vessel by which they may procure Freedom. But to the unfortunates who only sin, it may be the guide to lower and miserable states of existence. This our life is the boundary mark whence one may take an upward or downward path. Our present time is a most precious time, wherein each of us must decide, in one way or other, for lasting good or lasting ill.
One who aims only at his own individual peace and happiness adopts the lower path (Hinayana), but he who devotes the merits of his love and compassion to the cause of others belongs to the higher path (Mahayana).
In meditating on the Final Goal, one has to discover the non-existence of the personal Ego, and therefore the fallacy that it exists (i.e. because everything in the universe with name and form is basically illusory in nature)
To realize the state of non-existence of the personal ego, the mind must be kept in quiescence. In that state, thoughts, ideas, and cognition cease and the mind (awareness) passes into a state of perfect tranquility so that days, months, and years may pass without the person perceiving it; thus the passage of time has to be marked for him by others.
The visions of the forms of the Deities which appear in meditation are merely signs attending the perseverance in meditation. They have no intrinsic worth or value in themselves.
All the efforts put forth during this path must be made in a spirit of compassion with the aim of dedicating the merit of one’s efforts to the Universal Good. There is a need of mentally praying and wishing for blessings on others so earnestly that one’s mind processes also transcend thought.
Just as the mere name of food does not satisfy the appetite of a hungry person but he must eat food, so also a man who would learn about the Voidness (i.e. Universal Awareness) must meditate so as to realize it, not just learn of its definition.