Advantages of Meditative Walking

At a time of Buddha’s staying in Savatthi, Jetavana, the garden of Anathapindika, Buddha taught the Bhisus:

Endurance for longevity; endurance for deligience; less diseases; good digestion of food and drinks; justified meditative walking for a long time. Bhiksus, these dharmas are the advantages of meditative walking.

 (ĐTKVN, Aguttara Nikaya II, chapter 5, Meditative Walking part, VNCPHVN published, 1996, page 346)

 COMMENTS:

Meditative walking is an important Dharma practice applied and popularized to the Buddhists. Everyone from every sect, every level, and every fundamental ability can cultivate and gain practical results and benefits.

Meditative walking is walking with mindfulness. Walking is not for arriving but for ‘returning’, back to the presented mindfulness and leaving the sadness and anxiety in the past; by the way, releasing all the intention for the future. Meditative walking is walking in peace in every step.

Walking without mindfulness is not meditative but still receiving a lot of benefits for health. Nowadays, walking becomes a popularizing sport and the most positive and the easiest therapy to practise in order to increase our health, retreat the illness specially the dangerous diseases caused by the modern life.

Practising meditative walking repeatedly every day is not only recovering and improving our health but it also creates the affection of uplift and peace in mind. The most essential advantage of meditative walking is giving us the tolerance and the diligence and the patience in work; especially enhancing our stamina for the increasing pressure of modern life. In other hand, meditative walking helps us to harmonize our body to become durable and tough and to enhance circulatory function and digestion etc. Specially, meditative walking helps us to ease our minds to be easy to maintain our right mindfulness and to promote and to focus on high capacity in order to create the base for the intellectual achievement and enlightenment.

 With those advantages of meditative walking as Buddha’s taught, a Buddhist should practise walking every day.

Life would be more sense if people can apply meditative walking to get a good health and an easy mind.

Quảng Tánh.

Translated into English by Nguyen Khanh Hoa.