CNN on meditation

How interesting. I just found a CNN article on the benefits of meditation. It's called "Meditation: The key to calm" and here's part of what it says:

Says Maitreyabandhu of the London Buddhist Center, "Meditation is about being in life. People tend to think its about blanking your mind: it's not, it's about becoming more alive -- alive to your own experiences, the world and others."

How does it help?

According to many practitioners, learning meditation helps to manage daily stress, concerns and pressures. Says Maitreyabandhu, "Lots of people come to meditation because they want to relax. Some people come because they want to live more vividly. I meditate now because I want to gain some sort of transcendental awareness of the universe. It's about that experience that changes you completely - so it's not just a fluffy, relaxing, muesli eating thing."
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As a result of our rushed lives we can also lose touch with ourselves. Meditation then becomes a way of "checking-in" and assessing how things are going.

Says Maitreyabandhu, "We can become alienated from our more subtle emotions. We are alienated from our bodies. There is a real need to get in contact with something alive. We easily get stuck on the surfaces of ourselves. In the west we forget the mind has depths. There are depths of the mind that are really satisfying and profound."

It's a good little article. Go read all of it if you have time.