The role of Meditation 

This illustrates the grave need of man to practice meditation. What meditation does is to make the cognitive faculty of man dominate his mind rather than the affective. This involves a change in the way we think, so that the emotions will stop dominating our mind. 
The importance of changing our thinking to stop the unconscious and irrational emotional behaviour has been recognized only recently in Western psychology. This fact was fully understood and used by the Buddha to transform personality by radically eliminating all self-centered emotions. This was the meaning of becoming a spiritually Awakened Buddha or an emancipated Arahat.
It is in the sermon called the Mūlapariyāya Sutta that the Buddha explains the difference between the thinking of the emancipated individual and the normal person. In other words, this explains the meaning of the paradigm shift from existence to experience (nirodha samāpatti).