A few words about meditation

First, your intuition that “you can’t think your way to awakening” is correct. There is no way that trying to figure it all out is going to yield awakening. Conceptual knowledge, and it is a form of knowing, is not the same kind of knowing that awakening will bring about.

You see, there is already an aspect of our ordinary, everyday experience that is the awake or enlightened mind. Yogis call it “the seer,” “purusha,” “cit,” and more. Buddhists may call it “the awakened mind,” “rigpa,” “consciousness free of clinging,” and many more terms, even “the Buddha nature,” or just plain “Buddha.” Buddha means “awake.” We will call it either “the seer,” “the witness,” “awareness,” or “consciousness.” Why I say that it is already awakened is because consciousness is the only aspect of our experience which is conscious or sentient. You see consciousness grants sentience to the mind, to the dreams, thoughts, images that occur and move through mind. The contents of the mind are not themselves conscious. They are granted consciousness by consciousness itself. Consciousness does nothing but provide awareness to all the appearances or phenomena that move through mind. Those phenomena cannot see or give awareness to themselves. Some say that the mind has these two natures, one that is pure awareness and one that presents all the phenomena or appearances to that pure awareness. That awareness is never tainted by anything that mind presents to it. It is simply a witness, kind of like the surface of a mirror that is never made impure by the images it reflects. The surface of a mirror could care less what appears in it. It is totally indifferent to all appearances. This is like our own awareness. This is simply the way we human beings are structured, all of us sentient or conscious beings—even a worm or an ant—are put together like this.

If what I am saying so far is true to you, it is for many of us, then we have to admit that we do not need to accumulate anything to become awakened. We are built with all of the necessary equipment to realize our awakening. Awakening adds nothing to our nature as human beings. So, what is awakening? Awakening is awaking to what is. It is awakening to what is already the case. It’s like looking for your glasses—which your earlier placed on top of your head—when you already have them. It’s like, “Having never left the house you are looking for the way home,” –Nisargadatta Maharaj. “Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you,” –Ajahn Chah. This last quotation, and I’ll provide a few more, says something very important. It tells us to stop searching, stop applying effort. There is nothing we can do to bring about our awakening; we are already awake but if we don’t surrender our search, our need, our inclination to grasp at phenomena—mental, forms, images, feelings, etc., then we will not experience the peace and tranquility at the very heart of our everyday living—already. It is always already the case. There is no need for the search, the acquisition, the accumulation. So, relax!!! “I contemplated my greed for peace. And I did not seek tranquility anymore,” --Ajahn Sumedho.

So, what do we do? Well, very little. We can lay the groundwork for surrendering our effort. That includes all of the practices that many of us do. We have looked at a few of them already throughout the blog. However, in the end, all they represent is preparation not attainment. We do not attain anything, through this meditation, but experience what already is. We actually suspend effort and realize that awareness or consciousness is at our very roots. When we hear sound, we abide in silence. When we taste ice cream, we abide in the tasteless. When we feel pain, we abide in the painless. When we smell odors, we abide in the odorless. When we see forms, we abide in the formless. There is only one word that I might add to those last sentences, and that is the word already. Pure consciousness is at the root of all of experience. Without the hole, there is no doughnut. Without the hub, there is no wheel. Without the space, there is no cup. Without the silence, there is no sound. Silence and the rest of the phenomenal opposites we just mentioned are an integral part of all human experience. While the opposite of day is night, the third opposite, one might say, is neither day nor night but the presence of a witnessing and sentience-granting awareness. This opposite, however, is paired with phenomena like form is to color. They are distinguishable but never separable.

I could go on forever. However, only you can decide if this is truly helpful. By my lights, I think it may be. But only you will know for sure. As for specific things one should do, I would impress upon you the need for meditation and some form of exercise, such as walking or yoga postures. I would also recommend some breathing exercises, especially if you were a smoker. Your meditation should take a formless, quiet witnessing. Whatever phenomena that arise in the mind are simultaneously dissolving.

Feelings accompany all phenomena, i.e., thoughts and images, etc., that arise in the mind and dissolve into the reservoir of past actions from which they arose (past acts residing as latent tendencies—another topic). Witnessing the movement of mind-narratives and their accompanying feelings, without attachment or aversion, just watching, is meditation in the way I mean it here. “When sitting in meditation say, ‘That’s not my business!’ with every thought that comes by,” –Ajahn Chah. Remember, thoughts may arise with seeming knowledge, but it’s not that type of knowledge we already have. We have to simply witness, act like that which we already are.

Important note: What we have here is one example of meditation. It certainly does not say all there is to say about the topic. There are so many different types of meditation and one should follow one's heart in the direction it takes one in the practice of meditation. This is but one example of an approach that many have found helpful. Perhaps you will too. Thank you for reading.