Simplifying Meditation

Chaz

Interesting article by Thomas Roberts.

http://www.shambhalamountain.org/simplifying-meditation-practice-wake/

Barra

Bingo. It really is that simply. Not necessarily a quick fix, but it works for me!

betaboy

What does the author mean by awakening?

Chaz

betaboy said:

What does the author mean by awakening?

Good question, but one that I can't answer. I'm not the author.

If I'm allowed to speculate, I'd say awakening is a metaphor used as a polar opposite to sleeping or dreaming which is often used to teach our samasaric state - asleep, a dream.

So if all this is nothing but a dream-like state of being, what would being "awake" mean?

What do you think?

ThailandTom

what you mean sit and sit and sit and sit? Who was it that went on a retreat and they ended up in the mountains? It may be Leon I dunno. Anyway their monk guide simply took them to some mountain sitting and sat them down, they were all expecting talks and what not but he made them sit. Soon enough you get restless, you want to leave, however the guide is wise and directs you to staying. Soon enough you see it, you see the potential of meditation by simply sitting.
(sorry Leon if this was not you).

betaboy

He says meditation is not about any outcome, but he also adds that we do it in order to wake up. Wouldn't that - waking up - become a new goal or purpose?

riverflow

Sounds very much like shikantaza (Soto Zen) practice: shikan (just) taza (sitting). It has its roots in Honzhi's "silent illumination" practice. Dogen, who imported "silent illumination" into Japan, saw a problem with meditating "in order to" get enlightened-- it presupposes a dualistic approach to meditation: There's the unenlightened "me" chasing after enlightenment which is separate, somewhere else.

Shikantaza isn't about gaining anything at all-- including "enlightenment" (which is really just our notion of enlightenment anyway). Instead, thoughts are observed and immediately dropped. Thoughts are allowed to be just thoughts-- they arise, they pass away. There's no need to chase them or push them away-- just let impermanence do its work and let it drop. That dropping away process is the very actualization of enlightenment-- in other words, it isn't something one "gets" (or doesn't "get")-- it is something one does. There is no separation between meditation and enlightenment. There is no "in order to." No goals, no purpose. Just observe.

Taigen Dan Leighton calls it "objectless" meditation in two sense of the word: (1) there is no object upon which one concrentrates (such as the breath) and (2) there is no goal in "just sitting"-- there is only sitting. Language (or more precisely, grammar), because it carves up the world into dualistic fragments, cannot describe it. There is no subject, there is no object, but it has to be actualized by (and through) just sitting.

Norman Fischer describes shikantaza like this:

The problem is that we actually are incapable of seeing zazen as useless because our minds can’t accept the fundamental genuineness and all-rightness of our lives. We are actually very resistant to this reality. We hate it because it is too simple and we persistently think we need more. This is not a detail or quirk of our minds; it is not even a habit really; it is the deep nature of our minds. The Sanskrit word for consciousness is vijnana, which means to divide, or to cut. In order for us to have what we call experience we have to divide or cut reality. Genuine or all-rightness is wholeness, indivisibility, so it can’t be an experience. And even if we practice zazen and have an enlightenment experience, we immediately confuse ourselves with it.

[emphasis mine]

I begin meditation by focusing on the breath, and once I feel settled enough, I switch to shikantaza.

Jeffrey

You can't trick dukkha to get to sukkha. You have to sit with the dukkha and despite knowing it will eventually become sukkha you know it won't work until you fully accept dukkha with no tricks.

Chaz

betaboy said:

He says meditation is not about any outcome, but he also adds that we do it in order to wake up. Wouldn't that - waking up - become a new goal or purpose?

Yes, that's confusing.

One factor is that we don't really have an adequate vocabulary for this stuff. He is correct in saying that we meditate "in order to wake up". He is also correct about there being no real goal in our practice. So, we need to discern if in saying, "in order to wake up", is he talking about a "goal" or an "outcome". I tend to view the latter.

YMMD

Jeffrey

It's not a goal because it is here already. We just let go of what is getting in the way and we find that we need not grasp something 'out there'. That is we already have tenderness towards self and others.

anando

Hello,
it´s not ok, changing the instructions to meditate the 8fold path, that has been given to us by Gotamo Buddo. The least is in cutting it, is that you will not proceed enough.
Make this life of your´s the last one on this planet.

sacco