Meditation, beginning and beyond
Les Johnson
If you break open a
cherry tree
where are the blossoms?
Just wait for spring time
and see how they bloom
Ikkyu
Meditation is a practice of, and the development of, our
ability to pay attention and be aware. From its practice we dispel the social mystique that shape our perceptions of our world and
of ourselves. We become more centred; more attentive to the here and now; more
attuned to our connections. We have a happier disposition and enhanced
abilities to cope. Or, at least that's the official story.
This guide has no other authority than it’s being my guess at what I would have liked to have read when I started meditation. It is just one way to begin to meditate in just one tradition. Nevertheless, all techniques of meditation train the attention by the returning the mind to a focus. I have chosen Soto Zen perhaps because of the greatness of its founder Dogen whose writings are a national treasure of Japan.
The most important thing in meditation is to approach it with the
right attitude, which is to be open to the experiences of the present moment.
This openness to experiences of the moment is all you need to start and
continue with Zen meditation. You are not required to have any prior
beliefs or come to believe anything subsequently. The experiences are all you
need to write your own story. This guide is to get you started. It gives only
the basics but nothing more is needed.
Zen
In the Soto Zen tradition we train our attention not by
stifling 'distractions' but by the gentle act of returning again and again to
the focus of our attention in the here and now. We simply acknowledge the
intrusive thought, feeling, image or emotion and let it be. We don't try to
change it in any way and we don't go along with it. We let it be and let it go
by. We are like a person working at a desk whose attention is caught by someone
walking outside across the street and we simply note who they are and return
our attention to what is on our desk. We do not engage with the person. We
simply let them be, and let them go by. We don't judge them positively or
negatively or in any other way. Similarly, we don't praise or blame ourselves
for them walking by. They are what they are. We let them be without any kind of
evaluative judgement.
Preparation
First time
Before you start the practice of meditating you may benefit
from finding your "still point", locating your diaphragm, and scanning
your spine. You need do these once only.
Stand up straight, arms hanging loose, feet two firsts
apart, head looking straight ahead
Two or three fingers below your naval you will be able to
detect your still point. Feel for it. It isn't a physical feature of your
belly: it is your centre of gravity for your body. When you think you have
found it, you have. Now, with the back of your hand feel up and down your lower
back. There is a gentle curve inwards. This is how your back should be when
sitting.
Now hold your breath. Just after you stop breathing you will
feel a slight contraction of the muscle that runs right across your torso three
or four fingers above your navel. You will feel the contraction at the front.
This is your diaphragm.
Mind set
Perhaps the best start to a meditation is to acquire a
particular mental set. As though you are a visitor to the place where you are planning
to meditate. You don't own it or have any responsibilities for it. You don't
have to think about tidying up, repairs, or anything else. You are in no hurry
- even if you only have ten minutes for a quick meditation. You might
imagine that you are the only passenger on a long-haul flight. You have no fear
of flying and no practical concerns; everything is taken care of, you have no
responsibilities. Your two heavy suitcases of past concerns and future
expectations are in the hold. So, after carrying them yourself for quite a
while, this provides a double liberation: from the weight of the past and the
fear of the future. Unburdened, you decide that the only thing you want to do
is sit and be still.
Body set
We sit in a relaxed but upright, straight, posture that
gives a gentle curve to the lower back, as though we were standing. In this
posture, there are no constrictions that inhibit our breathing. We use a chair
or stool, or sit in a yoga position. If we sit on a chair we plant our feet on
the floor, shoulder width; ideally, our thighs slope down slightly and we might
add a cushion to sit on. We don't rest our back on any support. Swaying back
and forth and then side to side, in gradually smaller arcs, stretches the hips and
lower back and help us to locate an upright posture. When straight, we stretch
our spine up, and, as we relax down, we stack one vertebra on top of the other.
Our hands rest on our lap with the back of the fingers of
our more passive hand resting on the fingers of our active hand palm
up. We touch thumbs at the tips. We tilt our head down as though reading a
book. Our eyes are lidded but not closed (look at the floor two or three feet
in front of you without focusing your eyes).
As we settle our body, we completely squeeze out a breath
through our mouth and then breath in and out once deeply. From then on, we breath
in and out through the nose with the mouth closed and the tip of our tongue
resting broadly and lightly on the roof of our mouth, just behind the top teeth
(this prevents our mouths from drying or drooling).
Our preliminaries seems a little complicated but they are
part of the meditation and are a lot easier to do than driving a car and you
don't have to pass a driving test. So, don't get too hung up on doing
everything right. No one is watching you or judging you, including you!
Beginning
Calming Meditation
The meditative state is stillness itself. But, no matter how
still you become your breathing continues, even if very very shallowly. So, we
start from that constant - breathing - and move towards a deep stillness.
Breathing
We breathe in though the nose (tongue resting lightly on the
roof of our mouth) by pulling our breath down to our still point and holding it
there a flash. Then we push the breath out from the still point to our nose by
gently contracting our belly. Of course, the air actually goes no further than
our lungs but by the physical acts and imaginative effort we help our breathing
to be regulated by the right muscles in the belly. Our belly rather than our
chest goes up and down. We keep the chest as still as possible.
We pay attention our breathing. For example, we 'track' the
in breath in three places: the nose, the chest (even though it is still), and
the belly as we pull the breath down to the still spot. If you pull your breath
down to the still point, your belly is raised and is ready to contract and push
the breath out.
Paying attention to the sensations at these three points
helps you find a rocking chair rhythm and feel. When you have an easy, gentle,
rhythm, focus your attention a little more narrowly to your belly raising and
falling. Take a little longer in the out breath. Squeeze steadily. Let the
raising and falling be your focus. Belly rising. Belly falling. Beginners can
even say these words a few times silently while breathing.
Now, let the rhythm of
your breathing settle. There is no need to control its rate; your body will find
the rate it requires. Follow your breath focusing on the experience of breathing.
Quick body scan
The next phase of our calming period of meditation is to quickly scan
our body from head to foot, inside and out: is there a sensation? If we find there
is a spot of tension, we soften that spot.
If there are stronger sensations such as pain, we don't try
to numb them or avoid them, we let them be what they are and go where they
must. We ask: Size? Weight? Shape? Texture? Temperature? If a sensation
doesn’t have these features, we ask can conceive of it in those ways?
Just This
When we have finished our quick body scan, we feel our whole
body expand very very very slightly as we breath in and as we feel it shrink
back as we breath out. We feel embodied, integrated, and alive. But, the
emphasis is not thinking these things as "self-talk"; the emphasis is
on the awareness of sensation. A shadow of a smile is felt at the corners of
the eyes.
To consolidate, you can say the following silently: Belly rising:
"I smile", Belly falling: "I relax", Belly rising:
"Just", Belly falling: "This". This silent commentary is standard practice in some traditions.
Expanding
Keeping awareness of your breathing and your body, feel the
space above and around you. Feel the floor where you are sat. Go under the
floor and down to the earth. Expand your awareness to include "feeling"
the room you are in - we sort of glow.
Keep awareness of your breath, body, and place, going
together for a while.
Expanding more
We expand our awareness to include our surrounding. Hear the
faint sounds in the distance. We acknowledge them but don't dwell on them. Feel the contours and shapes of land and buildings.
There is no need to keep on expanding, but you could expand
to locality, city, region, country, and the world. It's up to you. It's unlikely
you will find the time to do all this in your short beginning sessions.
Acknowledging and labelling
At any point in a meditation, your mind may wander. Simply
acknowledge the thought, feeling, emotion, picture, or sound and gently bring
your attention back to your breathing - belly raising; belly falling. Focus on
your belly rising and falling and the sensations of breathing until you're
steady again. Belly rising. Belly falling.
One way to acknowledge that you have been wandering, or
there is an intrusion, is to label the distraction: "Hearing",
"Thinking", "Musing", "Sadness", “TV” and so on.
Do not blame or praise yourself. As said above, this type of silent commentary is standard practice in other traditions.
It is very common to stray and wander and have intrusions.
You typically have to return to your focus again and again. You let intrusions
be what they are and merely acknowledge them without trying to change them in
any way. You let them pass you by and you return to your focus. Just as though the intrusion were like a friend you see walk by on the other bank of a river.
Experiments
1. 1. With your eyes wide open, stare at the corner of
a brick, leaf of a plant, or any other small thing. Stare - do not allow the
eyes to move. At the same time stop breathing and concentrate on fixing your
object. You are not thinking about the object but using it to stare at. Whilst
you hold your breath, you will find that you can prevent thoughts coming into
your mind. You may feel something like the stirrings of a thought but that can
be kept under control. If you repeat this experiment several times, you will
find that you can inhibit even the shadow of a stray thought. You have
experienced not-thinking. Now forget about it.
In In meditation, we engage in non-thinking, not not-thinking. Non-thinking isn't about becoming brain
dead, you are fully aware. Non-thinking is neither measured thought nor putting the mind in a straight jacket. Non-thinking is inhibiting dispersed attention and stray
or wavering thoughts. We treat the mind like a puppy. Each time it strays we gently bring it back to focusing on the breath. Non-thinking is paying attention - here and now.
2. 2. Try breathing through your nose using your
belly muscles but rounding your shoulders and slouching even a tiny a bit. Now,
sit upright with square shoulders. You will find that it's much easier to
belly-breath when your posture is straight. The whole point of belly breathing
is breathing efficiently; it brings in more oxygen with less effort. Your
breath can then become extremely shallow.
3. 3. Try to feel the difference between 1) pulling your
navel in and 2) squeezing abdominal muscles with your diaphragm in opposition to
them. The latter in the way in Zen, the former is the way in yoga. The
differences reflect differences in purpose. In Zen, your sole purpose is to be
as still as possible. Belly and brain are connected! Honest.
Y 4. Whilst laid down, try to feel the different muscular "weights" in belly breathing compared to being sat upright.
Insight Meditation
It is often said that there are said to be two types of meditation. The first type is
the calming meditation where we focus on breathing to become still in body and
mind. The second type of meditation drops a pebble into this calm pool. It is always conducted after a period
of calming mediation. This type of meditation is called insight meditation
where a word, phrase, sentence, poem, emotion, or image is allowed by you to be
of interest. You ask: What is it? What does it really mean? What meaning can I
give it?
In Zen, you are not required to drop a pebble in the pool. But, if you do so, do it consciously and only do it after at least
five, preferably ten, minutes of calming meditation. You can set an interval
chime on a timer.
Examining an emotion
One common pebble to drop is an interest in fear. Facing and
exploring fear is a powerful means of 'healing' it. Turn your mind to the fear
and feel it. What does it actually feel like? Are there sensations? Does it
have, or could you give it, a size and shape? Is there an image associated with
the fear? After answering these questions, return to an awareness of your
breathing/body/place and then repeat the exercise noticing any differences.
Now, focus your mind on the nature of fear. The Buddhist says
we are like an artist who paints a picture of a tiger and runs away in fear. Is
this so? What is fear? Meditate on the fact that fear can be dispelled through
awareness.
Examining a dialogue
After we have settled into a meditation, we might be aware
that a 'big' internal dialogue has started, "What should I do about...” or
"I showed them", or "I'm an idiot", or "I have to get
better at...” or "I'm really good at...” "I've got so much to do,
there's ... ". If so, then you can allow yourself to be interest in that
dialogue. You can take that dialogue as the object upon which to focus your
attention. Acknowledge the dialogue and acknowledge that you intend to meditate
upon it. Then silently: "Are there specific bodily tensions I have as a
result of that dialogue?". "Is the breathing more rapid? Is the jaw
tense? Is the gut churning? Is the pulse increased?” And, so on. If you have
had the dialogue before, ask, "Are these the same observations as the last
time I had these thoughts/images/emotions?" After we identify its bodily
manifestations we ask, "What does it really mean? What meaning can I give
it?"
The process here is exactly the same as any other
observation: We don't indulge in the egoist's praise or blame. We don't judge.
We observe. The dialogue is what it is and we become aware of it without trying
to change it. We stay in the observer's chair.
Discussions
The observer's chair
At any point in your meditation, if an intrusive thought,
image, feeling or emotion occurs you can choose to observe it.
Observation is aided by labelling a thought, image, or internal
dialogue. But, do not praise or blame. Even labels hide evaluations
and so we need to label with care to keep an observational stance. Drain the
labels of evaluations, think of them as word tags only: “hearing”, “Wondering”,
“sweetheart”, “Tingling”, and “Rehearsing”.
When we take the observer's chair, we are not the observer
any more than we are the things observed, nor are we a taskmaster who returns
us to the observer's chair: In Zen, we shouldn't conceive ourselves as fixed in that
way. We, each of us, are the set of stories that we tell ourselves; stories
that change or transform by themselves with no help from the observer, the
observed, or a supervising ego.
Distractions
To say it again and in another
way: distraction is not frowned upon in Soto Zen because the tolerance of
distraction comes from a very deep appreciation of The Way. As the sense
of a fixed essential self is said to an illusion there is no separate/deeper/essential/transcendental
self/sole that is distracted. Only distraction is happening. Therefore,
awareness of distraction is the only meaningful practice of present awareness possible.
Just sitting
It is in the act of imaginative effort that things change.
Thinking is an act and like all other acts has Consequences. But, there is no
goal that when achieved, means we stop meditation. Even enlightened Buddhas
practice meditation daily. Meditation is an expression of who we are and is an
act of self-cultivation and care.
When asked what they are doing, Soto masters often say
"nothing just sitting". Any other answer would be misleading because
it would be misunderstood. In meditation, meditate: sit. As a beginner, you
don't want to get too hung up on doing everything right. All the instructions here are really to encourage you to approach meditation with a particular mind set and the ritualistic performance of them enables you to find and keep that mind set. With more experience
and insight, you will understand that concerns with doing the right thing properly belong to your needy and
fearful self and such concerns will drop away. Just sit.
Openness
There is no such thing as a good sitting or a bad sitting.
To apply these notions you would have to make a judgement on things already in
the past; judgements that encourage either 1) your needy and fearful self or 2) your
greedy and grasping self.Either way, in doing so you reframing your next sitting. But, sitting
is not approached with expectations, fears, or hopes, based on past sittings. This is what is meant by 'Beginners Mind'. Many
meditators do 20 minutes twice a day, every day, as though they were fully
aware and yet still a beginner! Monks do several hours each day, every day, as
though they were Buddha, and yet as a beginner. We approach sitting with
openness to the experiences of the moment as they come. We just sit. Whatever
comes is what it is. Be it boredom, joy, irritation, bliss, sadness, happiness,
pain, frustration, sound, smell, insight, understanding or any of many things,
if it comes, let it be, and let it go. We don't hang on to, or avoid, anything
that comes.
Performative perspective
Meditation is commonly conceived to be instrumental. It's
purpose to attain a heightened mental state. The great Zen Master, scholar, and the second founder of the Soto School, Eihei Dogen, however, took
what in modern parlance we would call a performative view of meditation. On
this performative view we would say something theoretical like: Meditation is
the performative expression of enlightenment and not a means of attaining it. Just as dancing is not learning to dance, even if we improve our
dancing by dancing, meditation is not learning to meditate and thereby attain enlightenment.
We meditate to meditate. Wholeheartedness is more
important than 'learning'.
The essential point of practice is not seeking
something in the future (contra my opening motivating statements). The
practice brings benefits but these benefits are not to be striven for directly:
they are not the objects of doing the mediation. They happen. The essential attitude for practice is openness to the
experiences of the moment: an expression of awareness.
Deep awareness is not a capacity we acquire at all. It is
already in our nature. If it were not in our nature, meditation would be like trying
to “polish a tile with a rock to make a mirror”. Meditation is not like polishing;
we are a mirror already (dust free too). Deep awareness is in our nature.
Ritual
Ritual doesn't have to involve elaborate fancy dress or decor.
But, ritual has its place. Ritual does something to practitioners. It shapes
them into perceiving the world and understanding themselves through repeated
action. It establishes a context for experience in that certain moods, desires,
emotions, mental states, and other actions come to the fore. (Ritual may serve other purposes too.)
Keeping it going
Daily meditation practice is recommended. But, as a
beginner, or to start meditating again after a break, don't over commit.
Resolve to re-read this guide each time and meditate or experiment, say three
times a week, for two weeks, starting at 200 seconds. When your set time is up,
don’t jump up, sit for a while and gather yourself. So, a 200 second
meditation, with preparation and gathering yourself at the end, should take
about 300 seconds. (Meditation timers, even free ones on your smart phone,
allow you to set chimes to mark each phase and thereby free you from thinking
about the clock.)
At the end of your term, make a new resolution: frequency,
time, term. For each term, do no more and no less than you have resolved to do.
Make your own rules but stick to them as best you can. Avoid making meditation
a matter of grim resolve and determination.
This gradualist approach is to get you into a familiar routine.
It is not for you to ‘work up’ to a proper ‘work out’. No, from day one your
meditation is all that it needs to be. To repeat a point made earlier, openness
to experiences of the moment is all you need to start and continue with Zen
meditation.
Beyond
Body Awareness
Body awareness is an important part of the Zen way. This is
not a shift from a focus on mind to a focus on body. It is a shift to an
integration of mind and body: a sense of wholeness and connection. If you do a body
scan every so often, you can rekindle its deeper body awareness in a quick body
scan that is a standard part of a calming meditation.
A body scan is a worthy practice, but it is not described in
any illuminating way. So, you might gain more benefit from skip reading this section
and return to it only when ready to try things out.
Body scan
A deep scan takes about fifteen minutes. Start with a few
minutes of calming meditation. When you are ready, focus on sensations only,
some of the labels you might use are: hot, cold, tingling, numb, aching,
fluttering, wet, dry, smooth, rough, painful, pleasant. Or, no sensations at
all. Just acknowledge each sensation (or lack of sensation), and "go
up" to it. Allow yourself to be interested in it. Even if you are
experiencing pain, let it be, let it go where it goes, don't try to make it
different or go away. Move up to it, as it were, rather than away from it.
Focus on it. Find its boundaries, its depth, and its character. Focus
intensely. Is it causing you to tense something? Soften there.
Start at the soles of your feet: In order, and slowly, feel:
Each toe. Toe Nails, Balls of the feet, Arches, Heels, Ankles, inside to the
bones, feel the joints. Inside and out: Calfs, Shins, Knee Joints, behind the
knees. Hamstrings, Thighs, and up to the point where the legs join the hips.
Feel the joints. Feel across the pelvic cradle. At each point label the
sensations.
Now focus inside the pelvic cradle: Pubic bone, Genitals (inside
and out), the two systems of elimination, and the one of reproduction. If you
become aroused, or cold, or burn, or anything else, just let it be without
trying to change it. Finish by focusing on your buttocks and then move up your
spine.
Your spine often keeps emotions, slowly move up it one bit
at a time right up to the base of your skull. Tail bones, lower back, waist,
between the shoulder blades, shoulder hump, neck, connection to the skull. Ease
back down the sides of your neck, feel the neck muscles, shoulders, shoulder
muscles, and over your shoulders to your arms: triceps, biceps, elbows, inside
forearms, outside forearms, wrists, hands, palms, fingers, fingernails, and
fingertips.
Your hands are near your belly: Move your attention to your
belly: navel, silent spot, underneath to the systems of absorption and elimination:
the large intestines, small intestines, kidneys, liver, up to the stomach,
pancreas, still inside up to the Adams Apple. Out over the top and down to feel
along the collarbone, the breasts, and the nipples. Inside to the sternum,
follow the ribs and sense the rib cage enclosing the heart and the lungs. As
you breath out, think of the rich red blood flowing from the lungs to the heart
for circulation around the body. Can you feel your heart beating? Take a while
to feel it. Can you feel blood pulsing around your body? Take a while.
Your lungs expel though your windpipe, nose, and sinuses;
feel them. Now feel the mouth, jaw, gums, teeth, tongue, lips, cheeks, nose,
eyes, eye balls, eye brows, forehead, scalp, hair, ears, inside the ears to the
brain, frontal lobes, round and back down your brain stem and spinal column
following the nerves that radiate all over the body, head-mouth, arms-hands,
torso-stomach, torso-genitals, legs-feet.
Your heart pumps enriched blood all around the body; your
nerves serve all parts too. You are wrapped in skin and pulse with the life
that you can feel. You are glowing with life. Your body expands and contracts
by very small degrees as you breath. Feel the pulsating glow of your whole body
inside and out. Don't place your mind in one part. Your body as a whole shares
your mind as a whole. With your whole body and mind, feel the place where you
sit and the room in which you sit.
Body awareness is an important part of the Zen way. But,
this is not a shift from a focus on mind to a focus on body. It is a shift to
an integration of mind and body: a sense of wholeness and connection.
Experiments
a) Breathing just as it comes, picture your breath
as starting at the base of your spine, then as you breathe in picture the
breath as travelling up your spine to the top and round the inside of your
skull to your nose. As you breathe out, picture the breath moving down the
centre line of your body to the pubic bone. This completes a circle. Breathing
in, up the back, breathing out, down the front. Keep this going for three or
four breathes. This ‘circular breathing’ is just a useful exercise and an
alternative means of focusing yourself when you start a session (instead of
using the three points of breathing in). It has a cleansing relaxing feel.
b)
As the skin is also quite literally an organ for
breathing, we can picture our breathing as from it: on the in breath picture
pulling breath in from your skin (or hands, feet, knees, elbows, back of the
neck) to your still point and out from there through your skin (or hands, feet,
etc). Breathing ‘through the skin’ can make you feel very attuned. This exercise
in imagination is also an alternative means of focusing
yourself at the start of a session
Other variants
Outdoors
Try meditating outdoors where there are trees or water or
mountains. Adopt the visitor's mindset and walk around the area where you
intend to sit. As you walk around, hear and see sounds and sights without
internal commentary. That is, hear and see not as a newsreel running in your
head. Instead, listen as though you were blind and look as though you were
deaf. Then sit and start a calming meditation in which you expand your
awareness to include the location. Be there.
Sound
Sit in a busy city location with an inconspicuous but upright
posture whilst belly breathing. Be still and aware. Cast your eyes down and
listen to the traffic as sound: sound, not noise. Sound as equal in value to
music. You are John Cage: sound is always here and now and like laughter
doesn't have to have any meaning. It is what it is, here and now.
Doing things in the moment
Whilst walking down the street or driving a car keep in the
present thick moment and treat what you are doing as the focus of a
‘meditation’. That is, do what you are doing and label distractions and return
to your focus. Now, this thick moment, is the only time in which you can
realise your potential for action. Things are always done here and now, not
there and then.
Experiments
1.
Imagine you have a very large lemon in your
hand. Feel its weight. Heft it up and down. It has a beautiful skin, a deep
waxy lemon. Get a large very sharp broad bladed knife and wooden chopping
block. Place the lemon on the block and slowly cut it. Now notice, as the knife
cuts through the lemon, juice starts to ooze out along the blade. When it's cut
in two you can see that it is a beautiful and juicy lemon. The juice runs over
your hand. Bring the lemon to your mouth to suck on it. Now back to this page: what is happening
in your mouth? This is a demonstration that imaginative
effort can have definite physiological effects. Knowing this helps to commit to
imaginative exercises and experiments.
2.
Make real imaginative effort to adopt the
traveler’s mind set before the next few meditations, and thereafter.
3.
Have you really listened as though you were
blind and looked as though you were deaf?
Meditation on impermanence
In this section, the meditation needs framing before we
engage in its practice.
n Zen Buddhism, a meditation on impermanence is said to bring great positive potential (karma). And, therefore, anything that reminds us of the transience of things can stir the heart. As a result, “a sensitivity to ephemera" developed. This explains the great appreciation of the cherry blossom in Japanese culture. The short-lived blossom and its falling petals are deeply evocative of the beauty and transience of life.
In some Japanese flower arrangements, they will
have just one flower. Even at a wedding, they can have just one flower on
an alter. The singularity of that flower stands out. You can be much
more aware of a flower’s uniqueness, and much more aware of its ephemeral
nature. The framing of the experience highlights those qualities and
thereby that single flower speaks of all things.
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A
whole aesthetic is part of the Zen tradition. This aesthetic is calledWabi-sabi, defined as the beauty of
things "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" and is an integral
part of the Japanese culture.
All things in Zen are considered as either
evolving from or dissolving into a realm of potentiality. As they do this they
show signs of their coming or going and these signs are considered to be
beautiful. In this, beauty is an altered state of consciousness and can be seen
in the budding and decay of things, or in the imperfections of things. But, these
signatures of nature can be so subtle that it takes a quiet mind and a
cultivated eye to discern them.
A bowl with obvious roughness, asymmetry, and other imperfections is wabi-sabi. Broken bowls may even be repaired with gold and be considered even more beautiful for having been broken, Kentsugi.
There are seven major concepts that come together in Wabi-Sabi. These are: asymmetry, irregularity; simplicity; basic or weathered; without pretence, natural; subtle profound grace, not obvious; unbounded by convention, free; tranquillity.
Second level impermanence
To narrow the scope of this discussion,
let us take a closer look at impermanence. Things are impermanent because they
are produced by causes and conditions. Things arise dependently. As
conditions change at some point things dissolve into other forms. But, this is
true not only of things in the sense of objects. It is true of all things in
the widest sense. This includes our character and the things we do, and the
thoughts we have. Once we understand this we can indeed accumulate the positive
potential that builds up the mind’s openness and receptivity.
And, here I am hinting at a second level of impermanence.
The second level of impermanence is at the
insight level: when we experience things without the filter of our conventional
labels and concepts. In ordinary discourse, we tend to give things a
semblance of permanence through the conventions inherent in our concepts and
labels. It is very useful and easy to do this but we limit ourselves. For
example, when we put ourselves in certain categories and create a sense of permanence
that is limiting. To be able to drop behind the concepts is a desirable
but radical thing to do. What you will find if you look at the relationship
between your conceptions and your inner life of happiness and discontent, is
that your discontents are rooted in conceptions about how things are. If
you can drop behind the concepts and labels, you will have a different
perception of what is actually going on.
It is not that the concepts and
categories are always wrong, it is that they can be limiting in ways that lead
to discontent. Is that really an ugly old woman? To have the flexibility
to see more fully is what we mean by dropping behind the concepts. If we
are always seeing things through the filter of conventions, then we are missing
really important parts of what is actually happening. Why not go out and try to
see an old woman? If you think about her, you will not see her.
Zen puts a lot of emphasis on the
experience of change. You might try that in your life and in your
meditation—to begin seeing that aspect in your present moment experience.
You can watch new things arise in the present—something new comes, and
something that was, goes away. You can notice that things arise, things
pass; suddenly things are there that were not there before, and then they are
gone. Try to do this by dropping behind the concepts and labels.
When you engage in insight meditation,
consider the arising factors, and the dissolving factors of any object of
meditation. For example, what are the arising factors and dissolving factors of
your anger?
End Notes
All roads lead to Rome but you have started your journey
already and you are here, now. You need to know nothing more. You don't need
several maps. You can move forward now: sit!
July 2015
