2 Explanations of Meditation
A classic, from the 6th Patriarch of Buddhism, Hui Neng:
Sitting means with any obstructions anywhere, outwardly and under all circumstances, not to activate thoughts. Meditation is internally to see the original nature and not become confused.
My take: I like the "under all circumstances." Makes it more global and all-encompassing. I would, however, change "not to activate thoughts" to "not to attach to thoughts." Perhaps that is what the dude meant. If not, it is a significant difference because we have no say whether or not thought is "activated." It has its own schedule. And anyway, thought can be fun (when there is no investment in it).
A "modern" explanation (1995) from Joan Tollifson (taken from her first book, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up From the Story of My Life):
Meditation is not merely a quest for personal peace of mind or self-improvement. It involves an exploration of the roots of our present global suffering and the discovery of an alternative way of living. Meditation is seeing the nature of thought, how thought constantly creates images about ourselves and others, how we impose a conceptual grid on reality and then mistake the map for the territory itself. Most of the time we aren't even aware that thought is taking place. Meditation is realizing, on ever more subtle levels, that it is. When conceptualization is seen for the imaginary abstraction that it is, something changes.
Meditation is listening. Listening to everything. To the world, to nature, to the body, the mind, the heart, the rain, the traffic, the wind, the thoughts, the silence before sound. It is about questioning our frantic efforts to do something and become somebody, and allowing ourselves simply to be. It is a process of opening and quieting down, of coming upon an immediacy of being that cannot be known or captured by thought, and in which there is no sense of separation or limitation. Meditation is moment-to-moment presence that excludes nothing and sticks to nothing.
Meditation is not dependent on a method or program. It questions any attempt by the mind to construct any program or goal. It relies on no techniques, special practices, costumes, or body positions. It is utterly simple and available to everyone at every moment. Meditation is that which we are, when all that we think we are is not in the way.
Meditation is a powerful antidote to our purposeful, growth-oriented, war-mongering, speed-driven, ever-productive consumer civilization, which is rapidly devouring the earth. In doing meditation work we do not, as is commonly imagined, retreat from reality, but from our habitual escapes from reality. Meditation is a social and political act. Listening and not-doing are actions far more powerful than most of us have yet begun to realize. But meditation is much more (and much less) than all of this.
Meditation is not knowing what meditation is.
My take: This is my personal favorite. I haven't found an explanation that is more spot-on. If you like Joan's approach see more of her at: http://home.earthlink.net/~wakeupjt/index.html.
posted by endofthedream @ Saturday, March 17, 2007
11 comments
11 Comments:
I think I could spend all day sharing thoughts on these subjects. Joan is another of my favorites. I think what some of these teachers, if we can use that term, have in common is that they not peddling a formula for enlightment. They are really talking about living your life in a way that is reality based. This afternoon I am going to attend a lecture by Matthew Flickstein called "The Seven Concentric Circles of Spiritual Development." It is about a model of spiritual development that explains how all spiritual paths ultimately lead to clarity of mind. He is a buddhist monk who helped start the Bhavana Society Monastery. It should be interesting. Being a "student" of K, I sometimes attend these things with a somewhat jaundiced eye but we will see.
Karen
The Tibetan word for meditation (sgom) literally meanse "to become familiar with"
Nice and succinct.
Sgom.
btw, Karen, I was talking smack about Ken Wilbur, the bald guy from Boulder.
Actually, I haven't read much of his writings, so I don't know if he's a decent teacher, or what.
I'm not really into teachers anymore...
Oh Ken Wilbur. I have never read any of his writings. Some of what I have scanned just seemed to complicated or something. It just didn't strike a chord with me.
He just seems a bit too popular to me, for some reason.
I've heard good things about him from people who's opinion I value more than I do my own. That's proved to be an unwise thing for me to do in the past.
I didn't want to hear the album Nevermind, by Nirvana (it's by Nirvana, so I'm not off-topic) when it came out. At that time I was real into other bands on their former lable, Sub Pop, but I'd only heard that single that they played on MTV, and saw a couple interviews and dismissed the band as whiny punk wannabes.
Oops.
So, Ken Wilbur might be a fine teacher.
I've put down the books and I even stopped sitting (for a while, I could go back at anytime, the desire to do so is there). Before I came here I thought I had nothing more to say about whateveryouwannacallit.
I think I just like to talk.
I should at least take the time to preview my posts before publishing them.
I had said"That's proved to be an unwise thing for me to do in the past."
I was speaking of dismissing somebody because they were too popular. Nirvana was hugely popular at a time when none of the bands I liked were.
Sorry for not being clearer about that totally unimportant piece of babble.
mudderpugger, I looked up Erich Schiffman and I have him bookmarked. His whole book and history is online which is really nice. I am always interested in other people's point of view of stillness, which is why I guess I follow Krishnamurti. There is something in bare stillness that I am drawn to.From the time I was very young,(I was a very weird little kid) I liked going up to our attic and just sitting in the quiet. The attic was pretty bare and had it's own kind of attic smell, which I can still recall. I did then what I still do today which is I just sit and wait. I don't know what I'm waiting for. Sometimes the level of stillness and attention can get very intense. When I start reading books that give how-to's or explaining things too much, that's when the stillness leaves me. It's only taken nearly 30 years and many dollars in books to learn this, but it's starting to become pretty clear. That's why no Ken Wilber for me. I love the Tibetan Buddhist in our area, but again, it's too complicated. I don't think my brain can hold it all.
Karen, your description of sitting in the attic as a child just jarred a memory I have of being a very young child and going down to the creek bank near my home and sitting... not really thinking or contemplating anything in particular. It was "my" spot.
I remember the smell of the moss and the sound of the water and the rustling of creatures in the dead leaves all around.
There's an important point here. What we call meditation is at its root, nothing special (to steal a phrase) and a habit a lot of people sense naturally.
The term stillness is an interesting one, it can be misleading as what is ever still? Everything appears to be in constant motion.
Erich used it, if I remember correctly (iffy, readers are encouraged to check my facts as I ain't gonna) comparing it to the stillness of a spinning top- centered, appearing still, but spinning smoothly.
I think non-attachment is a big part of "achieving" such a level of "stillness." Before I started studying and practicing "Buddhism"
(that's for all the "you smoke pot, you don't and have never practiced Buddhism" crowd out there, to whom I'd say "In that case, it's a good thing nobody ever stuck Siddhartha into a smoke-filled room, it might have erased all of his "Buddhism" and none of us would be here today!") I used to sit on rocks in the middle of rivers and streams (I live in the mountains) and do this thing where I'd let my mind clear by watching the surface of the stream with all its features flow by me, without allowing my attention to grab onto any particular swirl or wave. I'd allow the surface of the river to flow by my vision, with the sort of attention I later heard Alan Watts speak of as "floodlight" attention, as opposed to "spotlight" attention. I was aware of all the whirlpools and waves and flotsam, and this could only be so if I didn't allow my attention to be grabbed by any one feature of the stream's surface.
You dig?
That's zazen, man.
Anyone got a problem with that?
it's also practicing choiceless awareness- where I to focus on a particular wave or ripple, my attention would get carried downstream until whatever it was I was focusing on vanished, leaving me to find another whirpool to focus on; that's exercising choice in your awareness.
To go back to the metaphor endo and I were yammering about about whirlpools not existing; Choosing a wave to stare at, one loses the stream itself, and starts identifying with "things" such as "whirlpools". All of a sudden, it's a world of patterns and features on the river's surface, where if the flow is allowed to enter and then the field of vision without attaching to it, the wholeness of the river is sensed first.
Like wow, man.
The term stillness is an interesting one, it can be misleading as what is ever still? Everything appears to be in constant motion.
It's the other way around, isn' it?
The macro-vision is that everything appears to be still; you do not appear to change, moment to moment (unless something radical happens, like a haircut or a limb being severed).
But when understood (or appreciated) on the micro-level (quantum), it is seen (by no one) that there is only on-going movement. This movement, this flow is so total that it is not even possible to point to a specific or particular thing which is in motion. It might be more accurate to say all there is is flux and not some "thing" which undergoes flux. (BTW, I like the spinning top analogy!)
I think non-attachment is a big part of "achieving" such a level of "stillness."
Non-attachment is not something that one can manufacture.
it's also practicing choiceless awareness- where I to focus on a particular wave or ripple, my attention would get carried downstream until whatever it was I was focusing on vanished, leaving me to find another whirpool to focus on; that's exercising choice in your awareness.
To go back to the metaphor endo and I were yammering about about whirlpools not existing; Choosing a wave to stare at, one loses the stream itself, and starts identifying with "things" such as "whirlpools".
Whether or not there is staring at the wave or the flowing stream is not up to us. For some, there can be value in realizing that nothing is up to us. Not what we think, what we do, what we feel. "We" are not in control of it, being rather the driven, not the driver.
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