The kind of spirituality I value
is one in which you get great joy
out of contributing to life, not
just sitting and meditating,
although meditation is certainly
valuable. But from the meditation,
from the resulting consciousness,
I would like to see people in
action creating the world that they
want to live in.
~ Marshall Rosenberg
Mindfulness is both
a state of being and
a daily spiritual practice,
a form of meditation.
~ David Richo
Meditation is a practice that will bring into word and action that which is known at the level of the soul.
~ Iyanla Vanzant
Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of perceptions when I went to listen to him in London on my birthday in October 2000, and what he had to say has stuck with me all of these years. He said that we see everything through our perceptions, and they are nearly always wrong. This was brought home to me again when reading Byron Katie’s work. The first question she says to ask about anything we are facing is ‘is that true?’ It is amazing how many thoughts can float through our minds each day, and when the question ‘is that true?’ is asked, the answer is ‘no’.
~ gill
Our perceptions are conditioned by the many afflictions that are present in us: ignorance, craving, hatred, anger, jealousy, fear, habit energies, etc. We perceive phenomena on the basis of our lack of insight into the nature of impermanence and interbeing. Practicing mindfulness, concentration, and deep looking, we can discover the errors of our perceptions and free ourselves from fear and clinging. All suffering is born from wrong perceptions. Understanding, the fruit of meditation, can dissolve our wrong perceptions and liberate us. We have to be alert always and never seek refuge in our perceptions.
Self-consciousness is at once the most obvious and central fact of my life and the most elusive. If I search for my self in meditation, I find it is like trying to catch my own shadow. I reach for it, but there’s nothing there. Then it reappears elsewhere. I glimpse it from the corner of my mind’s eye, turn to face it, and it’s gone. Each time I think I’ve pinned it down, it turns out to be something else: a bodily sensation, a mood, a perception, an impulse, or simply awareness itself.
I cannot find the self by pointing my finger at any physical or mental trait and saying: “Yes, that’s me.” For such traits come and go, whereas the sense of “I” remains constant. But neither can I put my finger on something other than these traits that-however ephemeral and contingent they may be-nonetheless define me.
The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me. The more I delve into this mystery of who I am (or what anything is), the more I just keep going. There is no end to it, only an infinite trajectory that avoids falling into the extremes of being and nonbeing. This trajectory is not only the center, which is free from this duality, but the central path itself.
I have a friend who is an artist. Before he left Vietnam
forty years ago, his mother held his hand and told him,
“Whenever you miss me, look into your hand, and you will
see me immediately.” How penetrating these simple, sincere
words! Over the years, my friend looked into his hand many times.
The presence of his mother is not just genetic. Her spirit, her
hopes, and her life are also in him. When he looks into his hand,
he can see thousands of generations before him and thousands
of generations after him. He can see that he exists not only in
the evolutionary tree branching along the axis of time, but also
in the network of interdependent relations. He told me that he
never feels lonely.
When my niece came to visit me last summer, I offered her “Look
into Your Hand” as a subject for her meditation. I told her that
every pebble, every leaf, and every butterfly are present in her
hand.
The insights of insight meditation are intuitive, not conceptual. Intuitive in this sense does not mean some kind of vague feeling about something; rather, it means clearly, directly seeing and experiencing how things really are.
For example, you are sitting in meditation, watching the breath. All of a sudden your mind settles into a different space. Even if it is just for a couple of moments, you feel a deeper kind of calm and peace. Instead of struggling to be with the breath, you begin just to rest with the breath in a very calm, effortless, way.
That is an insight through direct experience into the nature of calm and tranquillity. You do not think about them or reflect on them. You know that daffodils are yellow because you have seen them. You know the nature of calm and tranquillity because you have felt them in your heart.
There are many such experiences, and many levels of each one; and each time we know them directly, it is as if we open to a new way of seeing, of being. This is insight.
But often our mind becomes so excited by each new experience that we start thinking. “Look at that. I’m so calm. This is great Or we start reflecting discursively on impermanence or suffering or whatever the particular insight-experience has been.
We need to take a lot of care. If we fail to note such reflections and become caught up in them instead – and Dharma reflections can become extremely compelling and interesting – they themselves become a hindrance to deepening insight. Sometimes people become obsessed with Dharma thoughts, with reflections about genuine insights they have had.
So try to differentiate clearly between true intuitive insight and thinking about it. Knowing the difference can save you trouble and delay. You do not have to worry about later finding words to communicate your insights. Our mind very rarely has a problem coming up with the words. Simply staying present with each new arising appearance allows the whole Dharma journey to unfold.