How to meditate wrong (Zen)

(ECHOES OF LOST KNOWLEDGE) The Zen teaching that tells us to stop "trying" | Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch of Zen (Chan)

What is the way to enlightenment after effortlessly settling into the zen state of serenity and stillness?

• What is right "mindfulness" defined? (Ven. Analayo)
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• Book review: Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

Path of calm and insight

If Buddhism is the marriage of wisdom and compassion, then the historical Buddha's path-of-practice is calm and insight. To gain calm, let go (no effort required). To gain insight, practice vipassana by the fourfold setting up of mindfulness (sati), a practice called satipatthana.

Insight into what? Mind-and-body to see three personally verifiable marks of existence

In Early Buddhism, the Pali term dhamma vicaya (Sanskrit धर्मविचय-) has been variously translated as "keen investigation of things" (Wisdom Quarterly), the "analysis of [various] qualities" [1], "discrimination of dhammas [phenomena]" [2, Note 1], "discrimination of states" [3], "investigation of [the] doctrine [the Dharma]," [4, Note 2], and "searching [for] the [ultimate] Truth" [5].

• The Three Universal Marks (Characteristics) of Existence

The meaning, which may seem tricky to translate, is clear and not ambivalent in context. In the two Four Foundations of Mindfulness sutras (MN). It is the systematic investigation of physical-and-mental phenomena (dhamma, "things") -- "body and mind" in terms of their ultimate constituents, which are "form particles" (rupa kalapas) and "mind moments" (cittas).

• It would be wonderful if this were not disputed by nonpracticing scholars. Practitioners who read and follow the two sutras can see the meaning very easily; however, in practice, it is far better to seek out a competent teacher who has known-and-seen these things. In that way, there is no speculation, interpretation, or arguing to be had. The scholar-monk and master practitioner Pa Auk Sayadaw (Ven. Bhaddanta Āciṇṇa) is all about the practical: How will one ever be able to "see" a particle (kalapa)? By purifying (visuddhi) the heart/mind, one is suddenly able to make use of all its powers. But particles move far too fast and live far too briefly to ever be discerned or analyzed by the mind's eye because the mind/heart has a speed limit due to the number of impulsions (javanas) in a mind-moment.
• So here's the trick. Locate the "mind door," which is a green light near the physical heart. This door is a mirror of sorts reflecting everything in consciousness. It records. And the recording can be played back in slow-motion so as to see the life of the kalapa (form particle, which has three distinct phases that can be observed directly: arising, turning, passing). It does not stand even for a single moment, but rather passes through these three submoments.

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  Practical instructions, not theory

  How can anything composed of form (materiality, the mahabhuta or Four Great Elements, which are actually four qualities of matter, not matter itself, which come in pairs as outlined in Pa Auk Sayadaw's book Four Elements Meditation) be real if everything made up of particles is constantly passing away and always hurtling towards destruction? This is not a belief; for it to be effective, one must literally know-and-see it happening all the time all around but especially in this body we call the "self." Most people can quickly comprehend that the body is not the self, but nearly everyone gets stuck believing that the "self" must therefore be the mind (awareness, the watcher, the doer) or consciousness itself (which is an impersonal process, not a thing in and of itself). The Buddha searched for a self that was not be found and went into very great detail to catalogue that process masquerading as a "self" (soul, atman, atta, ego, personality, true self, higher self), which is recorded in the very dense collection of sacred texts, the Abhidhamma, and Buddhaghosa's meditation manual The Path of Purification. See A Guide Through the Abhidhamma for a comprehensive introduction to the details. It will be impossible to ever believe there is, ultimately speaking, no self until one does a systematic search of mind, of which consciousness is but one component.
• Wait, why would anyone in his or her right mind ever want to find out that there's no self? Surely that would mean annihilation, oblivion, falling into the void, the vast emptiness, utter destruction, the loss of everything?!
• One would want to because that is the entrance into the stream that leads inevitably to full awakening, enlightenment, and liberation from all suffering here and now in this very life. It is on account of not seeing this, not comprehending Dependent Origination, that we have all been lost and wandering, life after life, through this interminable and miserable (unfulfilling) samsara, seeking for pleasure now here, now there, existence after existence, state after state, world after world until there's nothing new that we have not already experienced many times over only to be disappointed and misled yet again.

This, of course, will be impossible...until the meditative absorptions (jhanas) purify and intensify the heart/mind to make that investigation, discrimination, analysis.

In the meantime, the practice of Four Elements Meditation and the application of discernment (by wise reflection or yoniso manasikara, which includes seeing things as they really are, including their repulsive aspect or patikula-manasikara that we normally work so hard to ignore) to body-mind phenomena in the application of right effort, so as to gain entry into the first absorption (jhana, the first "meditation") if "mindfulness of in-and-out breathing meditation" (which is the first practice in the setting up of the first of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness) has failed to bring one there.

ETYMOLOGY: According to Rupert Gethin, "Dhamma-vicaya means either the 'discrimination of dhammas' or the 'discernment of dhamma'; to discriminate dhammas is precisely to discern dhamma"[6].

But, again, this is the confusion of something very simple and straightforward. One does NOT study Dharma (capital D Dhamma) during mindfulness meditation. What one DOES do is analyze, discern, and discriminate the "things" (phenomena, dhammas) the sutra specifies:

• 2. feelings (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, whether corporeal or spiritual);
• 3. mind states (lustful or free of lust, angry or free of aversion, deluded or free of delusion, contracted or expansive, exalted or mundane, surpassable or unsurpassable, samādhi or not-samādhi [still and coherent or not], released or bound); and
• 4. mind-objects (the [presence or absence of] the Five Hindrances and the Seven Factors of Enlightenment). See Lists of the Fourfold Setting up of Mindfulness or satipatthana here.
• 1. The first foundation is the body, and the body is usually known through parts of the body or more deeply by knowing the Four Great Elements in their tangible expressions as hard, soft, wet, dry, hot, cold, smooth or rough, heavy or light, and so on. (See Four Elements Meditation for details).
• More: dhamma vicaya (Wikipedia)
• ECHOES OF LOST KNOWLEDGE (video); Dhr. Seven, Ani Kalyani, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY Wiki edit