Dhr. Seven and attained meditator Kalyani, Wisdom Quarterly (UPDATED 3/29/24) |
| First meditation then maybe levitation (Ruwan_W/Flickr.com) |
The person who wishes to remove a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
The instructions are easy. They couldn't be easier. Just sit.
Nothing could be harder. The
sitting is easy. But the "just," there's the rub! The habit of
discursive-thinking, worrying, wondering, and constantly drifting off is like an ocean current that before we know it pulls us away from
this moment.
(There's
only this moment, but time and again we want to be anywhere but here).
"Be here now." When? Now. Where? Here. What? Just
be.
"That's
too easy! Give me something to
do, something to
accomplish, something to cling to!" Okay. Do this. Become "The Observer," "The Watcher." To do that, instead of
doing, become a human
being. Instead of
becoming something or going somewhere
To be is to see. Watch. What's happening without your input? It's happening so often and without effort that it's easy to miss. What is it?
Breathing. By itself, the breath comes in. By itself, the breath goes out. It does it. So let the breath breathe you. Just watch.
- It is like asking, "Who discovered water?" ANSWER: "I don't know, but you can bet it wasn't a fish." That is, if it's not clear, what we have completely and utterly taken for granted, that we cannot see. But although it is the least salient, it is the most obvious and abundant. If you worry, you won't even notice what you worry about. If you sleep next to a loud river, by morning you won't hear it at all. The brain does the trick is segregating out that part of the signal so we can attend to other more important things. So to be hear now is to begin again to hear what has been going on. And all that loudness in between your eyes is not due to trying to meditate. It is due to being made aware of what has been there so long that we ceased to be aware of it. The breath is just such a thing, so subtle, so taken for granted, that we would never think to notice. It's there, it's always been there, we can ignore it. Only, it's the secret. It's what's going to pull us out. Let's stay with it, attend to it, not veer from it, and not attempt to change or improve it at all. There's not even the judging of, which is a kind of thinking, just knowing it. It has something to show us, and we at this moment have nothing to tell it that it needs. (Maybe at a different time, learn deep abdominal breathing or pranayama exercises, but not now). Now, just let it be. It's the mind that concerns us. And the medicine for the mind is this super subtle thing: the breath. What is the "breath." It is this process going on right now, and only ever now. We don't leap forward to future breaths or reminisce and ruminate about past ones. There's only this one. It's the only one that matters. Let everything else go.
Keep watching. Relaxing in stillness (not initiating movements of mind or body), without effort, without "thinking" (judging, evaluating, measuring, pondering, criticizing, questioning...), the breath
may grow calm. Let it be. But keep watching. That's the effort, the work, the field of endeavor (
kammatthana). It is not easy because it is so subtle and plain and not doing much of anything. We want entertainment and stimuli. This seems the opposite. Without aversion, keep on it. Lean into it. This is it.
Keep watching. The real object of meditation is that subtle breath. It hardly moves. It gets more subtle the more calm we get. To notice it,
attention has to grow stronger to keep up. The easiest thing -- and it may be needed -- is falling asleep because "nothing was happening." But something was.
It was very subtle, and it grew more subtle. And that guide naturally leads to a
sublime state. Sublime is not a synonym of "subtle." Look it up. Sublime is exalted, grand, lofty. How one can come from the other? Why ask why? It does. The subtle leads to the sublime.
Before levitating (the rapture or
piti, the inspired lightness of just being), there is focusing, collecting the mind, stilling it, tranquilizing it, until it is serenely concentrated (but not by any
effort of
trying to concentrate it), gaining
absorption (
jhana, dhyana, zen), developing one-pointedness and equanimity. This is
samma-samadhi (right stillness often misleadingly translated right concentration). It all unfolds by itself.
Follow the breath and everything that's going on -- as a dispassionate (disinterested, unbiased) observer. Be the watcher, the witness, the one who notices and keeps noticing, keeps giving attention. It's the little things in life. To move a mountain, begin with the small stones. Just sit.
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