The Continuum of Meditation

[deci belle]

I pulled this response to a thread about concentration and insight I made and put it here.

 

When concentration and insight are spoken of together in meditation manuals, they are not properly limited to techniques gaining entry to single-mindedness, The breath is used as an expedient device because undisciplined mind needs something at first to rely on— where it is described as using the sickness itself as the medicine.

 

Eventually, the breath should be forgotten in terms of being used as an aid in gaining entry to single minded concentration and insight into aware nature. Meditation is attaining single mindedness; it doesn't have to be deliberate. As such, meditation based on anything is a temporary expedient because aware nature itself is concentration and insight all-at-once without having to be broken down into two things based on observation of breath, thoughts, movement, stillness, etc…

 

But at first we could say meditation is concentration and single-mindedness is insight, because one leads to the other.

 

There are many pairs of terms describing the relationship between concentration and insight.

 

Another term denoting this pair used in manuals is stopping and seeing.

 

They are like one to the other; like respiration itself, alternating endlessly.

 

This is no different than movement and stillness.

 

Movement takes place on the in and out breaths, but it is the stillness that is the alternation between the breaths, so it is not just the alternating direction of the breathing itself …watching this and letting it go …and then letting the letting go too.

 

So the alternations and the relationships constituting the alternations become more and more subtle as practice deepens.

 

Concentration, stopping, stillness; insight, seeing, movement.

 

Because awareness itself is what is unborn, is the primordial itself, we use conditioned awareness (the sickness) to enter the inconceivable (the medicine). Awareness itself is inconceivable, its contents relative. So in this regard, we stop the conditioned aspect to see the absolute. Once we see the absolute, we do not then cling to insight, nor do we cling to the relative. The ultimate is seeing the real from within the conditioned as a natural fact of being aware.

 

Stopping aberrant views results in seeing reality as is, no longer in terms of self and other in everyday ordinary situations.

[deci belle]

So reality becomes suchness when we can see the real as constituting everyday ordinary situations. It is not true as some say that there are so many definitions of "suchness". It is just this as is. When you see this, there has never been aother reality.

Then the raft of endless books of literal translations is overthrown in the sea of its own making.

It is not that reality looks different than illusion in terms of enlightening being, it is a matter of no longer viewing externals as a separate reality because seeing entails accepting the knowledge that the created is nothing but illusion, ourselves included.

So what is reality? There is no other.

So what is illusion? Just what we make of it.

When we don't use illusion, when we don't speculate in it, it turns into reality. This is the meaning of the saying, "Don't use what you can see; use what you don't see."

When we don't use what is visible, we alter our relationship with creation and divorce ourselves from habitual speculations in the created. We don't stop responding to situations, we don't stop following desire— we just don't step over the line and fall into selfish views of self and other.

Just this practice is the highest meditation of all beyond self, other, created and absolute.

Who has the fortitude to realize the independence and inconceivable freedom allowing one to take over creation, step over eternity and arrive at the path of prior illuminates?

When you see your nature, your teacher awaits you on the rise. Just take the single forward step that traverses eternity and accept your function.




ed note: "don't use illusion, when we don't speculate in it" in 6th paragraph

Edited January 18, 2013 by deci belle