Tony
24th September 2011, 14:05
Study, reflect and meditate.
Through study, we arrive at some interest in our subject.
Then we need to analyse and reflect on this, over a nice hot cup of tea, to get some conviction.
But now, this needs to be assimilated through personal experience of meditation to verify without doubt what we have ascertained through study and reflection.
The tea is optional!
It is the meditation that produces the transformation – only meditation can break through habitual patterns both learned and karmic, as we have now taken time to look, see and drop. Gradually, we become healthy human beings, following a path that will clear karma and karmic patterns. What needs to be dropped naturally falls away, revealing more and more clarity, which has been there all the time. We start to see for ourselves! Then we have the impetus to study and reflect some more.
To achieve liberation when one has distorted, learned, habitual patterns is difficult... this always depends on the individual. Some may be able to follow the path without dealing with the separate issue of becoming a healthy human. However, many of us have intense distortions and if we hear teachings, in this frame of mind, this may distort our patterns even further, as we have got used to clinging to all sorts of ideas coming our way.
This is always a dilemma on an open forum – and this why we are urged to study and reflect, and not just jump in.
For such person, if you tell them there is no identity etc, it could make it all worse..and to hear that everything is suffering could create even more problems. Or, on the other hand, they may be able to accept and realise something. But then again, people looking at this forum...are looking!
For harmony to be achieved at the conventional level of truth - every day life - we have to have realised absolute truth and then the conventional truth naturally comes into harmony. Then we become healthy human beings.
Conventional truth, in the absence of realisation of absolute truth, cannot function properly.
It becomes reified/fixed, and doesn't function according to its own nature, and thus it gets exaggerated.
When absolute truth and conventional truth work together we have a fluid state, because we haven't reified everything (made it solid).
Then every day becomes different, because we are not working in so much of a set pattern, so life becomes creative and spontaneous. We may then be in a place where the wool cannot be pulled over our eyes!
You have to trust something, so trust your knowing...not the fixated thoughts!
However, through meditation, space and light are expanded in the mind. A little clarity just seems to happen, and this can reveal insight.
Now, here we have to be very careful not to fall into the trap of imagination and guess work. That is the reified “I” showing up again, because our habitual patterns are taking over.
As the mind clears, answers can be found, and the dots join up!
Here we are still working with the mere “I”.
If you want to know the truth, you have to go beyond concepts, beyond the conceptual world.
The conceptual world is still in relative truth of impermanent phenomena.
I would have to say that filling your mind with conspiracy theories only serves to make the mind coarse. That is not a mind to realise the subtle truth. We will be pulled in two opposite directions at the same time. Instead of looking inward, we are distracted by the outside.
This does not mean that someone who is interested in the inner work, will not know what is going on outside. It is just that they do not make such a big deal about it.
Here is an example of missing the point.
If one only takes a superficial glance at meditation, one might mistake a vacant state for meditation.
The vacant blank state is, in fact, called ignorance.
There is no virtue in it...no emotion, no thinking, no insight and no knowing.
It is indescribable as nothing whatsoever is going on.
Now the good news!
By merely being aware of that blank vacant state with no thought or mental activity, look naturally into the one who perceives this state and who remains without thinking.
When you do so, there is an awareness free from experiencer and experienced – it is non dual.
Once you have resolved that this is your own nature, and that there is nothing besides this, you arrive at conviction.
This nature is also indescribable, but has a different quality to it.
Cognisance of the outer relative world is important, but if it is exaggerated, it can cause more distorted problems.
To repeat; the relative and absolute world must be realised as inseparable, otherwise we will live in the extremes.
Through study, we arrive at some interest in our subject.
Then we need to analyse and reflect on this, over a nice hot cup of tea, to get some conviction.
But now, this needs to be assimilated through personal experience of meditation to verify without doubt what we have ascertained through study and reflection.
The tea is optional!
It is the meditation that produces the transformation – only meditation can break through habitual patterns both learned and karmic, as we have now taken time to look, see and drop. Gradually, we become healthy human beings, following a path that will clear karma and karmic patterns. What needs to be dropped naturally falls away, revealing more and more clarity, which has been there all the time. We start to see for ourselves! Then we have the impetus to study and reflect some more.
To achieve liberation when one has distorted, learned, habitual patterns is difficult... this always depends on the individual. Some may be able to follow the path without dealing with the separate issue of becoming a healthy human. However, many of us have intense distortions and if we hear teachings, in this frame of mind, this may distort our patterns even further, as we have got used to clinging to all sorts of ideas coming our way.
This is always a dilemma on an open forum – and this why we are urged to study and reflect, and not just jump in.
For such person, if you tell them there is no identity etc, it could make it all worse..and to hear that everything is suffering could create even more problems. Or, on the other hand, they may be able to accept and realise something. But then again, people looking at this forum...are looking!
For harmony to be achieved at the conventional level of truth - every day life - we have to have realised absolute truth and then the conventional truth naturally comes into harmony. Then we become healthy human beings.
Conventional truth, in the absence of realisation of absolute truth, cannot function properly.
It becomes reified/fixed, and doesn't function according to its own nature, and thus it gets exaggerated.
When absolute truth and conventional truth work together we have a fluid state, because we haven't reified everything (made it solid).
Then every day becomes different, because we are not working in so much of a set pattern, so life becomes creative and spontaneous. We may then be in a place where the wool cannot be pulled over our eyes!
You have to trust something, so trust your knowing...not the fixated thoughts!
However, through meditation, space and light are expanded in the mind. A little clarity just seems to happen, and this can reveal insight.
Now, here we have to be very careful not to fall into the trap of imagination and guess work. That is the reified “I” showing up again, because our habitual patterns are taking over.
As the mind clears, answers can be found, and the dots join up!
Here we are still working with the mere “I”.
If you want to know the truth, you have to go beyond concepts, beyond the conceptual world.
The conceptual world is still in relative truth of impermanent phenomena.
I would have to say that filling your mind with conspiracy theories only serves to make the mind coarse. That is not a mind to realise the subtle truth. We will be pulled in two opposite directions at the same time. Instead of looking inward, we are distracted by the outside.
This does not mean that someone who is interested in the inner work, will not know what is going on outside. It is just that they do not make such a big deal about it.
Here is an example of missing the point.
If one only takes a superficial glance at meditation, one might mistake a vacant state for meditation.
The vacant blank state is, in fact, called ignorance.
There is no virtue in it...no emotion, no thinking, no insight and no knowing.
It is indescribable as nothing whatsoever is going on.
Now the good news!
By merely being aware of that blank vacant state with no thought or mental activity, look naturally into the one who perceives this state and who remains without thinking.
When you do so, there is an awareness free from experiencer and experienced – it is non dual.
Once you have resolved that this is your own nature, and that there is nothing besides this, you arrive at conviction.
This nature is also indescribable, but has a different quality to it.
Cognisance of the outer relative world is important, but if it is exaggerated, it can cause more distorted problems.
To repeat; the relative and absolute world must be realised as inseparable, otherwise we will live in the extremes.