Meditation on Meditation

Good morning. This session continues our series on the Six Paramitas. It's number five: Meditation.
Can anyone name the previous four?

Generosity, Discipline, Patience and Enthusiasm

Good. People have been asking about books on the paramitas. So here is an

Awesome reader's guide to the paramitas: https://www.shambhala.com/six-paramitas-readers-guide/

The first four perfections can be found in many spiritual traditions. Of course, we Buddhists have our own take on them, and they aren't a one-to-one match with exalted qualities you will find in Judaism or Christianity, but you won't get a lot of pushback from anyone if you say Generosity, Discipline, Patience and Enthusiasm are admirable qualities in a person.

Buddhist Meditation vs. Western Contemplation

Meditation, and specifically meditation as we mean it here, is different. In the west, when Plato or Buber or Kant talked about meditation, they were speaking of deep contemplation of an idea. Deeply investigating ideas about God, contradictions about the way the world worked, trying to puzzle out why things are the way they are.
Buddhist meditation, as we know, is different. It is an internal journey, but it's not so much a conceptual one. Buddhist meditation is a search for truth, but we are looking for truth that is already there, that is here, not one that will be revealed to us by an external god.
The meditation techniques that we practice were invented in India about 2,500 years ago. Their genius is their simplicity. Our main meditation practice, that starts from day one and continues on all the way through to death or final enlightenment, is to sit and do nothing. We don't do anything! It's so radical and so brilliant.
The basic message is that you have enough already. You, me, with all our glory and our confusion, is enough. No matter how generous, disciplined, patient or enthusiastic you feel or don't feel, you can meditate. No added ingredients. No assembly required.

Meditating in the West: A New and Open Path

What's so fascinating about American Buddhism, or Western Buddhism, is where we meditate. In Asian countries, Buddhism is a state religion, and a big part of the culture of many of the various countries in Asia. But deep meditation is not widely practiced. If you want to be a practitioner in Japan or Tibet or Vietnam, you join a monastery. Even then, the opportunities to practice meditation are more rare than you would think. I once asked Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche if he thought I should go to India or Nepal to study and practice Buddhism and he was very clear - it's a much better practice environment here in the west.
Of course here we don't just meditate in the monasteries or on retreat. We meditate in our bedrooms or on the bus or walking at night. In the west, the traditional division between meditation and the "post meditation experience" is more fluid and more permeable.
I don't want to say that what we call "meditation in action" never happens in Asia. Zen practitioners have a wonderful phrase for this: "Chop Wood, Carry Water". If you've ever seen the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" you know what I mean. Many of the most famous Tibetan lineage teachers worked a day job: Saraha was a hunter. Tilopa was a bouncer at a bar and a sesame seed grinder. Marpa was a beer drinking farmer when he wasn't translating Sanskrit and teaching Milarepa the true nature of mind.
And of course we have monasteries in the west. But most meditation in our culture is happening outside of formal institutions, integrated into our home, our jobs, our distractions and our passions.
We will get to the practice in a second, but I want to point out that we, as western meditators, are embarking on a somewhat new path. We aren't leaving our palace to join the forest renunciates the way the Buddha did. We aren't forsaking our possessions and our families to join a monastery the way so many of our teachers have.
So some of the texts and teachings that come out of those environments might not work for us. Shantideva, who wrote one of the definitive books on the paramitas, spends half of the Meditation chapter arguing that normal daily life with its distractions and pleasures is not worth living. He says we should really abandon all this and go meditate in the woods for the rest of our lives. As romantic as it sounds, that's not going to happen.
So we do have to sort through the teachings and figure out which ones work for us in our life, in this culture, now.
I think, I know, that the core practice of Buddhism - sitting quietly, grounding our attention in the present moment and then gradually letting our awareness expand, being brave in the face of our internal chaos, gradually loosening, relaxing, opening up to ourselves, other beings, and our world, does work in our life.
The growing edge of Buddhism in the west, is how do we bring the groundedness, the peace, the clarity and the compassion that we can develop through meditation practice, into our daily life.

Guided Practice: From Focused to Open Awareness

But we can't merge meditation with daily life without meditating, so let's do that now.
Let's start by establishing a good posture
Let's aspire that this time will bring benefit to ourselves and others.
And let's start this meditation session a little tight. Maybe we will start a little too tight. We will take a quick tour of shamatha vispasayana, gradually opening up. Then in our discussion and when we end the Zoom session, we will experiment with bringing meditation out into our daily life.
Tight body scan
Tight breath attention
Sense of humor. Elise talked about smiling when meditating.
You still feel your body breathing, but you aren't policing your thoughts with as big a club.
We are just sitting here. Doing nothing. Being human.
You feel solid. Stable. Like a mountain in a snowstorm.
You can open your eyes. You can still feel your body breathing even though your eyes are open.
Your mind is still generating thoughts but that's not a problem. We are here together.
Feel your breath go out of your body. Ride the breath out into the world.
Relax the project of meditation. Just sit here connected to ourselves and the world.
Dedicate the merit and then let's take a sense of curiosity and exploration into post meditation. How does this practice bleed into the rest of our day?

Buddhist Meditation vs. Western Contemplation

Meditation, and specifically meditation as we mean it here, is different. In the west, when Plato or Buber or Kant talked about meditation, they were speaking of deep contemplation of an idea. Deeply investigating ideas about God, contradictions about the way the world worked, trying to puzzle out why things are the way they are.

Buddhist meditation, as we know, is different. It is an internal journey, but it's not so much a conceptual one. Buddhist meditation is a search for truth, but we are looking for truth that is already there, that is here, not one that will be revealed to us by an external god.

The meditation techniques that we practice were invented in India about 2,500 years ago. Their genius is their simplicity. Our main meditation practice, that starts from day one and continues on all the way through to death or final enlightenment, is to sit and do nothing. We don't do anything! It's so radical and so brilliant.

The basic message is that you have enough already. You, me, with all our glory and our confusion, is enough. No matter how generous, disciplined, patient or enthusiastic you feel or don't feel, you can meditate. No added ingredients. No assembly required.

Meditating in the West: A New and Open Path

What's so fascinating about American Buddhism, or Western Buddhism, is where we meditate. In Asian countries, Buddhism is a state religion, and a big part of the culture of many of the various countries in Asia. But deep meditation is not widely practiced. If you want to be a practitioner in Japan or Tibet or Vietnam, you join a monastery. Even then, the opportunities to practice meditation are more rare than you would think. I once asked Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche if he thought I should go to India or Nepal to study and practice Buddhism and he was very clear - it's a much better practice environment here in the west.

Of course here we don't just meditate in the monasteries or on retreat. We meditate in our bedrooms or on the bus or walking at night. In the west, the traditional division between meditation and the "post meditation experience" is more fluid and more permeable.

I don't want to say that what we call "meditation in action" never happens in Asia. Zen practitioners have a wonderful phrase for this: "Chop Wood, Carry Water". If you've ever seen the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" you know what I mean. Many of the most famous Tibetan lineage teachers worked a day job: Saraha was a hunter. Tilopa was a bouncer at a bar and a sesame seed grinder. Marpa was a beer drinking farmer when he wasn't translating Sanskrit and teaching Milarepa the true nature of mind.

And of course we have monasteries in the west. But most meditation in our culture is happening outside of formal institutions, integrated into our home, our jobs, our distractions and our passions.

We will get to the practice in a second, but I want to point out that we, as western meditators, are embarking on a somewhat new path. We aren't leaving our palace to join the forest renunciates the way the Buddha did. We aren't forsaking our possessions and our families to join a monastery the way so many of our teachers have.

So some of the texts and teachings that come out of those environments might not work for us. Shantideva, who wrote one of the definitive books on the paramitas, spends half of the Meditation chapter arguing that normal daily life with its distractions and pleasures is not worth living. He says we should really abandon all this and go meditate in the woods for the rest of our lives. As romantic as it sounds, that's not going to happen.

So we do have to sort through the teachings and figure out which ones work for us in our life, in this culture, now.

I think, I know, that the core practice of Buddhism - sitting quietly, grounding our attention in the present moment and then gradually letting our awareness expand, being brave in the face of our internal chaos, gradually loosening, relaxing, opening up to ourselves, other beings, and our world, does work in our life.

The growing edge of Buddhism in the west, is how do we bring the groundedness, the peace, the clarity and the compassion that we can develop through meditation practice, into our daily life.

Guided Practice: From Focused to Open Awareness

But we can't merge meditation with daily life without meditating, so let's do that now.

Let's start by establishing a good posture

Let's aspire that this time will bring benefit to ourselves and others.

And let's start this meditation session a little tight. Maybe we will start a little too tight. We will take a quick tour of shamatha vispasayana, gradually opening up. Then in our discussion and when we end the Zoom session, we will experiment with bringing meditation out into our daily life.

Tight body scan

Tight breath attention

Sense of humor. Elise talked about smiling when meditating.

You still feel your body breathing, but you aren't policing your thoughts with as big a club.

We are just sitting here. Doing nothing. Being human.

You feel solid. Stable. Like a mountain in a snowstorm.

You can open your eyes. You can still feel your body breathing even though your eyes are open.

Your mind is still generating thoughts but that's not a problem. We are here together.

Feel your breath go out of your body. Ride the breath out into the world.

Relax the project of meditation. Just sit here connected to ourselves and the world.

Dedicate the merit and then let's take a sense of curiosity and exploration into post meditation. How does this practice bleed into the rest of our day?