What Is Meditation, Really?
Meditation is the direct recognition of the nature of mind,
and whatever obscures it.
And that which obscures it can the method of meditation itself!
In the moment of recognition,
there is no meditation.
So, if we keep meditating,
we obscure our reality.
Meditation methods simply lead to being aware of awareness, and whatever obscures that awareness. While we are ‘meditating’, we are doing something. When we finally realise the nature of mind – our essence which is beyond the meditation – we realise that we are this mind essence, free of contamination. That is pure consciousness itself, where there is nothing to do. This is self realisation: realisation arises by itself.
But aren’t we supposed to keep watching the breath?
Watching the breath focuses the mind as a tool of mindfulness. We can spent our life doing mindfulness meditation and still not realise our true nature of pure consciousness … but we become pretty good at watching the breath!
It is not a matter of stopping thoughts. When we sit still, thoughts and impressions constantly bubble away; this is merely our memories, stirring. If we relate to this bubbling, these bubbles turn into thoughts and we are gone … off with the fairies. We live in this way, relating to everything, and it is for this reason that our conventional world is called ‘relative’ reality where we live in memories – a virtual reality – bringing our samsaric world into our meditation; by following our thoughts, we give them a seeming reality.
Realising and staying in pure consciousness is absolute truth. It is the origin of ‘absolute’ reality.
In reality, in pure awareness, we do nothing.
The programmed mind makes the body talk and walk,
while pure consciousness witnesses.
We still play our part
but it’s our past that has written the script:
in seeing that, we can rewrite, until we complete the play.