Is Meditation Special?

Special: better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual. From Latin specialis, from species appearance’ 

When we sit in meditation, do we feel special? No, of course not. If we did, we’d be Mara – an enlightened ego making a show. If we think meditation is special, we don’t realise that the experience is common to all, and that is our original reality of pure consciousness. It’s just being ordinary, as opposed to wanting to be special.

Meditation does not need to be dressed up and adorned; we don’t have to have a special cushion or any paraphernalia. These expensive trappings are something to maintain a culture, a religion, an identity.

There is a saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”, which means that the Buddha is not external: it is actually within – the essence of mind. The word ‘Buddha’ simply means awake and purified of causes and effects, meaning that there is no residue of bias, attitude or reaction left in the mind. It is a liberated mind.

If we think that there is something greater than our own pure consciousness, we would never know it because we would be unable to re-cognise it. The very nature of a Buddha is pure consciousness.

A Buddha is nothing special because a Buddha sees Buddha nature in everyone. We say a Buddha because there have been many Buddhas – awakened beings – only a few come into the public consciousness.