This meditation session has a long introduction in which two ideas are brought forward:
the similes used last week (mirage, dream, dew drop, etc.) are related to software in our consciousness. The brain is hardware. The hardware of synaptic firings, brain stem, and such require the habits of consciousness (mental predispositions) to create a reality in which we function. In cultivating gratitude, or noticing, or contemplation, and meditation, one is adding new software, new programming, into habituated consciousness. By repeatedly using the new, i.e. cultivating them, one replaces the old software. One upgrades through updating.
A mirror has no sensations, thoughts or thought processes, no emotions or emotional responses to whatever appears on the surface of the mirror. We are invited to bring this neutrality forward throughout our day.
The soil, water, and sunshine of meditation is shamatha. The Sanskrit term, shamatha, has been variously translated into English. Examples include:
tranquil abiding
peaceful abiding
equipoise
resting the mind
clean-clear spaciousness
focused peaceful awareness
taming the mind so as to train the mind
establishing the ground or establishing ground awareness.
Each translation is correct to what shamatha is, can provide, and opens to. If there is a challenge for a practitioner, especially if unseasoned, one might think that each translation is a distinct result requiring specific practices. There’s a yes/and here. Shamatha is the entire process from learning to recognize how wild one’s mind is, initial taming, grounding and calming practices, up to and including spacious emptiness-clarity, true nonmeditation, and awareness recognized as original face beyond all conceptual references. Each translation, then, is an instruction.
To abide is to float in a stability that has no craving or grasping, no rejecting or preference. Tranquility implies a restfulness, peacefulness, and serenity that is content and has no needs thus no distractions. Equipoise indicates at-one-with-all; no center or periphery; nothing pulling, nothing pushing. Resting the mind – how does one do that when the mind is “all that appears and exists”? Machig Lapdron indicated how. She said, “Buddha is the mind; the mind is space.” Therefore, what all the translation-instructions are pointing toward is spaciousness: a loose floating equipoise, alert, acute, and awake. “Awareness in its seat.” With such instructions, over time and dedicated practice on and off the cushion, one discovers that ground awareness is ever serene, acute, and present; and that this is who or what we are.
since the British first traveled to India. Although the Indian subcontinent and the entire Himalayan area are still living harsh negative results from British colonization, division, and devastating treaties, the world received yoga and meditation.
