Meditational hypocrisy

When I first sat in meditation at my local Soto Zen center long ago (I think it was in 1965), for me, it was like practicing being still.  I had never sat this still before.  But this was not the case with my ordinary human mind which included lots of internal dialogue, and picture thinking.  Sitting still for long periods of time I didn’t find that difficult.  It was trying to control my human mind that was difficult.  Let me put it this way.  My body was still but not my mind.  I had achieved a state of meditational hypocrisy!

In an attempt to calm down my noisy mind, I would follow my breath until images of some of the girls I dated in high school came dancing through my brain.  It was sort of like in the first scene in the movie, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) when the character Frank Chambers first sees Cora Smith played by Lana Turner.  Discipline immediately breaks down.  I couldn’t follow my breath, but I could follow my mental image of Shirley, the A cheerleader, who I had dated several times.  Still, on the outside I appeared to be a seated Buddha.  I hardly moved a muscle.

Trying to control my thoughts was difficult.  I have to admit, I was never successful.  The only benefit I could see from seated meditation was that I gained the ability to stand in a long line better than most people or sit longer without fidgeting.

Only many years later did I come to understand the more profound fundamentals of meditation.  It wasn’t about trying to control my thoughts or follow my breathing.  To put it briefly, meditation was about gaining the laser-like ability to focus directly on the very substance of my thoughts and mental images (this substance being pure Mind or tathata).  It was also the ability to be more and more antecedent to my breathing—neither following the in breath nor the out breath.  Naturally, the physical body became less of a burden but also it became apparent that my ability to connect with the very substance of thought (i.e., pure Mind) brought me, in a manner of speaking, to a place or universal medium that was utterly transcendent.

I gradually came to understand that the phenomenal world with all of its variety was fundamentally the substance of pure Mind—nothing more.  This Mind only seemed to be pluralized owning to ignorance.  Moreover, not knowing the medium of pure Mind it seemed the only path I could take, as far as meditation was concerned, was being a meditational hypocrite: calm looking on the outside but with a monkey mind (kapicitta) on the inside. 

 

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[minx]

My Master told me;

"There is only Mind. Beyond its true nature, nothing [real]. Either you get to know IT as such or you do not and remain ignorant, with all the suffering befalling such a a poor choice.
Genuine dhyana as adviced by the shining ones, confirms this view irrevocably, thus strenghtening your resolve to reach the other shore. Mere dead sitting on the other hand, is a waste of time and excellent proof that you are still bound to the body consciousness of birth and death."