Some practitioners of Zen believe that learning how to do zazen is all that is really necessary. A nice side benefit, one doesn’t have to do a lot of book reading. Just go to some Zen center and learn how to sit properly—that is the important part.
It would be nice if this were true, but it is not. Given the fact that the transcendent part of us is interfacing with the part that is impermanent, suffering, and not really us, should give us pause to reflect that maybe there is more to meditation than meets the eye. And certainly more than just sitting ramrod straight on a pillow.
To really grasp what meditation is all about we first have to accept the fact that the transcendent part of us is mixed up with the finite part of us, or the Five Aggregates, thus, making it really difficult to see the transcendent and attain nirvana.
In this mixed-up state (our normal state!), how do we distinguish something which is subtle, yet finite, from the highest state which is hyper subtle and transcendent? The question is not easy to answer for obvious reasons. Still, we have to take aim at the transcendent which is continually interfacing with a finite body, not to mention its temporal thoughts, internal dialogues, and anxieties.
What gives us both hope and help is knowing that we are fundamentally the deathless (amrita) absolute. The only problem pressing in on us is we can’t seem to find our absoluteness in the riot of temporal finitude no matter how hard we look. Nevertheless, looking for it is what meditation is really about.
Picasso once said, "I don't look, I find."
Posted by: Jure | March 28, 2012 at 09:11 AM