When we listen to a radio all that we are hearing is the amplification of a specialized vibration of the aether. What we are not hearing is the aether, itself, free and devoid of vibration. Using this analogy, our average of 70,000 different daily thoughts (the good ole monkey-mind) can be thought of as a heterogeneous mixture of mind stuff (tathatā) vibrations into which we have fallen. Taking this one step further, our conditioned world is a vibration of the One Mind—grant you, a highly complex one—but nevertheless a vibration.
Intrinsically, what we are is this mind stuff. But there is one major problem. We don't recognize this mind stuff which is closer to silence than to our thoughts and internal dialogue. We only know its vibrating patterns in the manner of our thoughts and mental images. To think about this mind stuff is something like patting the waves of the water down to see waveless water! It won't work. We can't think our way to gnosis of this waveless mind stuff. Nor can we settle down enough through various meditation/relaxation techniques to stop (nirodha) the vibrations. In a way, finally, mind stuff has to intuit itself. It is a matter of us not being bewitched by the vibrations of mind stuff; seeing our self in this continuing succession of changing vibrational patterns. This is what meditation is really all about: a way to get us to see our self which is devoid of vibrations—the very stuff of the universe.
Let me pause here, and go back to what I said earlier about not being able to settle down enough. When we combine the fact of inner silence, which is still a vibration, and couple this with, in my example, meditating in an abandoned copper mine—although not perfect, we soon get the message of our true self trying to intuit itself which is empty of vibration. Taking this approach for weeks on end does produce a profound change in our psyche. Still it is not perfect but the product is far better than sitting in a Zen center with other people; everyone's psychic field mixing together creating a melange of irreality. For me it was better because I was always awake, not slipping into a kind of theta brainwave state which is easy to do, for some odd reason, when one is in a group.
The silence achieved by me was always in the background which, when combined with coming to my wits' end, this being the checking of the discursive intellect, became the real start of a better Zen path which one night became a sudden intuition of the vibrationless.
Sunn Samaadhi
Posted by: Sunn Samaadh | November 23, 2015 at 02:05 AM