One of the most damaging aspects to meditation practice is this kind of desire to progress. I have noticed myself getting into this habit of being quite determined in the practice at the beginning, almost as though I had a big battling ram and I was wanting to overcome instances of distraction, fatigue or pain. It's only that the harder I push, the more exhausting it feels to practice. And there comes a point where all the dreams of progress are quite empty, predetermined. They start to look quite absurd in a sense: as though one were trying to dream about something that I expect to experience. Not only is the dream quite elusive when I do attain it, but there is no way we can fit the circumstances into that limited dream.
Somehow, it seems that the philosopher Kierkegaard had a good way of putting these experiences. He writes about eternal possibility as being the true source of hope, and even proposes a kind of "education of the eternal", when he remarks: "In possibility the eternal is continually near enough to be at hand and yet far enough away to keep man (sic) advancing towards the eternal, on the way, in forward movement." (p.237) I think the interesting point is that meditation is precisely pointing to this eternal, yet it is hard to pinpoint just what that 'eternal' really is. The experience of the eternal has sometimes been described as an act of sheer grace. Eternity is able to advance like a like that shines on everything, only when people stop thinking that they need to use their own power to somehow create that eternity within themselves. The nearness of eternity is precisely this understanding that the very mind we use to see, feel, to know, to act, etc. is this mind, or the true mind. But the farness of eternity is that I continue to believe that I need to add a head to another head: I have to work to create an experience, or define it for myself.
Very often, in meditation, I find myself trying to create an experience, because I believe that this is the way the true mind is supposed to feel. I assign certain experiences as positive while others are 'off the mark'. But the point of the practice is not to say 'this' experience is the best. On the contrary, it is to affirm every experience, in clear awareness. Not even to affirm: in fact, it is simply to know, in a spacious and compassionate way, that this experience is part of Buddha mind. But the problem is exactly that the tendency to want to shape experience in a certain way that feels spiritual is precisely what blocks the true knowing of this Buddha mind as being in every single experience.
In fact, it is a discriminating tendency to divide spiritual aspects of practice from 'non-spiritual'. The practice is in fact to trace all the phenomena back to the source from which they are supported. This means that there is simply no phenomena that could not serve as a trace to look into the mind. When I finally realize that every phenomena is just precisely the material to know the mind, I can stop pushing it away. I see that this 'stuff' that I so dislike is actually a form of the mind.
But the interesting thing is that even in not getting or not grasping the point I just mentioned, I am using the same mind. I remember Fashi talking about the gold that can be shaped into a beautiful figure or a toilet. The gold itself does not change. So why am I worried about not 'getting' the point when this very 'not getting' is precisely the true mind? If I knew in that very instant that even 'not getting' something is the true mind, would I keep seeking something more pristine or 'less confused' then what I have now?
Kierkegaard, Soren (1962). Works of Love. New York: Harper Perennial.
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