Letting Go of Self in Equanimity

 I am reflecting on both recent Chan talks in Toronto, the first by Gilbert and the second by Venerable Guo Shang, and how they both emphasized in their own way that practice is not only stillness. When stillness (samatha) is practiced without an accompanying insight or investigation into experience, it can only become a dead sort of practice which lacks vitality, because it ends up seeking silence. The opposite of this is a mindset that is so pliable that it welcomes every guest, without becoming enamored with any of the guests.
   During the meditation practice today, I tried to adopt Silent Illumination by taking a yielding stance toward the scattered thoughts arising. While investigating the source of thoughts, I was seeing the thought itself without desire for the thought. I did reach a kind of glimpse into seeing thoughts as bubbles that have no substantial existence, but then this thought of glimpsing threw me off by creating a self concept around the seer. This practice of Silent Illumination is, at least for me, quite difficult, because I have a habit of confusing the thought of still contemplation for the experience. In desiring to reach this state, this anxious self emerges that wants to direct the experience toward its own benefit, almost like a movie director who is determined to scrape up an Oscar for meditative practice. Even that tiny desire for personal gain somehow becomes an obstacle to seeing with equanimity because it treats the latter as an agenda rather than as a natural outcome of a clear and still mind. There is still a desire there and still strong self-attachment there, it seems.
   I have found that this practice requires going beyond the sense of self and gain, but it seems like there is going to be a time when in doing so, one feels that there is no purpose or value to practice and one is not getting anywhere. I believe that Master Sheng Yen once compared this state to being on a mist-covered mountain, where one does not know one's 'stage' relative to the top, or how many steps they have left to get to the summit. But by letting go of the need to achieve anything from practice, there is already this space to move freely, because one is not afraid of failing the self's expectations or desires. At this point, the only thing left to do is just walk, and one learns that there doesn't need to be a self to walk anymore, or even a measure of the ability to walk.