So you want to be a meditator?
The founder of the OBC, RM Jiyu, said something along the lines of, “it is better not to start at all, than to start and then try to stop”. Once the bliss of ignorance has had a little light shone on it, it will be painful to try and resume normal service.
We might assume that it is us that determined this “start”, but that is not necessarily entirely so, what we are aware of is only a small snapshot at best. The following-on is in our hands, and it requires stepping out beyond knowing and not knowing.
It’s difficult to be truly thorough throughout a lifetime of meditation practice. Liberated activity is always accessible though, right under our feet. Thoroughness is serious work and it is rewarding simultaneously. Much like the work of a bird flying, exercising without doubt or desire, enjoying its natural attributes and its environment, so too is the unobstructed joy of the meditator. This joyful function tends not to be obvious to the habitual mind, it may even appear unpalatable at times.
Many of us, I think, taste a little of the freedom found through zazen and then find ourselves in whirlpools of one kind or another, outside of zazen. Cycles of being just on the edges of our true capacities, occasionally pulled into the still and unified centre and then spun out in repetitive frustrating cycles, alternating between satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This will continue until we do something about ourselves.
The way of meditation is also the way of fulfilment at every step and it is totally free of repetition. It is the enjoyment of intrinsic nature no matter what we have done or not done in the past, and no matter our current situations and conditions. If it seems a grind at times, in looking, we can see that there’s never any substantial obstacle. Serious application in meditation takes us beyond being endlessly caught up in appearances.
All teaching comes from meditation and points back to it. Ever since people have tried to help others practice, the necessity of diligent application has been pointed to. An old analogy used is of someone wishing to light a fire, they don’t stop at the first signs of the tinder catching, they must continue to care for the elements at each stage in order to act appropriately and have a blazing fire.
The daily opportunities to delve into and merge with unbounded freedom are constantly being presented to us. These opportunities are easily overlooked and easily undervalued, perhaps because they are subtle and quiet on the whole and also of no use to the needy mind. These open gateways in ordinary experience are infinite in number, even the smallest turning towards just one is deeply significant.
All that is really needed is to look. Looking entails facing what we are doing with our minds, over and over without end. When looking becomes just seeing, then it is clear that seeing has always been our true self from the first, even when it seemed that we were blind. Easy to say, not easy to do, it’s not sporadic heroic efforts that are needed, but an attentive consistent giving of oneself.
When the effort is consistent enough, many intrinsic qualities are found. Someone established in meditation practice has an unforced stability that is strong, responsive and receptively lively, nothing other than the fulfilment of a human beings nature. These qualities are not created by the mind of discriminative thought, we become established in them through surrendering reliance on discriminative thought. Buddhist teachings have always pointed to this essential aspect and to the great difficulty of facing the divisive function of the discriminative mind. The difficulty is in the necessity of it being all involving to be thoroughly free from restriction and division.
When we are established in undivided nature there is an ease in being that is always sharing itself because it is without self concern. We have nothing and we have everything, we are both individual and entirely inseparable from everything and everyone else without contrivance.