I want to talk about the undiscovered country. You'll see references to this in ancient literature and they'll define it as the land between the sea and the mountains - of a place, a land, a location that is between two other places and is itself undiscovered, unknown, hidden, mercurial, cloud-hidden. What they're talking about is the ever-present NOW. The undiscovered country is that place that you can live in that is between the future and the past.
You need not think about the future, and you need not think about the past. You can live in the present, and this is one of the goals. Now, there are a lot of people that don't want you to live in the present. None of the rabbinical council people, none of the WEF-onians... none of these people want you living in the present... because then you can't be tricked. They have to have you living in the past or the future in order to alter your emotions and cause you to accept their lies as facts. They can confuse you if you do that. If you're living in the present, it is extremely difficult to fall for scams.
If you look, there are hidden phrases or hidden meaning within common language that talk about this. A lot of this hidden meaning can also be found in meditation.
There are all of these allusions to living within the NOW within language... they're not actually described, they're not actually labeled, they're just alluded to, so they don't come out and just tell you “Go to the ever-present NOW”. They tell you the place of salvation is “the undiscovered country”.
It is truly salvation because you can save your mind from lots of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and learn to live a better life as a meditator. There's all kinds of obscured, occulted language about meditation and the ever present NOW. It's called the eternal NOW because it's perpetual. It never changes. It's always there and is unchanging. And yet it has within it all possibilities, and has within it everything that exists.
Because nothing exists in the future, it has yet to occur, and anything that is in the past has already occurred and has faded out of the ever-present NOW. The only place that there is ever action and change, and it is constant change, is the ever-present NOW, the undiscovered country, the place between the past and the future, the place between the sea of the future and the mountains of the past.
You'll find all kinds of occulted language with these kind of phrases in many different cultures across history. It begs the question of why did they have to be so obscuring? In some areas, places like Japan at certain eras and the Himalayas, Nepal, and Northern India, they don't obscure the language. If you go through all this ancient literature and see where there is occulted language relative to meditation in the ever-present NOW, you find that in those social orders there existed rabbis. There existed the Pharisees. There existed the Elohim worship cult. In those areas where they didn't obscure the language, there was no interference from the Elohim worship cult.
And of course, the Elohim worship cult cannot have you living in the undiscovered country because that's where your power lies, right? So they do things to the social order that make it unwise if you're living in the undiscovered country to talk about it. That can get you killed. And repeatedly we see that that is the case.
Now it's not just the Elohim worship cult direct, but also through their proxies, like the Catholic church and to a lesser extent the Protestant and Evangelical churches because those pastors don't want you free, self-actualizing, self-aware, and in the present. Those preachers want you living in the past and the future as well so they can control you... because religion is a control structure.
So there are reasons for obscuring the language and they make sense relative to keeping yourself alive. A lot of the language shows up in the Bible; you see hints of it telling you to look for it because it says things like “you'll know them by their deeds, not by their words”. Then there are seven seals, right? So you've got to examine everything seven different ways to really understand the meaning because of the nature of the occulting, because of the nature of this reality.
So meditators were called magi. Remember, it was three magi that were attending Christ's birth, three magicians from Persia who were undiscovered country people. That's the whole point of the magic schools. The whole point of the mystery schools is all of this conscious control stuff which derives from people who live in the undiscovered country.
The point is - you need to meditate. You need to see the power that's there. And there's only one way to see it. Anybody telling you about it, like myself, is not doing you a service. I mean, I'm pointing it out to you so you can go and find it yourself, so you can find the undiscovered country on your own, because that's the only way you'll get the power of discovering it - to live in it.
On Meditation
This is a brief discussion on how meditation is a biohack and also on tools to use in meditation.
Meditation is not simply sitting there and contemplating your navel. This is a very much a mischaracterization of what goes on. Meditation is an active technology. It is a technology specific to the mind and the spirit, but it uses the body to achieve it. And there are biohacks you can use, so to speak; there are tools within the meditative toolkit to cause these things to occur. And the process works. It's demonstrably beneficial. It is not difficult to understand. It is not even difficult to do. What is difficult is to make yourself do it.
Humans are described in the meditative literature as being that which watches or witnesses the mind. And so this is a very good way to think about it. You're not your mind, you are not your body... you are something else. And we attach the word spirit to it, but in Eastern tradition we think of it a different way in the martial arts. It's conceived in this fashion: All of universe is filled with life energy. An aspect of that life energy from an ontological viewpoint is consciousness which extrudes out the materium from itself and creates the encapsulations we call our souls. It puts its own consciousness within those souls for its own purposes and sets us all loose within the materium.
It's sort of like a giant video game in that there are, as with any good video game, those times when you get things right, with rewards. But you have to put out the effort in order to get the reward. Here, in reality, the rewards are truly not able to be adequately described. No matter how many words I put re: the benefits of meditation, it will never adequately describe it, nor will it ever describe how those benefits will accrue within you.
Meditation takes an act of will. The first time you do meditation you reinforce that will. You let yourself know you have the will to do it, and thereafter, once you know, as the witnessing mind, you will exercise that will as it chooses. And this is how you develop willpower. This is one of the side benefits of meditation. Willpower, mental strength, all different kinds of things... hundreds and hundreds of words can be applied to the benefits that you will derive from even just a few minutes of meditation. And then if you should ever do it on a daily basis, oh my God, oh my God.
Anyway, so this discussion is about the tools for meditation. How do you do this? The idea in meditation is to find what is described as the undiscovered country. And it's not that you have to, I shouldn't use that word find, because we know where it is. It's easy to locate, but you have to travel there. And that takes an act of will - it takes an act of will to do the meditation itself... because the undiscovered country is delivered to you in that very instant of trying meditation for the first time and having it work.
Meditation is a technology. It is predictable in terms of how it works once you get on the track of it. Once you hit the power button in the PC or push the little button on the phone, the machinery goes ahead and cooperates with you and fires up, assuming it's okay. Same thing is true of meditation. Assuming your body is in reasonable shape, meditation will fire you up to a different level.
Meditation is the act of going into the ever-present now. It's nothing else. It's not contemplating your navel. It's not thinking about God. It's not about any of this other stuff. It is an experience. It is not cogitation. Anybody that tells you that they came up with something in meditation - a complex theory for instance - may be quite correct because the mind will work ever so much better, but your mind is not involved in the meditation itself. In fact, the goal of meditation is this place called “no thought”. And that is the undiscovered country.
If you get into the undiscovered country, which is the space between future and past, you find that future is an illusion and past is an illusion within our minds. They do not exist in our physical reality. You cannot walk into your future, and you cannot walk and return to your past. You can only exist in this eternal, ever-present NOW.
Meditation itself is a technology, a process that takes advantage of, capitalizes upon, and ultimately enhances aspects of our biophysiology that interrelate the body to the mind, to the flesh, to spirit. And so meditation itself is a technology and it employs tools, but in a larger, greater sense, meditation itself is a biohack. It's a technique, a process whereby you can build a better you.
Meditation is a repeatable technology; meditation is a technology that works across humanity no matter what kind of a human you are. If you can do these activities, you will reap the benefits. It doesn't matter about culture, religion, or any of that other crap right now, and to a certain extent it doesn't matter healthwise, but the better your health is the better the experience, the more you gain from it. Maybe if you're really ill you might gain fantastically from meditation in ever so many different ways. Meditation, if you do it effectively and continuously and constantly, will result in psychosomatic wellness. You'll make yourself well by the activity of your mind.
I've done a lot of different kinds of meditation, but there's only two that have any real value to me. One is Vipassana. That is a form of active householder meditation. You do it while you're nominally engaged in your other activities, but you don't let the other activity fail or you don't do a bad job at it just because you're engaged in the Vipassana. That's really kind of a tricky process, but it makes you into a far superior human. And it is, at its core, a form of psychological therapy.
The other type of meditation I do is Zazen. Zazen is the stuff you would see where all the samurai guys go and they sit cross-legged or they do that kneeling pose. The kneeling pose is called Seiza. That's the way I do it. Okay, there's a reason for that. The Seiza is chosen by the samurai guys because you can get up. You can spring up from that position. Your legs are going to hurt. You're going to have circulation issues and so on depending on how long you've been sitting in meditation.
But you can spring up from it, which you can't do if you're sitting cross-legged. You will see the statues of Buddha and other enlightened beings meditating frequently, sitting in a cross-legged position. There are reasons to do that, so the meditation is using the technology of your body to get at the manipulation of the integration of your body, mind, and spirit in order to make that integration what you would of it so you're going to alter your entire relationship with reality and the way in which you express yourself down here in the materium in this reality by doing meditation. It gives you control over those aspects of your life, universe, and everything that you cannot get in any other way.
Meditation is a technology that is not only repeatable, but it has the ability to improve in your body the very pathways which it seeks to exploit in the meditative process itself.
Meditation has a very specific goal, which is no thought. Any other description of meditation is wrong. You can even find the description of meditation in the New Testament encoded in stuff that Jesus says. It's everywhere. The closer you are to the source of the meditation in terms of the originator, a particular school or technique, the more powerful the message is and the more likely it is that you'll get involved with it.
You can find meditation lying around in a dusty old book, thousands of years old, pick it up now and say, 'my, that's an interesting thing. I wonder if that body technique they're describing here would work with me.' And it will, it'll be repeatable, and you will gain benefits from it because all of these techniques are continuously being rediscovered because they're suppressed for one reason or another. It's necessary that we rediscover it.
But every generation needs to go through this on their own. Every individual meditator must go through this on their own. Meditation is a self-initiatory experience.
So now to the tools. In Zen, there's various different approaches. A lot of times you should get an intense kyatsu massage before the meditation if you're going to do an extended stint. I used to do six-hour stints and then meditate overnight, which is approximately nine hours. You need the massage in order to get your body ready for that kind of extended work.
You can do meditation 15 minutes every day, or 10 minutes every day, or even 5 minutes. When you start off it'll be very difficult to do it for even one minute. You'll find that that's a huge milestone for you when you can do it for one minute solid in the beginning.
The point of the meditation is the point of achieving no thought. No thought is only in the ever-present NOW, the eternal NOW, that is reached by turning your mind, your attention, your awareness to focus in on aspects of your body that will bring you to the eternal NOW.
One of these is breath. If you just focus on your breath, it brings you to the NOW... because you can't breathe in the future and you can't breathe in the past. Any of these body mechanisms that will return you to the ever present NOW are effective tools. And there are many of them within the body.
When you go into meditation you're going to find yourself fighting your mind. The witness fights the mind in meditation, attempting to calm the mind and get it out of the way so that the witness can witness itself and all of reality. In so doing, the fight of the mind in meditation is the constant distraction that the mind is used to and wants.
It's understandable, perfectly understandable, but it's shocking how little focus modern humans have now. The overweight, super flabby, seed oil eating, vax injected normies have no focus ability whatsoever because they use these phones and the technology flits them from one thing to another second to second to second. So there is no concentration. There's no analysis. It's an instant thing in the moment, which is always going to be emotional.
If you have to do anything, if you have to decide or make any decisions or anything like that, even move your body, all of those things are emotional. And the emotions are fleeting; emotions rise to the surface and then fade very, very rapidly. They are not an analytical tool.
So it is in the nature of our current society that the phones, the technology, that hard material stuff is your enemy. But you can train yourself in meditation and you will find that your activity with the phone, the addiction to the constant distraction will fade away. It'll just naturally drop away.
So how do you do meditation? Well, you concentrate on those parts of your body that will return you to the ever-present NOW. All you have to do is simply be aware of your breathing. Every time you take a breath, just be aware of the beginning of it and then the end of it. You don't alter it. You don't do special forms of breathing. A lot of these things cause problems with your body anyway. You just want to breathe naturally, but be aware of it. And then you'll find that your mind isn't going to rebel.
The mind is going to try to think about something. It will follow your baser instincts in attempting to distract you from this effort of meditation, which removes the mind. It gets the mind out of the control. It gives the willpower control back to the witness, and the mind does not like that. And so the mind fights you, and it'll use every tool it can, and it will bring up everything it can, and it will bring up those things that have the largest amount of emotional impact on you at the very beginning and continuously harp on them.
So you'll find yourself going back to your baser instincts and all of these weird thoughts showing up when you start the meditation. And it's fine. Let them show up. You don't care. It's just garbage being thrown up to distract you. And you just let the thought arise. Note that it is there. You just note in your own awareness that the thought is there. You need not have a word with it. You just sort of let it pass. And it goes into the past. And you remain. You just sit there. The witness remains.
The process sounds really goofy. It works. It's a very ancient technology. As I say, you find it everywhere in all this old literature. It's extremely powerful. If you're in the moment, you are reacting to what's going on and able to respond to what's going on right in that moment as opposed to being out in the future and then your mind having to be called back into the present moment because you're going to have a car crash or somebody's attacking you or you got to do work or something. But if you're living in the moment, you're just right there always.
Anyway, so that's the goal. You want to come back to the undiscovered country, the ever-present, eternal NOW, in which there is all possibility and all action and nothing ever really exists outside of that. Everything that you try and say exists outside of the ever-present NOW is basically a delusion.
So here's how you do it with your body. When you're doing Zen meditation and you get into it seriously, like you're 10 or 15 minutes into it, your body is going to seriously complain to you. You will have pain in the leg. You'll have all different kinds of things happen to you. It's an unnatural process for your body in many regards. And you're sort of doing biohacking.
There are things you can do. You can take your second finger and touch the tip of your thumb. This creates a particular key circuit that activates particular nerves within the vega system, and it reinforces activity within the tenth cranial nerve. Check it out. There's actually literature about the mudra, the hand positions relative to meditation.
A couple of people in some medical institution in India did a bunch of brain imaging while guys were doing this. It makes a big difference to do these kind of things. You can also cross your feet behind you. You can cross them at the ankles. But the samurai and the deep Zen meditators discovered that it's really only necessary to cross the big toes... and so I alternate when I do Zen. One day I'll cross the right big toe over the left big toe when I sit Seiza; I don't sit cross-legged because of damage to my knees, so that works. It's the same form of a key circuit as doing the finger mudra. And it works. It'll cause a brain change in you.
You've got to train your body to accept it. It's not easy. You work from the bottom up. So feet to hands to breath, and then to eyes. The eye mudra is more powerful than all the rest of them. You've got to do the fingers and the foot or the toe crossing in order to get that effective base. And of course, you're always thinking about your breath. You're always bringing your awareness back to your breath. But then you'll do this thing with your eyes. It's going to hurt like hell for a long time. And then you'll keep doing it, but you won't ever have to think about it once you get into it. It actually causes specific neural pathways to be activated. That's why you go through a training process and it hurts. There is discomfort and sometimes a lot of pain in doing so.
I'm going to describe what you see everywhere on these statues of Buddha and the meditating saints. You'll even see this in a 13th century painting of Christ on the cross.. he's doing this meditative process. And you'll see that St. Francis of Assisi did it and so on. You see it in a lot of these paintings. And unless you know what you're looking at, it's meaningless.
But someone somewhere, when they were doing these paintings, decided to encode that these individuals were magi, that they practiced the magic of meditation. And what you see is that half-closed eyelid. And that's sort of a funny little look on the eye underneath because the eye is not in its normal position.
To achieve this is a multi-stage process. What you do is you get into the meditation, you do your fingers and your toes, then you get your concentration on your breath, and then you cross your eyes.
You deliberately take your eyes and focus them at a point on the bridge of your nose, maybe about one-third of the way up from the bottom of your nose. You focus on that. This causes your eyes to cross, and it can hurt, and it can hurt a lot. And you just keep doing that until you're very comfortable doing it. And of course in doing so, that's part of an active meditation, forcing through the pain. Because you become aware of the pain, there's nothing else in your body but the pain, you don't react to the pain, the pain is there, you just let it go into your past. You just let the awareness of having that pain go into your past, and you're no longer concentrating on the pain. You're in the eternal NOW, watching your mind not react to the pain, but being aware of the mind and the pain at the same time.
You can use the pain or any number of body artifacts to bring you into the ever-present NOW, the eternal NOW. The most effective way you get there is through the breath - it's impossible to breathe in the future, it's impossible to breathe in the past, so it necessarily concentrates you in the moment. But in doing such things as Zen meditation you get to the point where you can concentrate on the pain and you can actually examine the pain, feel the pain, be aware of the pain, get into the pain, and you're not in the past or the future... you're just aware of it... you're just there with that pain.
There's all different kinds of things that you can do when you're meditating so you'll find maybe that at some point in the process your mind will slip constantly. So you start off in meditating, and mostly your mind is slipping into thought. And the idea is to grab those few instances between thoughts and hold on to them, feel them, recognize what it feels like, and always seek to get there... thought being in the future or in the past.
When you go into meditation and you get into the process, there are predictable things that will occur, and these predictable body things are brought up to you ahead of time by the gurus so that you know what's going to happen. And it's just so that you have a mechanism for dealing with it when it occurs. So sometimes you'll find your awareness gets off of your breath and it gets into something like your pulse. Maybe it's the beat of your heart, which is easy to feel through the breathing. You'll feel that as part of the breathing, the awareness on the breathing. Sometimes you'll get stuck on the heart. You'll actually hear the blood flowing in your ears. It becomes this overwhelming rush. You can't hear anything else. And these body sensations tend to dominate for some period of time in the meditation.
You can control them. They're the last line of the mind's ability to distract you to try and blind the witness or the will. And so it gets really deep with those. But once you're through those, then you're into the period where you're in the undiscovered country. So that's the veil. The last veil is getting through these body sensations - effects that are put up by your mind to try and distract you from reaching this particular point.
And then once you've found the undiscovered country and you feel it, then all you have to do to get there again is just return to that feeling. It's very unique, very easy to find in your library of feelings. And it will always reliably get you there. So once you get into meditation, maybe the first time you get into the undiscovered country... maybe you've been meditating for months and just can't achieve it... your mind is still dominating, but you persist, and then one day you get a brief glimpse of it. And the next day you're just all thrilled to try it again. And your mind having had, or your witness having had success directing the willpower to get you into the undiscovered country, into the ever-present NOW, will do so easier. It'll be easier for it. There'll be less energy involved.
The mind is a big barrier to overcome. Your mind has been trained to fight this by way of the constant, continuous distractions that it has been involved in since the moment it became aware. So this is not an easy thing to do, but it is quite simple to do. It requires willpower, though, but the good news is the instant you start it, you have willpower, and thereafter, once you know that feeling, it can never be lost. You can always retrieve it again, and willpower used is also willpower magnified. So it's easier to be willful the second time after success the first time. And so this is just the way it is.
Sometimes you may find that you can't find your breath. What's happening is that you're mind is putting up these barriers and you get lost in the blood flow or all different kinds of processes within the body. You can get trapped in body parts, so to speak, just awareness of them. You can get into these predictable traps within meditation. It won't happen instantly. It'll take a long time before you find any of the traps because you have to work and work and work to achieve these particular states from which the traps may emerge. So don't worry about them. They're nothing to be afraid of. This is something that is a predictable barrier that you'll have to overcome.
At the same time, just finding the barrier is proof of success. Just reaching that point is proof that you've achieved. So you will overcome. It's not a problem. And there are techniques that you can go out and find that will direct you to ways to overcome them... ways that others have found in the past. And this is the nature of meditation.
Now, once you get into it you can do all different kinds of meditation... you can do walking Zen meditation. Once you achieve the state, you have a tendency to be able to go into a meditative state at any time your witness shall will it, any time you will it. And you also have the spillover effected - being in meditation nearly continuously you can achieve no thought at will so you can go to the undiscovered country at will.
These are some of the techniques. You can research it. You'll find all different kinds of techniques. Don't get hung up on those. Recognize that every technique was devised to react to or overcome some form of obstacle or barrier in this process. The goal is the eternal NOW, the undiscovered country, that space between future and past in which you may live and in which you may play with all of the possibilities that exist within key science, within the key of the universe. That's where you manifest stuff.
The kicker is that once you do the meditation and get into the undiscovered country, it's so much fun to go and discover it that you're not really inclined to go out and do a lot of manifesting. It's just a real distraction and sends you back into the illusions and delusions that are part of the material reality.
You can find lots of other techniques for meditation, but you go from the ground up and so it's feet, hands, breath, and to a certain extent, heart, and then eyes.
And so just to finish this, when you're doing cross-eyed meditation and you get beyond the pain and you're able to just snap into it, one of the things you do is you close your eyelids over the crossed eyes. When you do that, people don't really know you're meditating. They may think you're just snoozing or having a little nap or something, but you're quite aware and you're just in this meditative state that is brought on by doing that. So you can bypass a lot of the warmup, so to speak, once you've reached that stage of doing cross-eyed meditation. And I'll leave it at that. When you see people doing the cross-eyed meditation and their eyes in that half-closed position, you know you're among the hardcore. Try it, it's good for you.
from the substack of Clif High on September 8 and 9, 2024
and according to chatGPT:
Zazen (literally "seated meditation") is the central practice in Zen Buddhism, particularly in the Soto and Rinzai schools. It is a form of meditation that emphasizes direct, experiential insight into the nature of reality and the self, without reliance on conceptual thinking or traditional doctrines. Zazen is unique in its simplicity and its focus on being fully present in the current moment.
Key Aspects of Zazen
Posture and Breathing:
Posture is of great importance in Zazen. Practitioners typically sit in the lotus position or half-lotus position on a cushion called a zafu, although other seated postures like the Burmese or Seiza positions may be used. The spine is kept straight, with the hands forming a cosmic mudra—one hand resting on top of the other, with thumbs lightly touching, forming an oval shape. The eyes are generally kept half-open, gazing downward without focusing on any particular object.
Breathing is deep and natural, often through the nose, with attention placed on the exhalation. Zazen does not involve any complex breathing techniques but encourages awareness of the breath as it flows in and out, helping to settle the mind.
Non-attachment to Thoughts (Shikantaza):
In Soto Zen, the primary form of Zazen is Shikantaza, which means "just sitting." It involves being fully present without any attempt to control or manipulate the experience. Unlike many forms of meditation, Zazen does not use a specific object of focus like a mantra or visualization. Instead, the practitioner simply observes whatever arises in the mind without attaching to it or engaging with it.
As thoughts, sensations, and emotions appear, the goal is not to suppress them but to observe them passively, allowing them to arise and pass away. In this way, Zazen cultivates a profound state of equanimity and non-attachment.
Koans (in Rinzai Zen):
In Rinzai Zen, Zazen often includes the use of koans, which are paradoxical or puzzling statements, stories, or questions given by a teacher to the student. A famous example is, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The goal is to go beyond rational thought and conceptual understanding, pushing the practitioner into a direct, non-conceptual experience of reality.
Koans are not meant to be "solved" in a logical way. Instead, they are used as tools to break down habitual patterns of thinking, leading to sudden insight (kenshō or satori).
Emphasis on Direct Experience:
Zazen emphasizes direct experience over intellectual analysis or abstract understanding. The idea is that ultimate truth (or "Buddha-nature") cannot be grasped through concepts or ideas; it must be directly experienced in the present moment. The simplicity of the practice allows practitioners to encounter reality as it is, without the interference of mental constructs.
Mindfulness of the Present Moment:
In Zazen, there is an emphasis on being fully present in the "here and now." By focusing on the present moment, the mind naturally settles, allowing practitioners to become more attuned to their experience. Over time, this leads to the development of a deeper awareness of how the mind works, particularly its tendencies to grasp at thoughts, emotions, and desires.
Zazen and Enlightenment
Zazen is not seen as a means to achieve a goal such as enlightenment, but rather as enlightenment itself in practice. The act of sitting and being fully present is the expression of awakening. In Soto Zen, enlightenment is understood as an ever-present reality, and Zazen is the embodiment of this reality, not something that leads to it in the future. This concept is often summarized by the phrase, "Practice is enlightenment."
In Rinzai Zen, Zazen may be seen more as a means of breaking through delusions and achieving moments of awakening (kenshō or satori). However, even here, the goal is to move beyond dualistic thinking (goal vs. no-goal) and to realize the true nature of mind.
Stages and Progression in Zazen
While Zazen appears simple, progress is typically described in terms of deepening one's awareness and equanimity:
Settling the Mind: Initially, the practitioner focuses on calming the mind and body. At this stage, one is typically very aware of thoughts and distractions, but the goal is to let them pass without attachment.
Greater Awareness: As practice deepens, there is less attachment to thoughts and emotions. The mind becomes more stable and clear, with less distraction.
Non-dual Awareness: At the most advanced stages, the practitioner may experience moments of non-dual awareness, where the separation between the self and the rest of the world dissolves. These experiences are often spontaneous and cannot be forced.
The Role of the Teacher in Zazen
Traditionally, Zazen is practiced under the guidance of a Zen teacher (Roshi). The teacher plays a crucial role in guiding the student, offering corrections to their practice, and often assigning koans (in Rinzai Zen). In Soto Zen, the teacher’s role may focus more on encouraging a consistent, disciplined practice and offering guidance on living in accordance with Zen principles.
Zazen in Daily Life
Although Zazen is typically practiced in formal meditation sessions, its principles extend into everyday life. The awareness cultivated during seated meditation is intended to be integrated into daily activities, helping practitioners to live with greater mindfulness, presence, and clarity in every moment. Walking meditation (kinhin) and mindful attention to daily tasks (like eating or working) are important extensions of Zazen.
Benefits of Zazen
Mental Clarity and Calm: Through regular practice, Zazen leads to greater clarity of mind and emotional calmness. Practitioners often find themselves more centered and less reactive to life's ups and downs.
Insight into the Nature of Reality: Zazen fosters deep insight into the nature of the self and reality. It helps practitioners see through illusions, including the sense of a permanent, separate self.
Compassion and Equanimity: By reducing attachment to thoughts and emotions, Zazen helps develop a sense of compassion for others and an even-mindedness in the face of challenges.
Spiritual Awakening: For many, Zazen leads to profound experiences of spiritual awakening, often described as a direct encounter with "Buddha-nature" or the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.
Conclusion
Zazen is a profound practice rooted in simplicity, focused on direct experience and the cultivation of awareness in the present moment. It embodies the essence of Zen’s emphasis on intuitive insight and non-dual realization. Whether practiced as a means of awakening or as an expression of awakening itself, Zazen offers a powerful path to understanding the nature of mind, self, and reality.
Now Vipassana.
Vipassanā (Pali; Sanskrit: Vipashyanā), which means "insight" or "clear seeing," is a core practice in Theravāda Buddhism. It is focused on developing a deep understanding of the true nature of reality, rather than merely achieving calm or concentration (which is the focus of Samatha meditation). Vipassanā aims at the direct experiential realization of impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anatta), known as the three characteristics of existence.
Core Principles of Vipassanā
Mindfulness (Sati): Vipassanā is grounded in the practice of mindfulness or awareness. This mindfulness is not just about focusing on one object (as in concentration meditation), but about observing all phenomena arising in the present moment, whether they are thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, or sounds. The practitioner cultivates the ability to see things as they really are, without being distracted or carried away by them.
Observation without Reaction: One of the key elements of Vipassanā is to observe phenomena without attachment or aversion. As sensations, thoughts, or feelings arise, practitioners simply notice them without reacting. This non-attachment gradually reduces suffering, as people often suffer due to their habitual reactions to what they like or dislike.
Impermanence (Anicca): The practice helps cultivate awareness of the transient nature of all things. As one closely observes the body and mind, it becomes clear that all sensations, thoughts, and feelings are constantly changing, rising and passing away. This insight into impermanence helps in loosening the attachment to things that are mistakenly perceived as permanent.
Suffering (Dukkha): By observing the constant flux of phenomena, one realizes that clinging to things, people, or states of mind is a source of suffering, as everything is impermanent. Vipassanā helps to uncover how suffering is rooted in craving (tanha) and ignorance (avijja).
Non-Self (Anatta): Another key insight cultivated through Vipassanā is the recognition that there is no permanent, unchanging self. Thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise and pass away, but there is no enduring "I" behind them. Realizing this helps dismantle the ego and reduces attachment to the self.
The Practice of Vipassanā
Vipassanā practice is generally divided into several key components:
Mindfulness of Breathing: Practitioners often begin with mindfulness of the breath, observing it as it naturally arises and falls. This helps stabilize attention.
Mindfulness of Body: The practitioner then expands awareness to the body, observing sensations, postures, and movements. The goal is to be fully present and attentive to bodily experiences without clinging to or rejecting them.
Mindfulness of Feelings: Vipassanā encourages awareness of feelings, whether they are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This helps in recognizing how craving and aversion arise in response to different sensations.
Mindfulness of Thoughts and Mental States: Observing the mind itself, practitioners notice how thoughts arise and pass away. They see how the mind creates stories, fantasies, and projections, and learn not to identify with them.
Mindfulness of Mental Formations: The practice also involves examining deeper mental processes such as emotions, intentions, and attitudes. By doing so, one develops insight into the conditioned nature of these mental formations.
Differences from Concentration Meditation (Samatha)
While Samatha meditation is primarily concerned with developing deep states of concentration (known as jhānas), Vipassanā is concerned with cultivating insight. Samatha focuses on one-pointed concentration, often using a single object like the breath or a mantra to calm and stabilize the mind. Vipassanā, on the other hand, is about broadening awareness to observe whatever arises, be it sensations, thoughts, or feelings, to gain wisdom into the nature of reality.
Ultimate Goal of Vipassanā
The ultimate goal of Vipassanā is the cessation of suffering and the attainment of enlightenment (Nibbāna in Pali). Through persistent observation and insight into the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and non-self nature of all phenomena, the practitioner gradually uproots the deep-seated ignorance and attachment that bind them to the cycle of suffering (samsara).
Vipassanā in Daily Life
Vipassanā is not confined to seated meditation but can also be applied in daily life. Practitioners are encouraged to bring mindfulness into everyday activities, such as walking, eating, and interacting with others. The goal is to maintain a continuous awareness of thoughts, emotions, and sensations, allowing insight to arise in every moment.
Modern Vipassanā Movements
Vipassanā meditation has gained popularity in modern times, especially through the teachings of influential figures like S.N. Goenka, who offered a secular approach to Vipassanā, teaching it in 10-day intensive retreats. These retreats are grounded in traditional Buddhist principles but are open to people of all backgrounds and beliefs.
In conclusion, Vipassanā is more than a meditation technique—it's a comprehensive approach to understanding the nature of the mind and reality, fostering wisdom, and ultimately leading to liberation from suffering.
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