A Note on Awareness

“Zen is the meditative discipline with which I have the greatest intimacy, as it was quite clear to me from the beginning that if any meditative discipline had the potential to still the mind and open the gates to awareness, it was Zen.  The premise of Zen is quite simple: pick a detail - any detail, and focus on it.  Now, we’re not talking about conceptual details here.  What we’re talking about is a simple point of focus that may occupy one’s attention.  Each Zen master has his preference.  As for myself, I would suggest focusing your attention on a single point in the near distance.  Allow your gaze to soften, and allow your attention to simply reside in a continuous interaction with said focus point.  It is really that simple.

You see, there are many meditative disciplines in existence, some of which rely more on a conceptual approach to spiritual quiescence than others.  What I will say is that the more you employ language, or any other means of conceptualizing a goal for your meditative pursuits, thus pursuit is most likely to circuitously revolve back into itself, leaving you no better off, and no further along, then where you started.

Simplicity is key.  What you have to recognize is that any and all engaging of the mind is, essentially, counter-productive.  Th  I scissor why meditative discipline fail before they start.  Stick to what is plain, simple, and free from all conceptual relation.  You have to understand that the moment you associate meditative practice with a doctrine, a dogma, or a ‘way,’ this practice takes on a conceptual weight that immediately undermines the pursuit with which you are engaged.

To be aware is to be free from conception.  This is so forgoing a possibility to mist that they will never even begin to engage with the process.  Yet, those of you who have been around for a while, who are a little less ‘new’ to the process of spiritual awakening, are beginning to seek avenues to facilitate your awakening process.  Be aware that this process does not happen over night, and you have to be willing to sacrifice everything bon order to move forward.

People often wonder why I am a Christian minister when I speak in Eastern terms.  Well, the reason is quite simple: within biblical text is articulated some of the greatest approximations of the ‘truth’ available to man.  Yet, why to I place truth in such quotations?  Well, what is ‘truth’ in a relative worm?  What is ‘truth’ when all that is considered ‘true’ is conceptually biased?  The short answer is that there is no ‘truth’ when expressed in such tens.  We have to go back  by to the biblical story of Babel to get a sense of what we are talking about here.  The basic premise is that there is a basic truth which is conceptualized and differentiated to the point that it is no truth at all, but merely a rendition of what is true in all things.  Truth, you have to understand, is not conceptually dependent.  It us not something that you can say is ‘yours.’  It exists outside of your ‘self’ and, thus, does not restrict itself to the parameters by which you define your identity.  

From the moment you think you ‘know’ the truth -be that the ‘truth’ with relation tongue ‘self,’ the ‘truth’ of that which exists around you, the ‘truth’ of your family or circumstance, you gave immediately missed the mark.  In fact, you are so far from the truth m, that it is not even on the horizon of possibility.

To get at the truth of what you are, you must first dispense with all that you are not, and the first thing to go out the window must be your conceptual identity.”

-Sri P.D. Lapinsky