The Buddha Project Understanding supporting ’emptiness of absence’ meditation
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- This topic has 9 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 6 months, 1 week ago by
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By isolating components we normalise and destress concepts. If observing the senses, the body, builds a useful base of learning to sit, observing the mind is less usual. For infinite reasons, mainly trying to stop the fire with gas. When there is less doing, there is more being. As deeply conditioned being, aspiration, dedication, study, when taken personally and not in an abstract way, the letting go works. Taken personally as in finding meaning to own causality, finding the way to care, outside culture or norms, but inside the person. Just like a mind worker.
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Really seeing with introspection how feelings, thoughts, memories, planning and control of the future are illusions, like clouds, moving in the sky, has been incredibly helpful. To try to let go of them and return to the breath. The last three weeks of meditation have really improved my presence in the present. Many thanks for them Venerable!
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I find it very helpful when you say “… and it is not self” after each aggregate we are investigating (form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, consciousness). It is at that point that I’m able to experience the insight that because of dependent arising, all conditioned phenomena, including “my own” consciousness, are empty of true or absolute existence. During the meditations, I can see that there is no self outside of what is dependently arisen. Even the present moment is empty of true existence, since it exists due to causes and conditions. That makes it easy to let go of my grasping because I’m wasting energy grasping at something that doesn’t truly exist. It’s quite sad and silly, actually, and no wonder the buddhas and bodhisattvas have such compassion for us. However, when I am not in meditation, it’s scary how quickly I go back to grasping, especially at a permanent, unitary, independent self and all the thoughts and behaviors that that belief entails. It’s SO subtle, that self, and I really want to be able to see it for what it actually is.
It’s been especially helpful for me to look deeply at my perception, how it is colored by karma (among other things), and how all of what I thought was true and real isn’t actually true and real; it’s just a conditioned way of seeing. I realize that my whole way of engaging with the world (contact, feeling, craving, grasping) is colored by karma. That makes it easier to let go, because none of it is absolutely true or real. Who knew!
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Which helps me in my meditation on the cushion are the few moments that there is nothing arising in my mind.
At least I expierence for a moment there is no feeling, no sound….no….
However in daily life I find it difficult to find these lovely quiet inner feelings, except when I sit in the garden looking at the dance of the little flies or on the couch and the tv has shut up and doing nothing…….Than I am again close to it….Conclusion or analysis: Next to my meditation sessies on the cushion it is good for me to take more time during the day to simply sit and enjoy.. -
What helps me is remmebering that there is no past or future, only this moment. And when thoughts come uo, just observe them. I liked te example of the facebook icon and the red dot. It helps me te remember that thougts or sounds seem urgant but are not.
I try to just focus on the freedom that this meditation brings. When I try to hard to stay focused, I relax. When I wander of I remember myself of just observing. I also try to remember that I can also let go of my identification of myself. And also my body.
The letting go seems like tuning a radio; where I have to find the right spot (of not to much effort and not relax to much). Trying to just observe what happens. Staying curious. -
In meditation, remembering the fact that the past doesn’t exist any more and that the future doesn’t exist yet and never might be.
In waking daily life: being more mindful, being awake by knowing and remembering that my life could end at any given moment. That makes it more easy not to waste time and to practice the perfections and let go of constantly defending the ego. -
Great contributions! Let’s see if I can make a list of the above, and perhaps some others – subtle analyses we can apply to support the letting go: 1) past & future doesn’t exist – just memories and unreliable forecasts; 2) all that chit chatter in the mind about social relationships, nothing of that can be found at this moment; 3) with regards to the mind, there is no self which is in control, whether the meditation goes well or not, it is just causes & conditions playing it out; 4) the body-mind complex is also just a collection of aggregates, of elements, no real body or mind to be found, body and mind are just labels; 5) the feeling of urgency, that I have to engage with a thought, that is nothing but the dynamics of the mental factors of feeling (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) and intention at work – and making each other mad indeed; 5) that following distractions is nothing to do with freedom, it is a like tunnel one get’s sucked into, one being the slave of past behavioural patterns and karma, and that letting go is closer to freedom; 6) letting go can give that subtle joy – if one has the luck to experience it (also just the effect of causes & conditions, so no need to get attached to that either).
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