This is the last post that Toby will be writing on the meditation-singapore blog. Toby will, from now on be posting his meditation articles on the new tobyouvry.com meditation blog
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Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The healing power of awareness; the topography of insight meditation
Next Tuesday 29th June I will be beginning a new series of classes entitled “Insight, awareness and the awakening of our spiritual vision” , so I wanted to spend a little time in this week’s blog post reflecting upon some of the subjects that we will be tackling in these classes.
I want to begin this article by paraphrasing Roger Walsh in a conversation that he had with Ken Wilber. Basically he said that one of the amazing things about our minds is that, if we let it, our mind has this incredible power to self-heal, self-actualize (that is start to move naturally toward an enlightened state), and self-transcend (that is to move naturally toward the deeper/subtler level of consciousness immediately beyond its present state of growth) itself, without our having to do anything too much other than allow it.
What Roger is basically saying here is that, if you regularly cultivate states of relaxed and lucid awareness in your day to day routine, then the innate power of this relaxed and lucid awareness will have a powerful healing effect upon your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. The problem for so many of us is that we perceive our relationship to our mind as a perpetual battle, where the main object that seems to be standing in the way of our inner growth is the mind itself!
One of the principle forms of meditation that we can use in order to start making friends with our mind, and begin to access and experience it’s amazing powers of self-healing is insight meditation. The main activity of the mind in insight meditation is simply to observe the different levels of our awareness without getting in the way. Because of this insight meditation is sometimes called “choice-less awareness” whatever comes up, we just watch, don’t interfere.
There are four basic levels of awareness that insight meditation helps us to cultivate awareness of; gross, subtle, very subtle and non-dual. We will be looking at these in depth in the classes, but what I want to do below is to outline them and then outline a simple meditation form that we can do on each of these four levels. This way even if you are not able to attend the classes (or listen to them as a recording), you can still get a basic practical flavour of what insight meditation involves.
A basic map or topography of insight meditation awareness:
Level 1: Gross awareness
This level is basically our awareness of our environment, senses and physical body.
Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:
Be aware of everything that you hear for a period of time. Note all the different layers of sound that your ear awareness is picking up. As I am sitting now I can hear some distant cars, the fan on the table next to me, the typing as my fingers work on the type-pad, I can hear the sound of my breathing in my inner ears. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the layers of sound flowing into your moment to moment awareness.
Level 2: Subtle awareness
This level basically observes the flow of thoughts, feeling and images that flow through our mind on a moment to moment basis. On this level there is a range of subtlety, from the everyday thoughts of our waking mind to the more subtle experiences of the dream state and of day dreaming. Basically this is the realm of inner form, or thought-form.
Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:
Simply sit down and observe the flow of thoughts, feelings and images the flows through your awareness. Imagine that you are like a person sitting by the side of the river of your mind, observing the constant ebb and flow of mental images and feelings that passes by you.
Level 3: Very subtle awareness
This level observes the formless inner space of our very subtle consciousness that is causal to, and lies behind our mental consciousness and sensory consciousness. If you imagine your thoughts and feelings are like clouds, and your very subtle formless conscious is like the sky that contains those clouds.
Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:
Continuing to watch your mind, become aware of the spaces between your thoughts. Allow your awareness to sink deeper and deeper into these spaces, as if you were entering into a clear open sky-like space. Let the cloud-like forms of your thoughts and feelings gently dissolve away into the sky like space of pure, formless awareness.
Level 4: Non-dual awareness
This levels is where the sense of yourself as an observer of the formless space of your consciousness (as in level 3 above) dissolves away, and you are left with a unified (non-dual) experience of primal awareness, just one single experience in the mind with no conceptual ideas of duality at all.
The way to approach this level of practice is through the level 3 exercise. The more you practice this gradually you will feel yourself moving toward this non-dual state.
So, my basic point in this article is that if you allow your mind to consciously relax on a regular basis, then you are giving yourself a chance to activate its natural self healing awareness. If you want a particular in-depth method to develop your minds self-healing mechanism, then insight meditation offers one such tool.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first.
I want to begin this article by paraphrasing Roger Walsh in a conversation that he had with Ken Wilber. Basically he said that one of the amazing things about our minds is that, if we let it, our mind has this incredible power to self-heal, self-actualize (that is start to move naturally toward an enlightened state), and self-transcend (that is to move naturally toward the deeper/subtler level of consciousness immediately beyond its present state of growth) itself, without our having to do anything too much other than allow it.
What Roger is basically saying here is that, if you regularly cultivate states of relaxed and lucid awareness in your day to day routine, then the innate power of this relaxed and lucid awareness will have a powerful healing effect upon your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. The problem for so many of us is that we perceive our relationship to our mind as a perpetual battle, where the main object that seems to be standing in the way of our inner growth is the mind itself!
One of the principle forms of meditation that we can use in order to start making friends with our mind, and begin to access and experience it’s amazing powers of self-healing is insight meditation. The main activity of the mind in insight meditation is simply to observe the different levels of our awareness without getting in the way. Because of this insight meditation is sometimes called “choice-less awareness” whatever comes up, we just watch, don’t interfere.
There are four basic levels of awareness that insight meditation helps us to cultivate awareness of; gross, subtle, very subtle and non-dual. We will be looking at these in depth in the classes, but what I want to do below is to outline them and then outline a simple meditation form that we can do on each of these four levels. This way even if you are not able to attend the classes (or listen to them as a recording), you can still get a basic practical flavour of what insight meditation involves.
A basic map or topography of insight meditation awareness:
Level 1: Gross awareness
This level is basically our awareness of our environment, senses and physical body.
Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:
Be aware of everything that you hear for a period of time. Note all the different layers of sound that your ear awareness is picking up. As I am sitting now I can hear some distant cars, the fan on the table next to me, the typing as my fingers work on the type-pad, I can hear the sound of my breathing in my inner ears. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the layers of sound flowing into your moment to moment awareness.
Level 2: Subtle awareness
This level basically observes the flow of thoughts, feeling and images that flow through our mind on a moment to moment basis. On this level there is a range of subtlety, from the everyday thoughts of our waking mind to the more subtle experiences of the dream state and of day dreaming. Basically this is the realm of inner form, or thought-form.
Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:
Simply sit down and observe the flow of thoughts, feelings and images the flows through your awareness. Imagine that you are like a person sitting by the side of the river of your mind, observing the constant ebb and flow of mental images and feelings that passes by you.
Level 3: Very subtle awareness
This level observes the formless inner space of our very subtle consciousness that is causal to, and lies behind our mental consciousness and sensory consciousness. If you imagine your thoughts and feelings are like clouds, and your very subtle formless conscious is like the sky that contains those clouds.
Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:
Continuing to watch your mind, become aware of the spaces between your thoughts. Allow your awareness to sink deeper and deeper into these spaces, as if you were entering into a clear open sky-like space. Let the cloud-like forms of your thoughts and feelings gently dissolve away into the sky like space of pure, formless awareness.
Level 4: Non-dual awareness
This levels is where the sense of yourself as an observer of the formless space of your consciousness (as in level 3 above) dissolves away, and you are left with a unified (non-dual) experience of primal awareness, just one single experience in the mind with no conceptual ideas of duality at all.
The way to approach this level of practice is through the level 3 exercise. The more you practice this gradually you will feel yourself moving toward this non-dual state.
So, my basic point in this article is that if you allow your mind to consciously relax on a regular basis, then you are giving yourself a chance to activate its natural self healing awareness. If you want a particular in-depth method to develop your minds self-healing mechanism, then insight meditation offers one such tool.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Finding inner space within your mind by focusing on outer spaces
An ongoing motivation for both beginners starting meditation and those who are more experienced practitioners is simply the need to create and preserve a sense of space within our mind which we can relax into and use to keep the rest of our busy lives in perspective. One technique I use regularly that I find creates a sense of inner space very quickly is to focus on an awareness of the outer spaces that exist in our physical environment. The mind basically becomes like what it focuses upon, so when you focus on an outer physical space, this in turn quite naturally starts to give rise to a sense of an inner space within our mind. Here is one example of a way in which you can do this:
Making your mind BIG
We have been using this technique recently in the class I facilitate. Once you have sat down in a comfortable posture, become aware of the sky and stars up above you and the earth beneath you, allow your awareness to become big and open like the sky above you, and vast solid and stable like the Earth beneath you.
After you have done this, extend your mind horizontally around you, out to the horizon of the land, to the north, east, south and west. Extend your awareness as far out as you can to feel the curve of the Earth’s surface all about you. Now you have a sense of your mind as being BIG, and spacious, taking in the vast physical spaces all around you.
Stay with this feeling for as long as you like, let yourself relax as much as possible into your sense of the big space all around you; above, below, and extending out into the for directions of the horizontal/horizonal plane.
If you do this for a while, you will find quite quickly that a sense of inner space and calm arises within your mind. By focusing on the big space outside, you start to feel the big space inside!
A final point here is that I have found that this meditation helps ANY problem that I may be facing and that I am concerned about. When your mind feels big, then problems seem much more manageable. In a small mind consumed by itself and its own challenges, even small issues can take on a distorted life of their own!
© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST gain Toby’s permission first.
Making your mind BIG
We have been using this technique recently in the class I facilitate. Once you have sat down in a comfortable posture, become aware of the sky and stars up above you and the earth beneath you, allow your awareness to become big and open like the sky above you, and vast solid and stable like the Earth beneath you.
After you have done this, extend your mind horizontally around you, out to the horizon of the land, to the north, east, south and west. Extend your awareness as far out as you can to feel the curve of the Earth’s surface all about you. Now you have a sense of your mind as being BIG, and spacious, taking in the vast physical spaces all around you.
Stay with this feeling for as long as you like, let yourself relax as much as possible into your sense of the big space all around you; above, below, and extending out into the for directions of the horizontal/horizonal plane.
If you do this for a while, you will find quite quickly that a sense of inner space and calm arises within your mind. By focusing on the big space outside, you start to feel the big space inside!
A final point here is that I have found that this meditation helps ANY problem that I may be facing and that I am concerned about. When your mind feels big, then problems seem much more manageable. In a small mind consumed by itself and its own challenges, even small issues can take on a distorted life of their own!
© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST gain Toby’s permission first.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Compassionate listening
Last week in my weekly meditation class, I brought up the old definition of meditation that I think many people find very helpful:
“Prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening to God”
If our mind is talking to itself all the time, how are we going to be able to listen to the intuitive wisdom, or the “still small voice” of our spiritual self as it offers us advice, support and consolation in our life’s journey?
So, listening in a reflective, meditative manner is important for this reason. It is also important as a practise for helping us to develop our compassionate and ethical heart when dealing with other people. If, when we are with others we consciously quieten our mind and really attend to what they are saying, they will notice and appreciate what we are doing for them. There is a book by Michael Ende called “Momo” that is about this power of listening. Momo is a little girl who is able to heal all those who come to her simply by deeply and attentively listening to the stories that they tell her about their life.
The second aspect of really listening to people is that we will really see where they are coming from, and so be much more likely to act in ways that are appropriate and helpful to both them and us. As a result our basic practise of ethics or positive action will improve.
So, when you are with others, try and see your listening to them as a meditation, it will help both them and you!
I want to end this article by outlining three ways NOT to listen that I had drummed into me during my Tibetan Buddhist training, using the anlalogy of a pot:
Don’t be like an upturned pot
An upturned pot cannot receive any liquid into itself. Similarly, when we are with others, if we are not really listening, we are like an upturned pot, they are talking, but nothing is going in!
Don’t be like a leaky pot
A pot with a leak cannot not hold what it liquid, it is useless. If we are not really paying attention, even if we hear what is being said, it simply “goes in one ear and out of the other” so to speak!
Don’t be like a bad smelling pot
You pour fresh juice into a dirty and bad smelling pot the fresh liquid becomes contaminated instantly. Similarly, if we are listening to someone, and there is a continuous negative inner commentary going on in our mind, this poisons everything that we are hearing. As George Michael once said (was it the title of one of his albums?) “Listen without prejudice”
© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST obtain Toby’s permission first, and cite Toby as the author.
Related articles:
30 Second methods for developing your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence technique 1: Breathing with your compassionate role model
Experimental ethics; strengthening your compassionate and ethical heart through personal experience
“Prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening to God”
If our mind is talking to itself all the time, how are we going to be able to listen to the intuitive wisdom, or the “still small voice” of our spiritual self as it offers us advice, support and consolation in our life’s journey?
So, listening in a reflective, meditative manner is important for this reason. It is also important as a practise for helping us to develop our compassionate and ethical heart when dealing with other people. If, when we are with others we consciously quieten our mind and really attend to what they are saying, they will notice and appreciate what we are doing for them. There is a book by Michael Ende called “Momo” that is about this power of listening. Momo is a little girl who is able to heal all those who come to her simply by deeply and attentively listening to the stories that they tell her about their life.
The second aspect of really listening to people is that we will really see where they are coming from, and so be much more likely to act in ways that are appropriate and helpful to both them and us. As a result our basic practise of ethics or positive action will improve.
So, when you are with others, try and see your listening to them as a meditation, it will help both them and you!
I want to end this article by outlining three ways NOT to listen that I had drummed into me during my Tibetan Buddhist training, using the anlalogy of a pot:
Don’t be like an upturned pot
An upturned pot cannot receive any liquid into itself. Similarly, when we are with others, if we are not really listening, we are like an upturned pot, they are talking, but nothing is going in!
Don’t be like a leaky pot
A pot with a leak cannot not hold what it liquid, it is useless. If we are not really paying attention, even if we hear what is being said, it simply “goes in one ear and out of the other” so to speak!
Don’t be like a bad smelling pot
You pour fresh juice into a dirty and bad smelling pot the fresh liquid becomes contaminated instantly. Similarly, if we are listening to someone, and there is a continuous negative inner commentary going on in our mind, this poisons everything that we are hearing. As George Michael once said (was it the title of one of his albums?) “Listen without prejudice”
© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST obtain Toby’s permission first, and cite Toby as the author.
Related articles:
30 Second methods for developing your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence technique 1: Breathing with your compassionate role model
Experimental ethics; strengthening your compassionate and ethical heart through personal experience
Friday, June 4, 2010
Experimental ethics; strengthening your compassionate and ethical heart through personal experience
One of the biggest barriers to our practice of compassion and ethics is the old and VERY outdated idea that by doing good and being compassionate we somehow have to sacrifice our own happiness and well being for someone else. The key to overcoming this is understanding that practising good actions and compassion is really a form of enlightened self interest; the reality is, by doing good we will feel good to!
To gain firsthand experience of this, think of a compassionate act, great or small (NO act is too small) that you engaged in recently. When you bring it to mind and focus on it, how does it make you feel? Feels good to have done it right? So, my suggestion for a 30 second compassionate experiment is this:
Whenever you do something caring, compassionate and or ethical, take 30 seconds after the event just sit, breathe with and appreciate what you have done. It is not ego we are talking of here, just recognition and appreciation of the act. At the end of that 30 seconds you will feel good, and this feel good factor will strengthen your intention to do such acts again; you’ll want to do good because you KNOW it makes you feel good!
Doing good because it makes you feel good is a COMPLETELY different act from “doing the right thing because we feel obliged to”, which in the long term tends to deplete our energy and, consciously or subconsciously resent the “sacrificial “actions that we are engaging in.
NOTE: This is the second in a series of articles on 30 second techniques for strengthening your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence, click HERE to see the first article.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission
To gain firsthand experience of this, think of a compassionate act, great or small (NO act is too small) that you engaged in recently. When you bring it to mind and focus on it, how does it make you feel? Feels good to have done it right? So, my suggestion for a 30 second compassionate experiment is this:
Whenever you do something caring, compassionate and or ethical, take 30 seconds after the event just sit, breathe with and appreciate what you have done. It is not ego we are talking of here, just recognition and appreciation of the act. At the end of that 30 seconds you will feel good, and this feel good factor will strengthen your intention to do such acts again; you’ll want to do good because you KNOW it makes you feel good!
Doing good because it makes you feel good is a COMPLETELY different act from “doing the right thing because we feel obliged to”, which in the long term tends to deplete our energy and, consciously or subconsciously resent the “sacrificial “actions that we are engaging in.
NOTE: This is the second in a series of articles on 30 second techniques for strengthening your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence, click HERE to see the first article.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
30 Second methods for developing your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence technique 1:
In the Tuesday meditation classes that I facilitate we have just finished a set of 3 classes on compassion and ethical intelligence, so over the next few days I am going to post four of the meditation techniques that we have been using that can be done in 30 seconds, as a way of pepping up our compassionate heart.
Technique 1: Breathing with your compassionate role model.
To do this exercise first you have to think of someone whom for you is a role model in terms of their compassionate heart and compassionate action. This could be a figure of spiritual inspiration, such as Quan Yin or the Buddha, it could be a figure from history such as Ghandi or Mother Theresa, of it could be someone from your own circle of friends and family who for you embodies these qualities. The main thing is that they should, for you embody the energies of compassion and ethics, and when you think of them you can feel their energy inspiring and strengthening your own compassionate and ethical impulses.
Once you have selected the figure that you wish to work with here is what you do:
- Mentally visualize them sitting next to you or in front of you.
- Feel their compassionate energy radiating from their heart
- As you breathe in, feel yourself connecting to their compassionate heart and ethical courage and breathing it into your own heart space.
- As you breathe out, feel the energy that you have taken in expanding out from your heart, filling your body and energy field.
- Breathe in this way for 30 seconds, then relax and finish.
Try doing this three times a day for a week, you can do it anywhere any time. Physically we may find ourselves alone, but mentally and spiritually there are always sources of inspiration available to us, anywhere, anytime. I find it useful to do when I hear of bad news or disasters around the world, it helps keep my mind steady and courageous.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission
Technique 1: Breathing with your compassionate role model.
To do this exercise first you have to think of someone whom for you is a role model in terms of their compassionate heart and compassionate action. This could be a figure of spiritual inspiration, such as Quan Yin or the Buddha, it could be a figure from history such as Ghandi or Mother Theresa, of it could be someone from your own circle of friends and family who for you embodies these qualities. The main thing is that they should, for you embody the energies of compassion and ethics, and when you think of them you can feel their energy inspiring and strengthening your own compassionate and ethical impulses.
Once you have selected the figure that you wish to work with here is what you do:
- Mentally visualize them sitting next to you or in front of you.
- Feel their compassionate energy radiating from their heart
- As you breathe in, feel yourself connecting to their compassionate heart and ethical courage and breathing it into your own heart space.
- As you breathe out, feel the energy that you have taken in expanding out from your heart, filling your body and energy field.
- Breathe in this way for 30 seconds, then relax and finish.
Try doing this three times a day for a week, you can do it anywhere any time. Physically we may find ourselves alone, but mentally and spiritually there are always sources of inspiration available to us, anywhere, anytime. I find it useful to do when I hear of bad news or disasters around the world, it helps keep my mind steady and courageous.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission
Monday, May 24, 2010
Fundamental Zen sitting meditation forms
One of the most basic and fundamental meditation practises in the Zen tradition, especially for those in the Soto Zen school is called “shikantaza”, or “just sitting”, and it is this meditation form that I want to outline in this article, as it forms the basis of the meditations that we have done and will continue to do in the Zen in the Heart of the City” retreats at the Sanctuary on the Hill.
So, the idea with shikantaza or just sitting meditation is that through just sitting you will start to develop and refine your awareness. When you sit down quietly and still your mind a little, you discover that there are basically five main aspects of your awareness. These are:
1) Awareness of your environment and senses, meaning the surroundings around where you are sitting, and the external sights, sounds and sensations that you can perceive with your five senses.
2) Awareness of your body and breathing, or your basic physical body awareness.
3) Awareness of the stream of thoughts, images and feelings within your mind
4) Awareness of the natural inner space and silence of your consciousness that surrounds and contextualizes the thoughts and feelings. To use an analogy, if you think of your thoughts and feelings as being like clouds, the space and silence in your mind is like the sky itself.
5) Awareness of awareness itself, that is to say the ever present witnessing aspect of our awareness that is present and observes the objects present in levels 1-4. To continue the analogy, if your thoughts are like clouds, and the formless space of your consciousness is like sky, then your witnessing awareness is like the sun shining its light rays into the sky of your mind. This awareness is sometimes called our natural “Buddha nature” in Buddhism. Other traditions call it other things, eg: the Hindus refer to it as Atma the Eternal Self, or the causal self. Western spiritualities might refer to it as the light of the soul, or the inner light of God that lies within the heart of all.
So, when you just sit, you can choose to focus on any or all of the above and take them as your object of meditation and observation. Different people will find that different aspects of their awareness feel more natural to focus on than others. For example some people find focusing on the body and breathing to be most effective. For others focusing on the sky like nature of the mind feels most appropriate and enjoyable.
A basic Zen meditation form
I personally recommend that when you are doing this initially, you spend a few minutes focusing on each different level of awareness in turn. For example if you are doing a 20 minute meditation, then you could first spend two minutes on each of the levels 1-5 above, from environmental awareness to awareness of awareness. That would take you about 10 minutes. Then you could spend the remaining 10 minutes of your meditation focusing on the aspects of awareness that you personally find most comfortable and helpful for meditation.
This meditation form enables you to gain basic familiarity with all five basic awareness’s, whilst also giving time for you to focus on your own personal preferences.
A more advanced form
Once you have some familiarity with the basic form above, you can then practice combining two or three different levels of awareness into a single awareness, for example:
- As you are aware of your body and your breathing (level 2), you can combine that awareness with a sense of the inner sky like space of your mind (level 4).
- As you are aware of the cloud like thoughts and feelings in your mind (level 3), you can be aware of the witnessing self that is observing them (level 5).
This can be a fun stage, whilst at the same time it helps you to develop your skill and dexterity in terms of leaning to be mindful of all the different facets of your present moment awareness simultaneously.
Deep meditation
Once you are familiar with all the different levels of awareness through the above two practices, then you should gradually try and spend more and more time sitting with awareness of just levels 4 and 5, moving deeper and deeper into the experience of the emptiness or sky like nature of the mind, in combination with awareness of the witness or causal self. These two facets of awareness will feel as if they are merging together into a single experience; the sun like nature of your awareness and the sky like nature of the mind merging and mixing into a blissful single flow of awareness.
Non-duality
Combined practice of deep sitting meditation with mindfulness of the five basic levels of awareness in your day to day life will eventually start to give rise to a sixth level of awareness, that of non-duality. This sixth non-dual level of awareness is where we start to experience the lower five levels of awareness as a single unity, not separate or distinct from each other. The world and our moment to moment experience is seen to be arising from the non-duality of primal spirit, or primal awareness.
Non-dual or primal awareness is an awareness that is ever present within us, but which we usually fail to recognize, you could say that it is the final enlightened goal of any authentic spiritual path. You can read a very good article by Ken Wilber on non-dual spirit HERE, I recommend it, it is one of the best introductions to the subject that I have read.
Anyway, I hope the above article gives some simple and clear pointers for Zen “just sitting” meditation, it is very simple and enjoyable, and its simplicity enables it to be accessible for beginners and at the same time offering ever deepening insights as we continue to practice it.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, Please do not reproduce without pemission.
So, the idea with shikantaza or just sitting meditation is that through just sitting you will start to develop and refine your awareness. When you sit down quietly and still your mind a little, you discover that there are basically five main aspects of your awareness. These are:
1) Awareness of your environment and senses, meaning the surroundings around where you are sitting, and the external sights, sounds and sensations that you can perceive with your five senses.
2) Awareness of your body and breathing, or your basic physical body awareness.
3) Awareness of the stream of thoughts, images and feelings within your mind
4) Awareness of the natural inner space and silence of your consciousness that surrounds and contextualizes the thoughts and feelings. To use an analogy, if you think of your thoughts and feelings as being like clouds, the space and silence in your mind is like the sky itself.
5) Awareness of awareness itself, that is to say the ever present witnessing aspect of our awareness that is present and observes the objects present in levels 1-4. To continue the analogy, if your thoughts are like clouds, and the formless space of your consciousness is like sky, then your witnessing awareness is like the sun shining its light rays into the sky of your mind. This awareness is sometimes called our natural “Buddha nature” in Buddhism. Other traditions call it other things, eg: the Hindus refer to it as Atma the Eternal Self, or the causal self. Western spiritualities might refer to it as the light of the soul, or the inner light of God that lies within the heart of all.
So, when you just sit, you can choose to focus on any or all of the above and take them as your object of meditation and observation. Different people will find that different aspects of their awareness feel more natural to focus on than others. For example some people find focusing on the body and breathing to be most effective. For others focusing on the sky like nature of the mind feels most appropriate and enjoyable.
A basic Zen meditation form
I personally recommend that when you are doing this initially, you spend a few minutes focusing on each different level of awareness in turn. For example if you are doing a 20 minute meditation, then you could first spend two minutes on each of the levels 1-5 above, from environmental awareness to awareness of awareness. That would take you about 10 minutes. Then you could spend the remaining 10 minutes of your meditation focusing on the aspects of awareness that you personally find most comfortable and helpful for meditation.
This meditation form enables you to gain basic familiarity with all five basic awareness’s, whilst also giving time for you to focus on your own personal preferences.
A more advanced form
Once you have some familiarity with the basic form above, you can then practice combining two or three different levels of awareness into a single awareness, for example:
- As you are aware of your body and your breathing (level 2), you can combine that awareness with a sense of the inner sky like space of your mind (level 4).
- As you are aware of the cloud like thoughts and feelings in your mind (level 3), you can be aware of the witnessing self that is observing them (level 5).
This can be a fun stage, whilst at the same time it helps you to develop your skill and dexterity in terms of leaning to be mindful of all the different facets of your present moment awareness simultaneously.
Deep meditation
Once you are familiar with all the different levels of awareness through the above two practices, then you should gradually try and spend more and more time sitting with awareness of just levels 4 and 5, moving deeper and deeper into the experience of the emptiness or sky like nature of the mind, in combination with awareness of the witness or causal self. These two facets of awareness will feel as if they are merging together into a single experience; the sun like nature of your awareness and the sky like nature of the mind merging and mixing into a blissful single flow of awareness.
Non-duality
Combined practice of deep sitting meditation with mindfulness of the five basic levels of awareness in your day to day life will eventually start to give rise to a sixth level of awareness, that of non-duality. This sixth non-dual level of awareness is where we start to experience the lower five levels of awareness as a single unity, not separate or distinct from each other. The world and our moment to moment experience is seen to be arising from the non-duality of primal spirit, or primal awareness.
Non-dual or primal awareness is an awareness that is ever present within us, but which we usually fail to recognize, you could say that it is the final enlightened goal of any authentic spiritual path. You can read a very good article by Ken Wilber on non-dual spirit HERE, I recommend it, it is one of the best introductions to the subject that I have read.
Anyway, I hope the above article gives some simple and clear pointers for Zen “just sitting” meditation, it is very simple and enjoyable, and its simplicity enables it to be accessible for beginners and at the same time offering ever deepening insights as we continue to practice it.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, Please do not reproduce without pemission.
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