Meditation is working with our speed, our restlessness, our constant busyness. Meditation offers space or ground in which restlessness can function, have room to be restless, can relax by being restless. If we don’t deal with restlessness, restlessness becomes part of the space. We do not control or attack the desire to catch our next tail.
Meditation practice is not a matter of trying to achieve a hypnotic state of mind or create a sense of calm. Trying to achieve a restful state of mind reflects a mindset of poverty. Seeking a restful state of mind means being on the lookout for restlessness. There is a constant feeling of paranoia and limitation. We feel the need to be wary of the sudden bouts of passion or aggression that can take us over and cause us to lose control. This monitoring process limits the scope of the mind by not accepting whatever comes.
Instead, meditation should reflect a wealth mindset in the sense of using everything that happens in the mind. So if we allow enough space for restlessness to function within the space, then the energy is no longer restless because it can fundamentally trust itself. Meditation is giving a huge, lush pasture to a restless cow. The cow may be restless for a while in her huge pasture, but at some point, because there is so much space, the restlessness becomes irrelevant. So the cow eats and eats and eats and relaxes and falls asleep.
Mindfulness and awareness
You communicate or connect to problematic situations or irritating situations in a simple way. There is ignorance, there is restlessness, there is passion, there is aggression. They do not need to be praised or condemned. They are simply considered fits. They are conditioned situations, but they can be perceived accurately and precisely through unconditioned mindfulness.
Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor a defensive weapon in relation to the germs we perceive through it. The function of the microscope is simply to clearly show what is there. Mindfulness does not have to refer to the past or the future; it is completely in the now. At the same time, it is an active mind involved in dualistic perceptions, because it is necessary to use that kind of discernment in the beginning.
The Sanskrit word for consciousness is smriti, which means ‘recognition’, ‘remembrance’. Memory not in the sense of remembering the past, but in the sense of recognizing the product of mindfulness. Mindfulness offers some ground, some space for recognition of aggression, passion and so on. Mindfulness provides the subject, terms or word, and awareness is the grammar that goes around and correctly locates the terms. Now that we have experienced the precision of mindfulness, we can ask ourselves, ‘What should I do with it? What can I do now?” And consciousness reassures us that we don’t actually have to do anything with it, but can leave it in its own natural place.
It’s like discovering a beautiful flower in the jungle; Shall we pick the flower and take it home or should we let the flower stay in the jungle? Consciousness tells you to leave the flower in the jungle because this is the natural place where that plant can grow. So awareness is the willingness not to cling to the discoveries of mindfulness, and mindfulness is just precision; things are what they are. Mindfulness is the forefront of consciousness. We flash over a situation and then spread that one-pointedness into consciousness.
Mindfulness and consciousness therefore work together to achieve acceptance of life situations as they are. We don’t have to view life as something worth boycotting or indulging in. Life situations are the food of consciousness and mindfulness; we cannot meditate without the depressions and agitations that occur in life.
We wear out the shoe of suffering by walking on it through meditation. The combination of mindfulness and awareness sustains the journey, so meditation practice or spiritual development is dependent on suffering. From an aerial point of view we could say that there does not have to be samsara or nirvana, and that making the journey is futile. But since we are on the ground, making the journey is extremely helpful.