Meditation

There has been some discussion lately about Foyan's ideas about meditation. This has been viewed through the lens of one part of his poem on sitting meditation. Here is meditation in Foyan's own words.

Practical Advice

When you sit and meditate, you do not see that there is any sitting. (3)

...when you have passed through each [sickness and light of the spiritual body], only then are you able to sit in peace. (4)

You should simply step back and study through total experience. How do you step back? I am not telling you to sit on a bench with your eyes closed, rigidly suppressing body and mind, like earth or wood. That will never have any usefulness, even in a million years. (51)

Generally speaking, when you go journeying to learn the path to enlightenment, you seek. Do not sit ignorantly, but go to someone to find out the truth with certainty. (67)

Criticisms

In recent days there are those who just sit there as they are. At first they are alert, but after a while they doze. Nine out of ten sit there snoozing. How miserable! If you do not know how to do the inner work, how can you expect to understand by sitting rigidly? This is not the way it is. How can you see? ... Also, Yantou said, “These who cultivate purification must let it come forth from their own hearts in each individual situation, covering the entire universe.” How can this be quiet sitting and meditating? (97)

The problem lies in the fact that you are always coming from the midst of conceptual comparisons, and do not personally attain experience. All of you go sit on benches, close your eyes, and demolish your thinking all the way from the Milky Way above to Hades below before you can make a statement or two. But when you get to a quiet place, you still don’t get the ultimate point. (96)

There is not much to Buddhism; it only requires you to see the way clearly. It does not tell you to extinguish random thoughts and suppress body and mind, shutting your eyes and saying “This is It!” The matter is not like this. (27)

...sitting meditation and concentration do not amount to inner freedom. (74)

Buddhism is an easily understood, energy-saving teaching; people strain themselves. Seeing them helpless, the ancients told people to try meditating quietly for a moment. These are good words, but later people did not understand the meaning of the ancients; they went off and sat like lumps with knitted brows and closed eyes, suppressing body and mind, waiting for enlightenment. How stupid! How foolish! (69)

Recommendations for How to Approach Meditation

I tell you, moreover, that there is nothing that is true and nothing that is not true. How can there be truth and untruth in one thing? Just because of seeking unceasingly, everywhere is seeking; pondering principles is seeking, contemplating the model cases of the ancients is also seeking, reading Zen books is also seeking; even if you sit quietly, continuously from moment to moment, this too is seeking. (80)

If you do not see the ease, then sit for a while and examine the principle. (71)

Now, don’t hold onto my talk; each of you do your own work independently. You may contemplate the stories of ancients, you may sit quietly, or you may watch attentively everywhere; all of these are ways of doing the work. Everywhere is the place for you to attain realization, but concentrate on one point for days and months on end, and you will surely break through. (59)

That is all.

Submitted August 16, 2020 at 10:38PM by surupamaerl https://ift.tt/31ZHbD4