Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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happens to a watcher who is found asleep while on duty? He will
be sacked because he was not a watcher. Likewise in all respects,
there is no actor apart from his action. It is the action which makes
the actor, just as a child makes one a father. This relationship between
subject and object, between cause and effect, is only a mental
separation which has no actual existence, for when one ceases, the
other is not there either. The actor does not produce his act, and
the act cannot continue apart from the actor. There is only acting,
the verb which joins in itself both subject and object. Taking the
two apart, there is no acting, and hence neither actor nor act; apart
from actual thinking, there is neither a thinker nor his thought.
Yet, this separation is made necessary by a mind which wants
to continue in security and which cannot continue in action. Action,
whether walking or talking, thinking or anything else cannot
continue unchanged. There is movement in action which cannot
cease without causing the cessation of the act. In action there is no
continuity, only proceeding in change, in renewal; but in renewal,
in change, there is no identity or entity. And so, the mind has invented
an entity to remain constant while his action changes. Thus
the owner remains even while his property has gone! Such is the
absurdity the mind is forced into by its greed to continue. And
then seeing the contradiction in this conflict, there is fear. Fear of
darkness is still there, even though a light is kept burning all night.
There may be no darkness, but the fear of darkness remains as long
as there is insecurity in the mind.
Such fear, therefore, has no real existence, although it is an
actual experience. Awareness of the state of mind will not provide a
substitute for fear. The thought of a guardian-angel watching over
you is a sublimation of that fear, just as a lamp burning during
the night. Fear remains as long as fear is not understood, as long
fear is not seen as a search for security, as long as security is not
understood as a desire for continuity as a separation of an actor and
his act.