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Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

A detailed description of awareness in Buddhist Meditation.

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property, who set fire to my house. I may not even know him or his<br />

name. But the hate I carry is the burn<strong>in</strong>g thought and memory of<br />

the harm done to ‘me’. And that hate will keep burn<strong>in</strong>g, as long as<br />

the thought of ‘self’ rema<strong>in</strong>s.<br />

What I hate is the damage done to ‘me’, the ideal ‘self’, the<br />

‘ego’, which persists and which pervades all my property, all that I<br />

call ‘m<strong>in</strong>e’, all <strong>in</strong> which the ‘I’ lives and grows, expands, is rooted<br />

and is made safe. Whatever goes aga<strong>in</strong>st that ‘I’ the ‘I’ must hate,<br />

for it destroys the ideal, the only th<strong>in</strong>g which is the ‘I’. In hate,<br />

the ‘I’ keeps itself alive <strong>in</strong> a struggle for life. The ‘I’ must hate to<br />

be alive, for it can only exist <strong>in</strong> resistance, <strong>in</strong> opposition. Hate is<br />

opposition and resistance, and I am that resistance <strong>in</strong> my cl<strong>in</strong>g<strong>in</strong>g<br />

to be<strong>in</strong>g, <strong>in</strong> my crav<strong>in</strong>g for becom<strong>in</strong>g, <strong>in</strong> my desire for stability, <strong>in</strong><br />

my greed for security.<br />

Only when there is no ‘I’ concept at work, there is no opposition,<br />

and no hate. Such is the work of awareness, see<strong>in</strong>g ‘hate’ at work<br />

without oppos<strong>in</strong>g what is only a mistaken mental attitude. There<br />

is no hate, there is only the wrong view of ‘self’.<br />

Thought<br />

Thought is a mental reaction to an experience, which is a challenge<br />

call<strong>in</strong>g for a response. The response of thought is a flashback to<br />

memory where all answers are stored, and where this new challenge<br />

will be stored with its appropriate answer. Those answers may have<br />

come from personal experiments or from those of others written<br />

down <strong>in</strong> books on psychology or religion, economics or philosophy.<br />

Whatever their orig<strong>in</strong>, they are there stored up to constitute that<br />

marvellous reference library of memory, without which there would<br />

be no <strong>in</strong>dividuality. For those memories are carefully selected for<br />

that purpose: to make and to strengthen the ‘self’-conscious ‘ego’<br />

thought has made this ‘I’ the centre of its action, and thought cannot<br />

move it or remove it without destroy<strong>in</strong>g itself. Can thought

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