Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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28 an object except as a symptom which reveals the real conflict of mental disease. Concentration on the 32 parts may at most produce the ecstatic first stage of mental absorption (jhāna) and thus find partial and temporary satisfaction in achieving and conceiving a mental disgust for worldly pleasures. But the essence of conflict is not laid bare until the mind in quiet contemplation is silent and does not move in search and expectation. As long as ‘I’ am the movement, ‘I’ am the source of motion and its goal; then there can be no solution of the conflict which is the separation and opposition of subject and object in actuality. Awareness of breathing Why should this exercise on inhaling and exhaling have become so popular? There is, of course, frequent mention in the Suttas and commentaries of the way of mindfulness through attention to the process of breathing. Even before the Buddha gave his advice in this regard, there was among the Hindu sadhus and ascetics (and there still is) great emphasis laid on this exercise as a means to acquiring mental absorption. For them it was a real exercise, for breaths had not only to be observed, but regulated and controlled, till finally breathing was stopped, or at least became imperceptible. And as the mind cannot concentrate without an image or a concept, this controlled breathing became a means for mind-control. The stilling of the passions was acquired through the stilling of the breathing process; and when this breathing process was taken as the object of the thought process, thought would cease with the cessation of breathing. But the Bodhisatta soon found the flaw in this reasoning, when with the cessation of breathing there was a falling off of the supply to the brain of physical blood carrying oxygen. And when the mind faints because of the irregularity in physical functioning, there is no cessation of the passions, not even a cessation of the thought process, but only cessation of awareness, of intelligent
29 awareness. When consciousness ceases there is no solution of any problem. There is rather the addition of another problem: What can the mind do, when thought stops? Just as suicide is no cure for a head-ache (even though the physical ache ceases), so unconsciousness cannot provide an answer and a cure for the passions of love and hate, jealousy and spite, craving and clinging, retention and projection. The senses can be stilled and the responses dulled under the influence of drugs and liquor. By excluding the operating mind, man can still continue to exist and labour as a machine, only to become mentally and physically exhausted. Factories can save on production costs by employing sub-standard machinery. Likewise, by employing sub-standard forms of energy through drugs, work will continue, and mind will continue its thinking, but at what cost? Thinking, then, is a mere reproductive act, based on memory and experiment. There is no creative activity, but only the reproductive activity of the conveyor-belt. In thinking the mind relies on memory, and with the ideas thus conceived it projects its ideal into the future. This thinking must cease. But if the mind applies its energy to the stilling of thought, that effort is still directed towards the achievement of an ideal: the quiet mind, which again is an object for a striving mind. Thought must stop but it cannot be made to stop. The first step is not directed towards a slowing down even, but to just understanding the process which has become a problem. Any vision of the process involves an image which is a further thought, a concept, a memory or an ideal. It is at this point that inhaling and exhaling of breath provides the answer, for breath itself is colourless, shapeless, weightless, without taste or smell; it cannot be seen or stored; it can only be felt in passing, when the breath passes along the entrance of the nose, being an inhalation or an exhalation. It is not the breath which is felt, but the contact of the flow of air with the nostrils. Without controlling, without guiding, without accelerating, without stopping, it can be watched in a pass-
Page 3: Copyright Notice This work is licen
Page 6 and 7: 4 Awareness of Perceptions . . . .
Page 9: From the publisher Henry Van Zeyst,
Page 12 and 13: 10 the ‘ego’, for the maintenan
Page 14 and 15: 12 insubstantiality (anatta). The l
Page 17 and 18: Awareness, the Beginning of Enlight
Page 19 and 20: 3 more important than the understan
Page 21 and 22: 5 continuance in impermanence, conf
Page 23 and 24: 7 Awareness is not Consciousness Aw
Page 25 and 26: 9 When there is no Awareness We are
Page 27 and 28: 11 not come through exertion, does
Page 29 and 30: Mindfulness as Recollection However
Page 31 and 32: 15 the Buddha is seen as the perfec
Page 33 and 34: 17 with good conduct, for they are
Page 35 and 36: 19 understanding of the degree of d
Page 37 and 38: 21 as change in evolution. And to s
Page 39 and 40: 23 our craving for continuity, this
Page 41 and 42: 25 observation leads to a feeling o
Page 43: 27 of the eye, the flexibility of t
Page 47 and 48: 31 thing to be talked about as an a
Page 49 and 50: 33 an escape is only more conflict.
Page 51 and 52: Applications of Awareness Awareness
Page 53 and 54: 37 Here is a sensation which is con
Page 55 and 56: 39 as a soul to carry and to carry-
Page 57 and 58: 41 (saññā) ideations or mental f
Page 59 and 60: 43 an entity, free from the opposit
Page 61 and 62: 45 Attachment to rules and rites (s
Page 63 and 64: 47 is thus made an object for striv
Page 65 and 66: 49 mind, such as the five hindrance
Page 67 and 68: 51 cur, a revelation not through di
Page 69 and 70: 53 of achieving, but just melts awa
Page 71 and 72: 55 which prevent the mind to be at
Page 73 and 74: 57 bare attention, not with the int
Page 75 and 76: 59 of a search for happiness contai
Page 77 and 78: 61 ery experience is fresh, in whic
Page 79: that craves for continuance, of all
Page 82 and 83: 66 Originally, in the early suttas,
Page 84 and 85: 68 the conflict, and conflict is mi
Page 86 and 87: 70 mind again. ‘What is felt is p
Page 88 and 89: 72 counter-balance to delusion (moh
Page 90 and 91: 74 be able to get rid of the deprav
Page 93 and 94: Awareness in Reaction Methods How c
Page 95 and 96:
79 of, will be there. But that is n
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81 past. Clinging to the past has f
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83 denial or to a spiritual ideal,
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85 When the mind is totally open an
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87 happens to a watcher who is foun
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89 now projected into the future as
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91 property, who set fire to my hou
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93 experience. When no answer is so
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95 there is freedom to see, to unde
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97 what it is, and not where it com
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Awareness in Meditation Stillness o
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101 future, based on a dead memory.
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103 neither the ‘self’, nor the
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105 truth; becoming as ‘self’,
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107 to become perfect. Awareness do
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110 is the wide vista for all to se
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112 truth in spheres where sense-pl
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114 has no entity, no conflict can
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116 all know what is right; and yet
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118 true relationship, as all conta
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120 is in loving, the thought of lo
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122 loving; and that moment is alwa
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124 Compassion is frequently seen a
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126 should not be a barrier of dist
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128 is the food on which the ‘I
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130 Sympathy Sympathetic joy (mudit
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132 no preoccupation, no pettiness,
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134 not ‘mine’, but which is al
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136 through mind-control or substit
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138 am that projection, that ideal,
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About the Author Henri van Zeyst wa
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