Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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32 something we all want, and what the world just now needs more than anything else. Man has fought global wars to achieve peace. With an atom bomb which killed and maimed millions, a war was ended, but peace was not established. Progress towards peace was sought through further invention of nuclear weapons, the hydrogen bomb, a thousand times more deadly, the neutron ray which can kill human lives, while preserving their property undamaged! Can peace be made in a laboratory, through science, by control, by treaty, by thought? Do we know what peace is? Peace is something like health, which we all want when we do not have it. That is, we only know disease and disharmony and conflict. And as these disturbances can only provide insecurity we seek their opposites: ease, harmony and love. But not knowing what they are, as we are always in conflict, our striving for peace is a mere attempt at approaching an ideal, a concept, an image of the mind which tries to escape from the horror of conflict, without knowing what conflict is, without knowing what peace is. It is the same mind which produced war, which now seeks peace, a mind which runs away from the past and wants to build a future with the same material, mind which, in seeking peace, is only seeking the security of continuation and the safety of ‘self’. In this seeking of an ideal there is only the projection of a mind in conflict; for, if there were no conflict, there would not be this search for peace. It is the search itself which cannot understand the present, because, in searching, the mind gathers the experience of the past and idealises the future. If peace is the end of conflict, then there must be an ending of striving which is competition, opposition, exploitation. Then there will be a new relationship based on mutual understanding of need without greed, which is love and peace. Thus, to know peace, we must first understand conflict. And that understanding cannot come through an attempt at escaping from conflict. Understanding of conflict can only come through awareness of conflict. To understand conflict one must experience conflict, live with it, see that life is conflict, and that my search for
33 an escape is only more conflict. It is the search for an escape which separates, which divides, which opposes and therefore IS conflict. Then, if peace is the absence of conflict, there must be an end to searching. Now, awareness is exactly that. To be aware is to see what is, and not to search for what may be. Awareness sees that all striving for attainment (and that includes the attainment of peace) is a striving which is conflict between what actuality is and the ideal which is not. Thus awareness sees conflict as non-real, and striving as idealistic, which also is non-real. Peace is then a condition of existence, unknown to a searching mind. It is a condition of existence, which is only known as a term, an ideal, a thought, as the absence of chaos, of conflict. This absence is not known in itself, but there is the experience of chaos, of confusion, of conflict, which is not conducive to the sense of security and safety required for undisturbed continuance and expansion. Without continuance there is no existence thinkable; and expansion is the first defence for continuance. What is known then is not peace, not even the absence of peace, but an expanding activity of self-assertion, which is necessary for continued existence. The continued existence, if self is not known of course because it is still an unborn ideal, hoped for in some future. This hope for the future carries with it its own doubts and fears of discontinuance, and is made up from reflected images and memories, which thought has rescued in the past, and without which there would not even be an ideal to look forward to. All this together is the conditioning from which the mind tries to free itself in its search for peace. But, peace itself being but an ideal, that is, a thought produced by the mind, and that in turmoil, can never be achieved by the striving of the mind to become peaceful. Mind can exclude some troublesome thoughts by concentrating on some more delectable objects. That is the work of escapism through drugs, or prayers, or external and social activity, etc. But such
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 and 44: 27 of the eye, the flexibility of t
Page 45 and 46: 29 awareness. When consciousness ce
Page 47: 31 thing to be talked about as an a
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
Page 97 and 98: 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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Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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