Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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bare attention, not with the intention to overcome but with the
need to understand. Without understanding conflict, there can be
only a desire to run away from conflict, and many are the ways
and methods of escape. Self-indulgence in food, in comfort, in sex,
in drugs can make one forget that there was conflict, but the very
search for such an escape shows that conflict is still there. Selfdenial
in sacrifice, in prayer, in renunciation, in abstinence of what
others indulge in, can focus the mind on a sublime ideal, and thus
by sublimation forget there was a conflict to cause the escape. But
none of those methods give a solution. Conflict is still with us.
What is the problem? There is conflict everywhere, between nations,
between races, between ideologies, between religions, between
families, between individuals ...; there is conflict within the individual.
It is not so much between the haves and the have-nots, because
even the haves have their problems and their conflicts. With all
demands satisfied, there still remains the conflict of finding security
for the endurance of satisfaction. With all comfort and ease there
still remains the discomfort of disease and also the final and only
certainty that this does not last. It is the conflict between the desire
for permanent security and the knowledge of impermanence.
This very knowledge of impermanence has made man to seek
his security elsewhere. Many seek it as an everlasting life hereafter,
and they are prepared to surrender the joys of their present life as
a sacrifice and a payment of guarantee for a better life hereafter.
Many others seek it in the perpetuation of their name for future
generations and they pay for it with the labour of their lives to leave
behind a name which will be remembered for ages to come, a name
of honour and achievement.
But the actual conflict remains in the present between the desire
for permanence and the actual fact of impermanence.
Why this search for security and continuance? There is obviously,
lurking in the background of the unconscious the spectre
of fear of insecurity, which becomes all the more menacing in