The End Of Experience
What's happening?" What have you been up to?" What's going on in your life?" We use these types of greetings every day in lives filled with things to do.
Any break in these nonstop activities is uncomfortable; when someone asks what is going on in our lives, its not cool to say Nothing. We would be considered boringnot at all fun to be around. Therefore, we spice it up; TV, the internet, movies, going here and there, relationships, family, friends, religion, careers, hobbies; they all contribute to make our lives interesting and active. A full life.
This is how we work through the stages of our lives; the student, the householder, maybe later politics or religion, and perhaps we even write a book in an attempt to leave for posterity any wisdom we might have acquired along the way.
This is everyday life. This is all there is. To reach beyond this involves reaching beyond existence as we know it, beyond experience, and few are inclined to do this. The saints, the sages, the visionaries throughout history have gone there, but have always been misunderstood at best and persecuted at worst, because what they have discovered is not for everyoneit scares people!
If you are one of the courageous few who may be interested in what the saints and sages discovered, read on; if notif you are happy with your life and satisfied to live out its predictable stages, this is a good place to stop, and perhaps read something more interesting.
When I first entered a Zen Buddhist monastery for training almost thirty years ago, I was told that Zen is everyday life. This I didnt want to hear; I didnt believe them. I was at a Zen monastery to escape everyday life through the magic and mysticism of Zen meditation. I didnt realize at the time, and it took me many years to realize that everyday life is the gateway to something far greater; that about which the saints and sages whisper.
Everyday life is an aphorism for emptiness; not expecting more than what this mundane existence has to offer. Regardless of how we try to spice up life with endless pursuits and diversions, life seeks its own level, just as water does, and sooner or later life settles down into everydayness. The trick is to accept this everydayness instead of escaping it, and use its predictability and peace to launch the mind into an unknown area of life; so wonderful, yet so foreign to everyday existence that the mind can unfortunately become frightened.
This is the point where many truth seekers bow out. The comfort of activity and the security of experiencing remain too compelling, and the seeker returns to the world. The fact is, if he or she didnt return to the world, they would soon be faced with the other world, and since in the other world they no longer exist, they are better off going back to their familiar bondage rather than risk disappearing and becoming unbalanced! This is why deeper meditation is not recommended for anyone with psychological issues, unless sanctioned by their mental health care professional. If the rug is pulled out too quickly, and our illusions shattered too abruptly, we can easily become unbalanced if we dont have direct access to a teacher.
One of the benefits of deeper meditation is that unless you have an underlying psychological problem, correct meditation will never permit you to venture further than you safely should. meditation, little by little, infuses courage, and only reveals to you what your accumulated courage can handle. For example, in the other world, existence, as we know it . . . doesnt exist! The other world and this world are no different, since we are but the conscious aspects of the pure awareness of that other world. In our minds, however, the other world is alien, even though this is the world of God that many speak so loosely about, and it can initially be a scary place for worldly based minds that depend upon their existence and experience for security.
But good things happen when ones courage, accumulated through either meditation or a spontaneous emptying of the mind, allows one to peek at the other world, a world beyond experience. Beyond experience means just that, no recollection of what has transpiredno registration in the conscious mind at all. This emptiness, this seeming unconsciousness, however, is fully aware without consciousness, at a level so deep that it could never surface to a conscious knowing.
This unconscious awareness is the other world. This means that as a human being, you are one of those rare individuals, like the sages and saintsthe visionarieswho have touched the other world, who have touched what some call God.
This is not the same as a feeling of God in you, or a vision of God; feelings and visions are within existence and caught within experience, and we can remember them. Pure awareness is something quite different from that, pure awareness is touching something so fundamental that your entire life changes, and although you cant recall what has happened, the more you dwell in that other world of pure awareness, the more the present world falls away, until both worlds merge. The Zen Ox Herding Pictures," ten stages of becoming fully aware of your fundamental true nature represents this beautifully.
When experience ends, when we are no longer conscious but entirely aware, this is where destinies change. This is where we look back and see that our sensory perception, thoughts, feelings, and emotions (and where they lead us), can easily be described by some as illusion at best, and the Devil at worst! When we live our lives directly from awareness, all the stale ideals and conceptions fade in the presence of pure awareness. Then we are spontaneous, and then we act with enlightened minds.
This would be the pinnacle of human development. This is the answer for which we have been searching; this is coming face-to-face with God. This is the end of experience, and the beginning of pure awareness.
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is co-founder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com
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