No amount of thoughtful scheming of determined willing will lead to a state of peace and happiness. Thought is a temporal process. Concepts are in Time. That which is the “now” of eternity has nothing to do with past and future.
Life independent of thought is a very scary thing for the thinker and its control.
A Zen kōan, “to stick a pin in the iron bull,” sounds like a ridiculous enigma, yet we do not find it ridiculous to seek eternal peace and happiness through the temporal mechanism of thought. The concepts of eternity as time that goes on and on and the concept of space as miles and miles of emptiness prevent human thought and ego consciousness from accepting a non-temporal reality.
There are many techniques and a variety of disciplines that offer a sense of peace and comfort in a dynamic world of conflicting values. Many from the perspective of an isolated ego with all its devices for attaining knowledge and adapting to life’s challenges. This involves a knowing subject and a known object. It is dualistic in form and useful in its nature.
The other is meditation. Meditation is not musing or ruminating, both of which are products of thought. True meditation is not a discursive process. In meditation, there is no activity of registering and retrieving, as in the reasoning process. There is no usefulness directed towards some goal. In meditation, there is no past and future concerns from an isolated ego. Meditation lacks any form of dualism. The attention to reality, seeing the true as true, the false as false, and the true in the false is a simple act in the “now.”
Meditation has nothing to do with changing your person to another kind of person. There are no efforts to elevate your thought-up personal ego. In meditation, there is a state of freedom from the movement of time (while one is adapting to present-day cultural, religious, political systems). This state of freedom and integrity has no defining edges by which the thought process may grasp and assume ownership. The thought process has its proper place in managing the practical aspects of daily living, scientific research and technical progress. The intellectual order within the cycle is not meditation.
With right order, the door to meditation is opened. Right order is not the order dictated by authority figures, police, teachers, gurus, or clergy. Right order is not simply laws that provide a means for the survival of the human species. Right order embraces compassion, caring, love, and freedom. Freedom is not the licence of individuals to do whatever they desire, nor is love the simple attraction towards each other. Freedom and love are devoid of compulsion and possession. With true integrity and the absence of inner conflict, the door to meditation opens.
Meditation is not reclusive introspection in solitude or a mystical experience for the few. It is true activity in daily life. It is not uncommon. There are many beautiful people in the world, professionals, non-professionals, adults, teens, children, poor and rich, whose daily lives are marked with unselfishness, caring, and integrity, i.e. who meditate. Binding oneself to a joy or hardship is stereotyping, adhering to ego identity. To let go is like being released from a body cast.
But no ego is not a state of nihilism. All activity goes on, but none of it adheres to a centre called ego. The ego is an intellectual vantage point, not identification with an event.
Memories often make it difficult to recognize the past as past. When one lives without identifying with the transpired, one is living in the present, and there is a realization that there is not necessarily an inner subject (ego) viewing an object. There is no reflective activity involved in the action when subject and object are one.
The ego keeps one’s face too close to the tree to see the forest. True artists and musicians see beyond the painting and the melody. Their works, whether scorned or admired by the pragmatist, shine a light on an inexpressible reality, while caught up in the limiting whirl of the cyclical.
Meditation perhaps should be referred to as an “awakening,” because the term meditation is now often used for a myriad of modern techniques for handling the stress and strain of daily living. Meditation transcends this perspective. Meditation is freedom from time.
True meditation is timeless. It is completely different from the ego’s perception of a cyclical world, and the ego’s goal-driven activities.
The Voice of the Plowman 