Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [121]
Awareness is the common denominator of all sentient beings. Meditation is the most direct and effective way to cultivate that innate awareness; it is the essential ingredient on the path to awakening the Buddha within. We meditate in order to purify and discipline our minds. We meditate in order to become enlightened—in order to understand and directly perceive reality or truth—defined by the Buddha as “clear seeing,” or “seeing things as they are.” We meditate in order to wake up to what is, and thus arrive at the total immediacy and authenticity of life in this very present moment. That’s the goal, and it is also the practice. Cultivating present, moment-by-moment awareness helps you come home to who you are and always have been.
Demystified and divested of religious and cultural trappings, meditation basically means the intentional cultivation of mindful awareness and pure attention—an alert, wakeful presence of mind. This development of awareness eradicates ignorance—about ourselves and others as well as reality. Meditation awakens and frees the mind, and opens the heart, helping us develop inner wisdom, clarity, joy, and compassion, thus bringing spirituality and a larger perspective into every aspect of daily life. Meditation training helps us to concentrate as well as to see and think more clearly. In this way we develop spiritually into wiser, more selfless, and caring men and women.
Meditation is not just something to do; it’s a method of being and seeing—an unconditional way of living moment by moment. Through meditation we perceive and know things as they actually are. This directly connects and brings us to truth according to its simplest definition—things just as they are. Meditation is how Buddhas pray.
The Dharma teaches that everything, good and bad, originates within our minds—minds that have been conditioned by years (and lifetimes) of deluded and delusional thinking. Don’t our minds buzz with anxieties, with regrets for the past as well as plots and plans for the future? Doesn’t it sometimes seem as though our minds are awash with conflicting feelings, thoughts, and fantasies? Every second of every day, the mind and senses are being flooded by external stimuli—sounds, smells, sights. So much is going on—so much extraneous information is going in and out of the mind that it seems impossible to “see straight”—to see with clarity.
The mind is capable of so much: It has given birth to all the marvels as well as all the horrors of the modern world. How we use our unique gift of consciousness makes all the difference. Thought and intellect are good servants—great tools, but poor masters. We so often fall prey to the tyranny of thought and are controlled by our own motor minds and surrounded by the static and empty echoes of our own motor mouths. Our restless imaginings, obsessions, and incessant anxieties, uncertainties, and worries run amok, leaving us not a moment’s peace. At these times, it’s good to take stock and renew our heart’s soulful search for happiness and fulfillment, to begin afresh our journey and exploration toward finding what really matters in life, and staying with it. What really matters—to us? How to learn to love and live better. How to make a life, not just a living. How to make life into something worth living. How to find ourselves—our true selves—not just our persona or image. How to use the special talents and gifts we have.
If we want to simplify and deepen our lives, we must simplify and deepen our minds. When we become more centered, clear, spacious, caring and open, there is suddenly much more room in our frenetic lives for both others and ourselves. Marshall McLuhan said, “Our mind is a magazine with a new edition every four seconds.” In the Dhammapada, the Buddha said, “The mind