Ordinary Mind
By Jayaji / transmissions and meditations for contemplation
Many people seek meditation today for what it can do for them, for its effects and affects. While it may present a smorgasbord of benefits, seeking meditation for benefits’ sake is missing the point.
The point is to find out first-hand that there is no point. With no point, one stops running around endlessly trying to do or be something other than what they are. With no point, one can then rightly accept what is present without daydreaming of futures or reminiscing of pasts.
In this way, meditation is waking from illusion. When we are engaged in thinking that there is something in it for us, that it will make us more special or give us more of whatever is desirable, be it peace or productivity, then we are in the illusion.
When we give up the goal and the achievement we come home, and we awake into presence. It is ordinary mind. It is ordinary existence. It is right under our noses but we hurry so fast on the treadmill looking for something extraordinary that we miss reality.
The progress and study of meditation are spectacular and anyones reason and motivation for practice should be fostered. However, it is wise to be aware of the subtlety that sneaks in to distract and detract and the subtlety that has to align to make the practice perfect.
Perfection is never perfected yet it stands eternally unmoved. Likewise, to practice perfection is to be reflected in its mirror. Never-ending, without goal or achievement and absolutely ordinary in the reality of what is.
I know some people have problems with perfectionism. That thing causes tremendous anxiety, cuts self-esteem down and ensues procrastination. Leave perfectionism out of it. I am not talking about striving for perfection. Rather, the giving up of all striving to see that everything is inherently perfected in itself.
Seeing the ground in front of you as nothing more than the universe is perceiving emptiness of form. No-self does not mean that you do not exist, it means that you are existence.
Be careful now with thinking you are existence, or that you are the universe. Such thinking can easily be mistaken. It is not that you are one with all things, rather it is that all things are one. Realised as such individual existence ceases and reality continues.
Question now: Where do I end and the universe begin?
And then:
If the universe is but one thing then how can I be one with it?
You don’t need answers, just ordinary silence.
