What is meditation?

True Meditation by Adyashanti

 

True meditation has no direction, goals, or method. All methods aim at achieving a certain state of mind. All states are limited, impermanent and conditioned. Fascination with states leads only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial consciousness.

 

True meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not fixated on objects of perception. When you first start to meditate, you notice that awareness is always focused on some object: on thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, memories, sounds, etc. This is because the mind is conditioned to focus and contract upon objects. Then the mind compulsively interprets what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.

 

In true meditation all objects are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to manipulate or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness (consciousness) is the source in which all objects arise and subside.

 

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

 

Silence and stillness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the non-state in which all states arise and subside. Silence, stillness and awareness are not states and can never be perceived in their totality as objects. Silence is itself the eternal witness without form or attributes.

 

As you rest more profoundly as the witness, all objects take on their natural functionality, and awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive contractions and identifications. It returns to its natural non-state of Presence.

 

The simple yet profound question “Who Am I?” can then reveal one’s self not to be the endless tyranny of the ego-personality, but objectless Freedom of Being — Primordial Consciousness in which all states and all objects come and go as manifestations of the Eternal Unborn Self that YOU ARE.

 

© 1999 Adyashanti. All rights reserved.

 

3 thoughts on “What is meditation?”

  1. While reading the paragraph:
    “As you rest more profoundly as the witness, all objects take on their natural functionality, and awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive contractions and identifications. It returns to its natural non-state of Presence.”

    for some odd reason, a scene from The Matrix popped into my head. Very close to the end, Neo is shot and thought dead. But then he stands up again with the most quizzical-confident look on his face. Smith runs to fight him but Neo blocks every punch thrown. Neo is distant yet present, responding to Smith but no longer bound to the systems of control within the matrix.

    :-) Maybe not exactly meditative in the usual sense, but thought I’d share.

    Do you know if there’s an audio version of this passage from Adyashanti?

  2. HI Andrew, that’s such a great scene in The Matrix!! Real change happens not in the content of the matrix, but in Neo’s relationship to it. Without the self-contraction, he is capable of responding with lots of effective meditative action :) I don’t think there’s an audio version of this passage, I found it after Adyashanti mentioned it in a live radio broadcast on Wednesday. I really like the live broadcasts, people email and call in and he addresses their questions and comments. The schedule for those is here: http://www.adyashanti.org/cafedharma/index.php?file=radio
    And there are lots of audio and video teachings here on his website: http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=watchvideo
    Thanks for your comments

  3. I know I’m late coming in here but thought I would respond anyway!
    Andrew… this passage is from a book by Adyashanti called “True Meditation” and yes, there is both an audio and book version available, published by Sounds True. It’s probably my favorite instruction on meditation for the purpose of spiritual awakening. I also like Joel Goldsmith’s “The Art of Meditation”.

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