Meditation (part 3)

Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness it.

Swami Muktananda

 If your mind is able to settle naturally of its own accord and if you are inspired simply to rest in its pure awareness then you do not need any method of meditation. In fact, it might even be unskillful when you're in such a state to try to employ one. However, the vast majority of us find it difficult to arrive at that state straightaway.

We simply do not know how to awaken it and our minds are so wild and so distracted that we need a skillful means, a method to evoke it. But remember a method is only a means not the meditation itself. It is through practicing the method skillfully that you reach the perfection of that pure state of total presence which is the real meditation.

As you continue to practice the method, the meditation slowly arises. Meditation is not something you can do: It is something that has to happen spontaneously only when we have perfected the practice. By far, the most important feature of meditation is not the technique, but the spirit, the skillful, inspired, and creative way in which we practice, which could also be called the posture. There is a connection between the posture of the body and the attitude of the mind. 

Mind and body are interrelated, and meditation arises spontaneously once your posture and attitude are inspired.

The posture, explained here, may differ slightly from others you may be used to. It comes from the ancient teachings of Dzogchen. In the Dzogchen teaching, it is said that your view and your posture should be like a mountain. Your view is a summation of your whole understanding and insight into the nature of mind which you bring to your meditation. So your view translates into and inspires your posture, expressing the core of your being in the way you sit.

Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that batter it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak.

Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar.

*SOGYAL RINPOCHE, 1992, THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING*

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