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Burgs Discourse - 'how meditation works' (Transcript of opening of video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_WBkjDrW0E
'I thought I might give it to you straight today. What do you recon? ha ha Haaaaa!
Well, you know, when I have an audience like this who are, maybe only a little versed in the technology of meditation and the spiritual path, I try to couch it, as much as I can, in a language that is everyday. Yesterday we probably didn't use anything more than one hundred and fifty words and they were probably quite easy to understand, even though the concept we were dealing with was quite profound.
But I think today I would like to give you a transmission of that information, of that insight about the heart essence of our awakened mind in the way I feel it should be delivered, yea, if, cos you seem to be, I would say, yea, thirsty, for this understanding. So, I'm gonna give you... it's still my way of delivering the transmission, but it's more along the lines of the traditional way I would have received it.
Now when we practice meditation, and I'm talking about meditation for the purification of our mind and for enlightenment, there are two branches to meditation: there is the branch of serenity, which is to enter into ever deeper states of serenity and bliss; and the highest states of serenity are really quite sublime states which we call Jhanas and these are, yes, extraordinary in their nature and the peace which we experience experience within them is very profound and moving. But they are called, what is called the momentary cessation of suffering, because we experience the complete absence of all suffering whilst we abide within them. But when we emerge from them, life is the same as it was when we got upon the cushion apart from the effect that our meditation may have steadied our heart-base and we feel lighter and more equanimous than before; that lightness and that equanimity may well carry us for a while, but the old habit patterns of our mind are still latent within us.
And then there is the practice of meditation that looks at how we might cut off at the root the very causes of suffering within us. So our meditation is more of an investigation into the way of things in the hope that through our investigation we come to see things more clearly all these things we were looking at yesterday: why is it like that! Why am I like that; and even having identified these things in me that I wish to change; why is it not just a matter of choosing?
Now this is what we call insight.
This insight thread of meditation brings us to a deeper understanding of the way of things though our experience, through our experience with meditation: we experience how this body arises. What are the conditions for it's arising? What causes it's to pass away? We experience what is the condition for the arising of this mind. What are the causes for it's arising, what causes it to pass away? We experience what is the basis for this awareness that sits behind this active mind. All of these faculties that make up the human experience, we investigate and we come to see: it's because of this that this arises, because of this, this arises. We start to understand what we call 'the causal chain'. Nothing just... You didn't just happen to just be here. You didn't happen to just turn out the way you are right now. It is absolutely a by-product of those causes, that causal chain that has gone on within you and around you throughout your life. This is what we mean when we say we are conditioned beings. But understanding this conditioning and actually seeing that is absolutely true, the insight needs to be penetrated to a deep enough level where it dismantles our idea of self, rather than creating in us an idea of self: "well I'm like this because my mother left me in the garden when I was four years old". That is not enough insight to break down this idea of me.
Eventually we investigate this causal process of arising and passing of conditions within us until we see absolutely what is the cause of the coming into being, what is the cause of it's passing away; And at that stage we know what it is to be a human being. We don't have any doubt. We know what is mind what is matter, where they come from. What causes them to arise and what causes them to pass away; and when we look out over the universe, we realise that everything in the universe is dependently originated in exactly the same way. We understand the universe. When we understand what is going on between the top of our head and the soles of our feet there isn't anything in the universe which you do not understand; at that point you really ahhhhh... this is how it is.
So this is how we get to that point...'
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The pristine ground of unconditional love. When meditation stops being meditation.by BurgsOnMeditation570 views
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