Awareness is more important than peace of mind

Every day I repeat a brief loving kindness meditation.

It starts with "May I be happy; may I be safe; may I be healthy; may I be at peace." Then I visualize someone I care about, usually my wife, and say the same things but substituting "you" for "I." After that, I zoom out to visualize the entire planet, and say "all" instead of "I."

It's interesting that I have little trouble envisioning myself or someone else being happy, safe, and healthy. But while I enjoy the sentiment, "May ______ be at peace," it's more difficult for me to picture what being at peace consists of.

Is it not being bothered by troubling things? Is it embracing everything that happens with calm acceptance? Is it being detached from the usual ups and downs of life?

Whatever being at peace is, it seems that if I, or anyone else, had it, then being happy, safe, and healthy wouldn't be nearly as important, since even if I or anyone else was unhappy, unsafe, and unhealthy, if we were at peace with that, life would be fine.

I used to think that this was something that meditation would eventually bring to me: peace of mind. Well, that hasn't happened yet, and I doubt that it ever will. I've even become doubtful that peace of mind is something to strive for.

For it seems to be unnatural, not really human, an artificial concept that sounds wonderful, yet is never observed as a living reality -- especially if we're talking about lasting or permanent peace of mind. 

Mindfulness strikes me as not only much more attainable, but more desirable. Meaning, non-judgmental open awareness of what is actually happening within and without us in the present moment.  (Which, of course, is the only moment possible, since the past is gone and the future hasn't happened.)

There's no way I'm always going to be happy, safe, healthy, at peace, or any other quality. Life is constant change. That's what life is, movement. When our mental and physical movement ceases, we're dead. 

So if I want a foundation to my life that offers a solid place to stand no matter what my circumstances are, it won't be peace of mind, which comes and goes depending on the state of my joys, sorrows, anxieties, worries, satisfactions, and all that. 

Mindful awareness, though, that seems doable.

Sure, currently I drift in and out of mindful awareness. Evidence of this is me walking back to my car to make sure I locked it; not being sure whether I took my vitamins and other supplements at the time I usually do; missing a move in a Tai Chi form because I was thinking about what I was going to have for dinner after the class ends.

I've been slowly making my way through a short book by Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence and the Way of Meditative Inquiry. I bought it because I'm a fan of Joan Tollifson's writings, and she studied with Packer for a while and speaks highly of her. 

Here's passages from a chapter called "Is Awareness Enough?" It isn't crystal clear what Packer is getting at here, but I'm fine with some murkiness when the general thrust of an idea makes sense to me, which these passages do.

Waking up during the night and looking out the window, such bright stars! The earth is enveloped in a fresh, white blanket of innocence. No footprints yet. No car tracks. No dirt. An amazing thing -- everything wiped clean. Like turning over a new leaf.

Yesterday I said, "Awareness is not enough." Why did I say that, some people were asking. Feeling the pain and sadness with tears welling up at memories of my late husband, Kyle, I said, "Awareness is not enough."

As I said it I wondered if someone would ask me about that. Somebody did. I do need to say more about what I meant at the time. Feeling love and pain and grief and sadness, one realizes how instantaneously remembrance creates a surge of sensations and emotions.

Memories and physical reverberations are as one -- it seems as though nothing could interrupt that immediate connection. Awareness appears to be there, but the remembering-paining-grieving cycle does not cease just because of it. And that's all right.

Awareness is like a mirror that shows what is happening, what we are at this instant, the joy and grief, pain and well-being, turmoil and peacefulness. Awareness reveals these memory connections but no one  intending or creating them. There is no I to be found directing things -- there is only what has been described. 

What does it mean, "Awareness is not enough?"

Where is our true abiding place at the rock bottom of everything -- an immovable presence? Is it just in the fleeting flow of events, both external and internal -- the thoughts, the feelings and emotions, the organism's reverberations -- and moving along with it all? Or is it simply awaring it all?

...People ask, "Would I be aware if there was nothing to be aware of?" Yes! Awareness needs no object. No subject I! Objects come and go and may even stay away in the depth of meditation. It doesn't matter. What matters is presence. 

Awareness, in which there is no fragmentation, no division, no me here and "everybody else" out there. All that is mind-made stuff. It needs to be seen as such.

Let me answer questions that may be lingering right now in people's minds: Does meditation mean I need to quiet down and be without thoughts? Does it mean I need to see everything about myself?

It's both. It's neither. It is without I. 

In seeing the hills and valleys now shrouded in fog, now lit up by sunlight -- do we see the ideas about them, or is there just unlimited space in which things freely appear and disappear? The open space being oneself, and what appears and disappears oneself, without division.

Comments

[Ron E.]

The loving kindness meditation in Buddhism is known as ‘meta’ chanting and is similar, if not the same as Brian’s practice. I used to do it years ago but could not see how such chanting was anything more than just, words and thoughts – and how could they benefit others, the world or myself. And as for being at peace, well, chanting generally seemed to bring a temporary feeling peace – perhaps because other thoughts and worries etc. were rendered briefly no prominent.

So, I much prefer and align with the thinking of Joan Toliffson. In her latest on-line posting, entitled ‘No one is steering the ship’ she talks about her first retreat with Tony Packer where: - “. . . the lightbulb went off and I realized there was no self, that the self is a mirage created by thoughts, memories, storylines, sensations and emotions. I began to notice that experience is without a center and without borders or seams—not just in my experience, but in everyone’s experience, although we might not notice this because our conceptual map often overrides our actual sensory perceptions. This realization didn’t mean that the me-sense was permanently eradicated, never to return. In fact, every time I get defensive or frustrated or feel miffed in some way, that me-sense is back. It’s never entirely believable anymore.”

In my opinion, this seeing that there is no self and that as (quite naturally) it arises, it’s not quite believable anymore. This perhaps is important, that although the strong feeling of self is always there, it is not believable anymore.

She talks about compassion, compassion that springs from the freedom from a self-dominated mind: - “No one [no self] is making it happen. Seeing this is an enormous relief. It takes away guilt and blame. It gives us compassion for ourselves and for everyone else being the way we all are.”

Perhaps this is where the sought after ’peace of mind’ resides.

[sant64]

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[s*]

Beautiful post Brian!!
I have done many retreats with Bhudists Teachers..
The ´Mindfullness¨Is so sooo very fine.

I love what you write and it awakens me in that sense of ´just be´Again´

Thank you

[Ron E.]

Have just read this post again and the piece from Tony Packer, particularly where she points out in last paragraph: - “In seeing the hills and valleys now shrouded in fog, now lit up by sunlight -- do we see the ideas about them, or is there just unlimited space in which things freely appear and disappear? The open space being oneself, and what appears and disappears oneself, without division.”

Quite often when we approach the wonders of nature, it can be seen that we have no real connection to any of it at all. Packer identifies the reason as sitting firmly in the way we habitually ‘see the ideas about them’. I would have thought that anyone interested in the lack of real relationships we have with nature, with ourselves and the world about us, would firstly enquire into the barriers we unconsciously erect that cause such divisions.

As far as I can see, meditation or awareness (or the felt need to honestly enquire into who/what we are) is the first and only step toward any sort of liberation that enables us to see the self-erected barriers that we construct from our repertoire of thoughts, ides, opinions, desires and wishes that contribute greatly to our existential feeling of separation.

[Aditya]

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[Integration]

I, I, I, I, I, like I’m so superior or so Special.
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[um]

@ Integration

It has been a pleasure listening to her.

Probably more because of her self-confidence in expressing herself than what she expressed.