Three Stages of Meditation

Concentration practice suspends our discontent and confusion by temporarily subduing thoughts and feelings, but when our concentration ends, the confusion returns albeit in a diminished capacity. The calm state of concentration only incarcerated our discontent for a moment before old habits overrode our shifts in consciousness and a jailbreak ensues with confusion reigning supreme once again when our ecstasy and calm disappeared.

Mindfulness practice goes a step further. It uses our new consciousness resulting from concentration practice to begin getting at the root of our unawareness and ignorance, actually making us aware of the ignorance itself so that our ignorance can be rehabilitated and pose no danger when released from its temporary prison of a concentrated mind.

Finally, Insight practice will reveal to us the one who is unaware, the one who thinks he or she is ignorant -- our "I" thought -- thus eradicating the root of ignorance once and for all. But since the "I" thought keeps us alive, we shouldn't look upon it with contempt; we should understand it for what it is -- innocent-- in, and of, itself. It is merely "what is," or the independent arising of phenomena. Only when we lack discernment and wisdom do we allow our thoughts to build into more than independently arising phenomena. This is when they create and establish an "I" thought or self.

But why would we want to see through this illusionary "I" thought, this illusion that we must necessarily use when investigating during mindfulness practice? It is because if we don't, we will continually be reborn into the illusion of a self, moment to moment, and our discontent will never end.

So now we must find a way to release our "I" thought in order to acquire the freedom we seek. How do we do this? We do it by curiously doing . . . nothing! In a way, we stop "doing." The doer begins to break up, and as a result, the "I" thought breaks up as well. We remove the "I" thought's fuel, which is desire.

At some point, the witness or watcher will disappear, with only pure awareness remaining. In place of a participant, there will only be untainted observation. You can never know yourself, just as an eyeball cannot see itself, or a knife cut itself, but there will be an awareness apart from "you," and then, your discontent ends when your attachments to the "I" thought, and attachments to both self and no self are broken. At this time, awareness will see the "I" thought, see the self, and see no self as separate existences, operating comfortably within the material world, innocent in, and of, itself.

Awareness is always there. It is eternal. It never began and will never cease; it is the basis of all existence and never dies. Unlike consciousness, which requires change in order to manifest, awareness requires no change. Awareness is unchanging. Awareness is what we thirst for; that undying, unborn, unformed, eternal Realty that we inherently are.

Consciousness happens when awareness merges with an object. If there is no object or no sense organ to experience the object, consciousness cannot occur. That leaves only awareness, pure untainted awareness. This awareness can never be explained, but it can be discovered in meditation, and once it's touched, the meditator is changed forever. This is why a meditator will proclaim that the ineffable is just that, inexplicable, because pure awareness registers nothing, yet pure awareness is everything, it is "empty mind, pure mind, shunyata, formless, no past and no future, no plans, voidness, emptiness of self, emptiness of soul, the ground of all existence, the Godhead, eternity."

And that's the beauty of it, it's nothing.

Copyright © E. Raymond Rock 2007. All rights reserved

About the Author

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center (http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com). His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Bo