Buddhist Meditation: Tranquility, Imagination and Insight by Kamalashila

Author:Kamalashila
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Windhorse Publications
Published: 2013-03-26T23:00:00+00:00

Insight reflection

The three levels of wisdom outline an increasing clarification of views that relate to the path of liberation. Crucial to this is the second level, reflection. We’ll look shortly at some standard frameworks for this, for example reflections on the lakṣaṇas, the ultimate characteristics of existence. But in the spirit of Yeats’ butterfly, let’s not overspecify the way it all works. Once introduced into the labyrinth of your habitual mind, reflection topics become less easy to track. That’s fine and to be expected; the main thing is to take them in. After you’ve done that, you’ll find yourself rambling around them for ages in all kinds of strange ways. But the rambles are always connected to the nature of things, to the great existential mystery vipaśyanā opens us up to. As already noted, that process is organic and beyond the rational, even though rationality is included.

To give several images: reflection is like sitting at a warm fireside on a winter’s night gazing into the flickering glow of thoughts and ideas. It is like looking out of the window on a train journey: your eyes take in both the changing scenery and the reflections in the glass. The glass surface holds the gaze, occupies the senses and frees the thinking mind to engage in deeper concerns as ideas arise and disclose their previously unnoticed layers of meaning. Reflection is a subtle activity that needs to occur within an expanse of receptivity. You need to allow the mind space to relax and be itself and then to deliberately choose an object for contemplation. But the contemplation will be at least partly associative. Your deliberations may be laser-sharp and penetrating, cooly separating unwanted matter like a surgeon using a scalpel. At other times you’ll need to seize on ideas hawk-like, hotly challenging and testing them, perhaps making yourself face unexpected conclusions. All along, you need to find a place for the gently musing butterfly style too. That’s because you need both the activity and the receptivity, the musing and the deliberation. Indeed, the word ‘reflection’ implies a mutual, cooperative relationship between a subject and an object.

When you next have some free time, even as little as twenty minutes or half an hour, resist the impulse to play with a gadget or to pick up a book. Engage in reflection instead. Put everything else aside, sit in a comfortable chair, relax and do nothing – except one thing: connect with your body and feelings. Notice your already running thoughts. In order to think deliberately, you must free energy by withdrawing the attention escaping into all kinds of interests. Thinking is an introvert: it needs time to itself. Often the reason why meditation is wasted in distracted thinking (or you have sleepless nights filled with intense thoughts) is that you don’t allow your thoughts any other time for play. So don’t hesitate to spend time doing ‘nothing’; it isn’t a waste of time or an indulgence. Nor, in seeking clear thought, are you pretentiously viewing yourself as a ‘thinker’.

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