Meditation Is Not What You by Kabat-Zinn Jon

Author:Kabat-Zinn, Jon [Kabat-Zinn, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2018-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Meditation practice invariably requires a certain kind of scaffolding, especially at the beginning (but really, always, to some degree, only it can grow to seem so second-nature that no “will” or “attempt” or “reminder” is any longer necessary), in the form of meditation instructions and a variety of methods and techniques. Such scaffolding also includes the larger context in which one would undertake such a strange lifelong adventure as to hone your own capacity for dwelling in stillness, for looking deeply into the nature of your own mind, and for realizing in this very moment and in all the moments that present themselves, the liberative dimensionality of awareness.

Just as we need scaffolding to build a building, just as scaffolding was needed for Michelangelo and his apprentices to paint the frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so we need a certain kind of framework to bring us to the essence of this inner work, right at the edge of this in-breath, this out-breath, this body, this moment.

But just as when the building is built or the ceiling completed, the scaffolding is no longer needed and comes down, never having been part of the essence of the endeavor, simply a necessary and useful means for furthering it, so with meditation, the very scaffolding of instructions and framework is dismantled, dismantles itself really, and only the impalpable, wordless essence remains, that essence being wakefulness itself, beyond and underneath, “before” thinking even arises.

What makes it interesting is that meditative scaffolding is needed in every moment, and by the same token, it needs to be dismantled in every moment, not later, at the end of some great work, such as the Sistine Chapel, but moment by moment. This is accomplished by knowing that it is merely scaffolding, however necessary and important, and not becoming attached to it. Letting it be erected and dismantled, moment by moment. With the Sistine Chapel, the scaffolding may need to be kept in storage, or resurrected for touching up, for restoration, for repair or fine-tuning over the years. But in the case of meditation, the masterpiece is always in progress and at the same time always complete in each moment, like life itself.

Put another way, proper instruction allows meditation to serve as the jumping-off point, right from the beginning, into what the Tibetans call non-meditation, even if it may only be a mysteriously opaque device at first, a mere suggestion to keep in mind for later. For even the very thought that you are meditating is scaffolding. That scaffolding is helpful in aiming and sustaining your practice, yet it is also important to see through it to actually be practicing. Both are operative simultaneously moment by moment as you sit, as you rest in awareness, as you practice in any way, beyond the reaches of the conceptual mind and its ceaseless proliferations and stories; even, or we could say, especially, your stories about meditation.

This very book, and all books on meditation, and all meditation teaching, lineages and traditions,

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