Delivery: Exploring the Way

The meditation started out with hatred. First I tried noticing the experience and my awareness of the experience, and seeing if I could, from the point of view of this awareness, extend acceptance to the experience. I found that I could and that compassion also arose in relation to the experience. But the hatred persisted and so I explored it further. But then, as I got tired of that I suppose, sloth and torpor arose. At first I looked at that as well, but the hatred continued unabated and as I knew that soon I had to go to work, I thought, ‘this hatred and lassitude really is rather unskillful, is there something else I can do here?’ As I was mulling over the usual options, none of which had ever worked very well, another idea popped up, ‘what about right effort?’

I decided that in this case ‘right effort’ consisted of abandoning an unwholesome state and generating a wholesome state. Unfortunately, my past experience has been that neither metta nor focusing on breathing are very helpful when working with such strong negative emotions or states. But for some reason it occurred to me to close my eyes and direct my attention towards the flutter in the darkness of tiny sparks of light, vague images, colours and random shapes and patterns as they appeared and disappeared. I became quite concentrated on this experience, and soon the aversion dissolved and was replaced by peace and calm. Hence I was able to use concentration on ‘seeing’ to abandon the unwholesome state and generate a more wholesome state, and from there was able to prepare to get on with my day.

Afterwards I speculated on how experience can be what it is, how we can know given everything is changing, and then hit upon the idea that of course we can because we are changing with it too. Just as when you are on a train going somewhere, you forget that you are moving with the train. And so the room seems still because I am moving with it, but from the sun’s point of view the room and I are both moving very fast indeed. As Einstein would observe, this is relativity, and how everything works, such that speaking of constants makes no sense except as a technique or method, one which the ancients mastered long ago, and which scientists only rediscovered and used to their advantage. The Buddha never won a Nobel Prize, perhaps only because his era pre-dated this latest brand of egotism.