Replying to LO24196
Dear Dan,
You say, "I am eager to hear the experiences and ideas of others on
getting the old ideas of "truth" and "what's right" out of our heads."
This is one good description of meditation practice, at least in the
Buddhist traditions I am familiar with.
Because of the cultural forms around it, sitting meditation is often not
understand as the radical, outrageous form of inquiry that it ultimately
is. It involves a progressive seeing-through of reference points; the
operations of conceptual mind are more clearly seen to be arbitrary, and
unavoidable. This is visceral experience and understanding. The marks of
it are that one's sense of humor, common sense, and gentleness towards
oneself and others increases.
Knowing intellectually that we are carrying around fixated notions of
"what's right," doesn't really help much, in my experience and
observation. As soon as we think we've gotten rid of one reference point
we are creating others-often more subtle and therefore dangerous-behind
it. We think its "right" to get rid of the idea of "what's right." We
are still stuck, and I believe its endless until we see through mind's
basic duplicity. At that point, one's reaction to their own confusion
might be "Who cares?"
I'm not proposing that the path of meditation provides any particular
answers to the practical questions we struggle with in this group, but it
does make grappling with them more fun.
l
--Michael Chender <mchender@netcom.ca>
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