..續本文上一頁ace, in this situation; and there is a knowing of that -there”s hearing. And that”s a completely different reality from thinking ”bird singing”.
If we are always falling back into concepts, then the internal dialogue goes chattering on: ”Bird singing. Flower over there. This person talking. I wish they”d be quiet. Candle burning. ..” and so on. And we think we know all about life! We continually juggle these concepts around in our heads and all they ever do is move from one side of the brain to the other - out of the memory to be verbalized, then back again. If we live with only concepts of life, it can get pretty boring -it”s the same old words -”flower, bird, tree”.
While it”s natural that we learn and understand through language, and express our understanding through language, many of us have become prisoners of language. With meditation we have the opportunity now to bring about a profound change in our Western civilization. We are trying to understand on a ”non - conceptual” level. In meditation we are realizing the nature of experience directly.
People who are completely identified with words may find this threatening, but we”re not talking about bypassing words altogether; we still have to express ourselves; we still need to communicate. But we should recognize that the words we use in communication are not the same as the experience we are attempting to convey.
Such little space is given in our society to silence. Words have become so loud and so powerful these days that sometimes that is all we hear. But it is the very space of silence that gives us access to, and nurtures, another way of relating. How wonderful to be like a child again and not be limited by words!
In the beginning, children don”t have a word for a flower. ”What is this
” they enquire. And we tell them: ”It”s a flower.” So okay, they have to learn to communicate, but maybe we should try saying, ”Well, it”s called a flower, but that”s not what it really is. It has its own perfect nature which is just-the-way-it-is.” To know this ”just- the-way-it-is” is to know joy. And knowing joy means we can bring back to life many of those beautiful qualities that have become drained out of us. We have a secret key now that will help free us from our habits.
The quality of joy can also be developed further. Beyond piti or spiritual joy there is a much more stable quality known as sukha. Generally, this term sukha is translated merely as happiness - the opposite of dukkha - but that”s not enough. Momentary happiness is like a butterfly that flitters around. It”s certainly 0. K., but it”s not the profound quality of well-being that is meant by sukha. Through having lived so much in concepts, our life has become boring, and fleeting excitement has come to appear as important to us.
Sukha, on the other hand, means: ”Everything is just fine.” It”s a sense of calm and well-being which pervades our whole body and mind. It makes the mind peaceful and collected, providing a firm foundation for samadhi - concentration.
But coming back to joy: joy is spontaneous. You can”t preconceive it. You can”t make it. It just arises in the moment. When there is true joy, you are in the moment. And joy in this way becomes a valuable reference point for us: if there is true joy, then we know we”re in the moment, and if we are really in the moment, then there is true joy.
So try to discover where joy comes from. See what supports it and what causes it to pass away. When we are doing this, we are beginning to cultivate joy as one of the ”Factors of Enlightenment”. It becomes one of the qualities that leads us to awakening.
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