Stirring Up Mud

Concentration calms the mind, but concentration alone will not grant the freedom we are looking for. Concentration is crucial in establishing the next step, however. Something needs to stir up the calm mind that we have developed similar to stirring up mud on the bottom of a pond so that we don’t become confused and believe that the mud is no longer there.

This unique type of investigation, this stirring of the mud,is called mindfulness, and is most effectively accomplished immediately after coming out of “fixed concentration,” which is that full, bright calm that is experienced when our meditation object disappears and after the visions and voices of “threshold concentration” cease. It’s exactly when we come out of this fixed concentration that the mind is sharpest and can penetrate most easily from a metaphysical perspective into whatever is being investigated. This is called disce
ment, which leads to wisdom or seeing reality rather than images.

These investigations into the body and mind will deepen as our meditation becomes an ongoing, continuous process all day long. This mindfulness is the second step leading to final insight, and is only successful when accompanied by an extremely concentrated mind, which is what we have been working on.

It is necessary to integrate whatever insight we discover into our lives. A good way to accomplish this is to take one step forward and then a half-step backward. This way we can be certain of our progress. We must be mindful of everything in this manner, and whatever wisdom does result, we must be careful that we don’t cling to it, always allowing ourselves to go on.

Bodies and minds are disposable, like disposable napkins — use them once and out they go! So why become enamored with bodies and minds? Awareness only uses them as a ship we temporarily sail to gain wisdom and understanding. Therefore,this mindfulness will involve looking at things we normally abhor, like our personal death and the insides of our bodies, the distasteful parts.

It can be extremely difficult to look at ourselves in this manner because we identify so closely with our bodies. We can barely stand the sight of blood, we hate funerals, and we fall apart at the scene of an accidents! Our body seems to be everything that we have, so it’s threatening to observe it too closely. It’s frightening to look at any of our delusions as well, but until we see through them, how can we be free to go on? The sooner we get past this idea that this body is us, the better. Thoughts are not us, the body is not us; so what are we?

A cursory investigation reveals that this body of ours contains animal-like things! Teeth, skin, finge
ails and toenails, body hair and head hair. But we don’t consider ourselves to be an animal! We regard these things as beautiful—our beautiful hair and nails—but when they drop off, what’s more disgusting than nail clippings on the floor, or a hair in our soup, or perhaps a week-old, dead and decaying body lying along the roadside?

We must now be responsible and courageous, however, investigating to see the actual truth of this body we hold so dear. Hmm, let’s see . . . our body is nothing but soft tissue and a skeleton, nothing substantial here, nothing to fall in love with. We don’t seem to go any further than this bone in our arm, and everything is made up of the elements of the earth! We eat the things of the earth and we will return to the earth, and in many ways we are the earth, just as a tree is the earth.

Unde
eath this bag of skin covering our bellies are many strange things; a tube from our mouth leading down to a pouch of undigested food, and further down are more tubes with waste products. Everything is coming and going—in and out. A bellows pushes air back and forth while a pump circulates blood. Looking directly at these things shouldn’t alarm us, nor should we be disgusted by them, because this is what we are, this is where our awareness, the great Reality decided to establish itself this time around.

We can’t count on our body; it doesn’t obey us. It merrily goes about its business without our direction, and in the end, it will dissolve into the elements and disappear without our approval as well. It doesn’t follow our schedule; it follows its own schedule. Our body is reminiscent of a comfortable house built near a raging river where we must live, knowing well enough that a flood could wash it away at any moment. It would be foolish not to consider escape routes when living in a house threatened with disaster, because when the time comes to leave, how would we be ready to get out in time? Therefore, since we can’t rely on our impermanent body, shouldn’t we invest in something we can trust, something that will be there for us when our body fails, which is not long from now, as it’s beginning to rain and the water is rising.

It seems to be in our best interest to develop our concentration to the highest degree possible but without becoming attached to it. If we become attached, which is easy to do because of the peace it instills; we will undoubtedly be hesitant to move forward with our work of mindfulness. We can see, reluctantly, that mindfulness is crucial if we are ever to acquire that unique, refined wisdom that will free us forever from physical, organic bodies.