On Feb 21, 2011, at 8:44 AM, Vaj wrote: > Byrom's translation is: > > You are bound > Only by the habit of your meditation > > Or in our context: > > You are bound > Only by the habit of your Transcendental Mediation™ > > and miss that you are already free, without flaw and luminous. > > Consider Judy, who takes to heart many memorized ideas, but not to the spirit; > and thus ends up wedded to her waking state concepts, mistaking them as real, > carrying around her pet rope. > > > One of the problems of meditation is forgetting to unlearn meditation.
The Dangers of the Path of Formal Meditation Whoever follows the ancient sages' path becomes sick from attachment to the meditation process; his teachers' literal instruction construed as a quest he chases a stream of concepts, as if pursuing a mirage: the perfect modality cannot be indicated by words and any 'true doctrine' is a travesty of Vajrasattva. Whether Buddhist, Hindu or Bon, the classical path of meditation is a snare and a delusion when attachment to it becomes obsessive and it becomes an end in itself. The habit of meditation becomes a disease when there is no liberating function in the process. It is a disease when a blissful trance state seemingly separates an arrogant yogin from his mind. But above all it is a disease simply because it is goal-oriented and promises attainment only if the present is prostituted to the future. This state of alienation is caused by mistaking mental constructs for the path, to mistake the shadow of the meaning expressed in words for the thing itself. The meanings of the words are taken as sacred concepts. The letter of the instruction is taken to heart rather than the spirit. To take the teacher's word literally is, for example, to construe reality as something concrete to be attained by striving in technique and method rather than as a door into the reality of the moment. Words and concepts are a means to their own transcendence in the here-and-now. Fascination with structure is a deviation; doctrine professed as 'true' and 'correct' gives Vajrasattva a mask of the ridiculous. -Vairochana, The Golden Ore
