The Essence of Meditation

Experience is interesting. Its absence is boring. But your being lies behind both of these, and it is always at peace. To abide as that is the essence of meditation.

Some people find meditating difficult because they rest in a blank state of mind rather than in being itself.

The object-knowing mind knows only thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions. When it turns to being, it finds an absence of these, and takes this absence to be a blank, empty void. Compared with the richness of thoughts and feelings, this blank state feels boring. The mind grows restless, and to escape the boredom, it takes off into thinking again. In other words, the mind finds being boring with reference to the content of experience.

But in the pure experience of being itself – the awareness of being – there is no memory of experience and therefore no sense of lack.

For the mind, meditation is boring; for your being, it is peaceful.

In the absence of any memory of your previous experience, you do not project a blank, empty void onto the experience of being, and therefore there is no impulse to escape into thinking or to fall asleep. Both these are forms of avoidance. You simply rest in your self, as your self.

For many people, meditation is a battle between thinking and boredom. Experience is interesting, and the absence of experience is boring. But your being lies behind both experience and its absence; it is peaceful.

Experience is interesting; its absence is boring ; being is peaceful.

When you know your being as it essentially is, you do not do so through the filter of memory or expectation. In your being there is no lack, and therefore no impulse to escape into thinking or sleeping. You simply rest in your self, as your self, without effort.

Imagine being in your bedroom late at night. It is dark outside, but the light is on, so you can see everything in your room. Then you turn the light out, and you see the darkness. The awareness that previously saw the objects now sees the darkness, the absence of objects. That awareness is equally bright in both the presence and the absence of objects. It illuminates both with the same bright light of pure knowing.

It is the same in meditation. The awareness that knows the content of the waking and dreaming states is exactly the same awareness that knows the darkness of deep sleep. In meditation you simply know yourself as this awareness, this aware being, which is not touched by the content of experience or by its absence. You remain the same throughout.

Meditation is not the awareness of the content of experience, nor even the awareness of its absence; it is the awareness of the fullness of being.

In meditation there is no investment in the content of experience, and no boredom or restlessness in its absence. The interest the mind feels during experience and the boredom or restlessness it feels in its absence are both states of mind. Awareness knows them both equally. You, awareness, are not agitated by the content of experience nor bored by its absence. You simply remain present throughout, open, aware, at peace.

In meditation you trace your way back through the layers of experience, and at first you arrive at the absence of experience. This absence is boring, not peaceful. Do not be tempted to escape this boredom into experience again, into thinking and perceiving, or to avoid it by falling asleep. Sink down deeper.

Underneath the boredom lies the peace of your true nature.

The essence of meditation is simply to abide as that.

Being is not a blank state. It is luminous, peaceful and full – available not just in stillness but in the midst of everything. If you would like to encounter that brightness directly, Living in Peace, Living as Peace is an invitation to sink deeper, and discover what remains wide awake.