Preference

Preference: 

my preference is the mantra and it's easy, ever more subtle vibration that seems lead me to a deeper stillness - and yet thoughts occur, my attention drawn to other sounds, and the mantra will sometimes go unnoticed for a certain length of time. But I gently return to the preference of the mantra, again giving it my present favor, no effort to correct the mind of it's activities, just easily coming back to the mantra in its own natural pattern and rhythm, whatever pace it seeks to hold. 

and that's my meditation...simply a preference for the mantra.

it's often believed that meditation is a rarefied position, one held without thought, and that only monks and yogi's ever achieve a complete sense of stillness. But the truth is that the mind is given to motion, spacious and allowing, and thoughts are always passing. That's the nature of the mind - and the goal of meditation, if there really is a goal, isn't to bypass this nature but to simply notice how thoughts belong as motion, never static, and that with their passing there remains an every present silence that allows for their existence. That's the deeper nature of the mind, silence, restful by its very presence, and no effort is ever required to reach this, always being present as the reality of who we really are. 

quiet by our very nature.

the mantra is simply a subtle vibration, no meaning to the words, just a faint idea repeated with an easy and gentle attention given to it, and with no attachment nor concern as it plays throughout the mind. It only has our preference, belonging as a seamless flow of thoughts, mantra, silence, however it is the sequence will unfold - until we find ourselves in the depth of a stillness lasting for uncountable moment, timeless, simply resting as existence. 

that's not the goal of meditation though, not really, in truth there isn't an expected outcome, everything simply happening on its own, an easy path without direction, nor any destination. We're already home, we've arrived here having found that we've never actually left at all. Meditation is just sitting, but also allowing ourselves the preference of the mantra, lending ourselves to its vibration, and seeing how life flows as one continuous, seamless moment, well beyond the private world of our concerns. 

my preference is the mantra, but every thought is now allowed, whatever seeming distraction that occurs, it all belongs within this seamless, continuous moment, everything does. 

and that's my meditation. 

~

Peace, Eric