Not Chasing

Not Chasing: 

meditation offers many gifts and the questions that's often asked, in some circles anyway, is if awakening is one of these gifts, does it lead to an ultimate letting go of an ego dominant belief system that seems to rule our world - does meditation bring us to enlightenment? The ancient yogis who first sat in meditation certainly believed so, to be liberated from Samsara, the endless wheel of life, death, and the suffering in between was to be the end result of their practice. My own thoughts are a bit more aligned with the Zen Master Dogen, who likened meditation itself to awakening, an expression of our innate Buddha nature already found present in the very fabric of existence. Mostly though, I'll leave it to others to debate the issue, it doesn't really matter much to me as I'm not chasing liberation. 

meditation is simply a joy to me.

it was actually my practice that brought an end to any pursuit of awakening, not that I abandoned it in any formal sense, or achieved anything that caused me to consider myself enlightened. Truthfully, it was just no longer a point of interest, meditation engaged in deeply, the joy of sitting and the creativity that followed were and are enough for me. As Dogen claimed, the moment of my sitting was enlightenment itself, there was no concerns other than breath and mantra and even these were eventually let go to the simplicity of just being who I am. 

completely so. 

really, enlightenment was never really my goal, I'm not chasing liberation, nor interested in debating the merits of my practice. Meditation has many gifts to offer but only to those who have an interest to discover them and not everyone is called to do so. There are other means to open some of these gifts, breathwork for stress reduction, cultivating a sense of gratitude to help us appreciate the present moment a bit more, journaling to foster the flow of creativity and bring insight to our lives. Meditation is just one means to realize these gifts, they're by-products to my sitting. 

but the true gift is simply the joy of meditation. 

it's here, sitting, mantra softly let go, breath barely a whisper past my lips, and there is no issue of pursuit, no sense of chasing liberation, just the joy of sitting, there's not even a trace of anyone actually meditating - only presence found...

 with no one here to claim it. 

~

Peace, Eric