Who seeks me by form,
Who seeks me by sound,
Perverted are his footsteps on the way;
For he cannot perceive the Tathagata.

The Diamond Sutra, The Buddha

There are a number of products out there that claim to work on the brain to produce deepened meditation or enlightenment. One came in my mailbox yesterday claiming Discover how to meditate deeper than a zen monk in just five minutes – without years of practice, or hours of boring meditation CDs – by using a secret shortcut you can’t find anywhere else. How do they promise to achieve this? Through sound.

Binaural beat recordings use specially generated sounds to alter your brainwaves. Using our research skills and the latest computer technology, we have produced the following range of binaural beat CDs, allowing you to quickly and easily enter states of creativity, relaxation, or pure energy! These are the highest quality, most professional Binaural Beats products available anywhere.

Maybe it works. I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know anything much to be completely honest, but it does strike me as strange trying to liberate ourselves from form by using form.

I guess if I were to have to make a call I’d say that I am taming the bull.  I’m reminded of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approach to body building; everytime the same routine, session in, session out. It’s not about making it interesting, it’s about getting the job done. And I’m reminded of something Gil Fronsdal once said; to paraphrase: that people think my talk was boring is a good thing. After all, what we’re pointing to is interesting not the pointing itself. But it seems we are making finer and finer distinctions until there are no distinctions at all.

So, this taming, seems to be about getting some distance on the mind; the kind of distance where thoughts are seen to be external, which is I guess glimpsing the bull. Perhaps distance should be called spaciousness. Thoughts arise within a much wider space than the thoughts themselves. And because of that distance there is a measure of control, which seems to be no control at all, because when there is control it is really thoughts controlling thoughts. Call this wider space presence.

But, now there’s a coming and going within this presence. That is to say from the seemingly wider awareness back to identification with thought. That’s why I think this is called taming the bull and also why I think persistence is key. It seems to me it’s more like breaking in a horse, except not only are we breaking it in, but we’re learning to ride at the same time.  We fall off, i.e. return back to identification with thought. Then we realise this and get back on.  That’s the coming and going or Shin Shau’s wiping the mirror, I guess.

But those who have gone before talk about achieving a sudden realisation, an insight so deep which brings this coming and going to an end. I think we need to get grips with what those who apparently have made the leap have had to say about it. Not that there is anything to be grasped of course.  I’m sure Arnold did his research.  Aside from the fact that buddha is found within one’s own mind, I wonder what I’m not yet seeing.

In the meantime Hui Neng’s realisation on hearing his predecessor recite the Diamond Sutra comes to mind, which was something around the idea of at all moments keeping the mind free.  Perhaps awakening is a matter of spiritual will.

I love this picture, which I found on Master Kozen’s website. I like it because it is a reminder that elightenment has no culture, although it is a culture of the mind. I like it because it shows the continuity of the practise of zen, which afterall is just a type of meditation practise, known in Sanskrit as dhyana and in Mandarin as chan.

And in the Sanghata Sutra, he recounts to Sarvashura “…the Tathagata, Arhat, Perfect and Complete Buddha Dipankara arose in the world. At that time, at that moment, I was a brahmin youth named Megha.”

In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha recounts to Subhuti, “I remember the infinitely remote past before Dipankara Buddha. There were 84,000 myriads of multimillions of Buddhas and to all these I made offerings.”

We don’t know how old humanity is, although some put the Mitochondrial Eve some 200,000 years ago. If we say there’s a Buddha every 2,000 years, that means there’s been 200 of them since Eve. How many countless dhyana masters have there been?

I find it inspiring.

I skipped Metta for the past couple of weeks and it’s absence is really noticeable.

Not getting
Not arriving
It is.
Not giving
Not appreciating
It is.
No concept of self
No concept of other
It is just so.

So, it’s back to Metta practise. Perhaps taking 20 minutes off dhyana on the breath in the morning. That’s the best way I think to get it into daily practise.