In his instructional video, “Attitude of Mind and Heart When Meditating,” Rev. Master Koshin has an evocative demonstration of the effects a day of distractions can have on us by shaking up a jar of sand and water. Just as this results in murky, unclear water,

In the course of our daily life we often unknowingly shake our “jar” of thoughts and feelings and perceptions up and agitating them and making the clear water of our own True Nature appear to be turbulent. What we’re doing when we meditate is allowing that turbulence to calm. And we’re allowing those “particles” to settle out. So that what we’re left with is the clear water. We do this, to start with, just by sitting still in the right position.

In its own nature, the water is clear and unsullied, and in Its own nature our Buddha Nature is clear and unsullied. We muddy the clear water with our actions of body/speech/mind arising from self-centeredness, which inevitably break the Precepts and cause suffering for ourselves and others.

Dogen wrote, “When one studies Buddhism, one studies oneself; when one studies oneself, one forgets oneself; when one forgets one-self one is enlightened by everything and this very enlightenment breaks the bonds of clinging to both body and mind not only for oneself but for all beings as well.” How do we “forget” ourselves? Through the stillness and silence of pure meditation.

Elsewhere in the video Rev. Master Koshin explains that, when meditating, “we simply allow our thoughts and feelings and perceptions to arise and to pass…not to edit them, grasp after them, not to enhance certain ones and suppress others, it isn’t to stop them, obliterate them, destroy or kill them, it isn’t to feed them…it is to just sit still within them.”

How does this intentional sitting still help us “forget” ourselves? Without a corrective, we naturally identify with our thoughts/emotions/perceptions; we use them to create our personal identity, our sense of self—a separate self that needs to be protected and nurtured, a self that embraces and loves what reinforces it and rejects and hates what denies or threatens it. The irony is that we base this misguided sense of a permanent, “solid self” on passing, transient states of thoughts/emotions/perceptions, therefore it is, in essence, a “false self.”

In meditation, when we do not willfully engage our thoughts/emotions/ perceptions, then the conditional factors making up the false self fall away to reveal our Original Nature—who we really are when undistorted by the false self. Or, rather, it is as if we fall away from them and descend deeper and deeper into vast stillness and silence of the Great Ocean of Meditation to meet our True Self. As the Scripture of Great Wisdom teaches, It is the unconditioned Pure, wherein there is “no eye, ear, nose, body, mind; no form, no tastes, sound, colour, touch or objects; vision none, no consciousness; no knowledge and no sign of ignorance…”. It is the place where the opposites have no relevance. In this Place,

The elements and instants which compose body and mind arise and vanish like waves on the surface of a sea, without depending upon each other and without the presence of an “I.” And, within this very arising and vanishing is the stillness of the Great Ocean of Meditation…. Within the Meditation of the Great Ocean all things are possible without attachment or fear.

—Roar of the Tigress II

When the burden of maintaining the false self, even for a second, falls away…that is liberation, that is freedom, that is joy. To mix metaphors, it is as if the doors of the prison cell of the transitory self swing open and we stand in the radiant sun of the Eternal. And when we look back, we realize that the cell of the self always was an illusion we constructed of ephemeral bricks of thoughts/emotions/perceptions.

The Stillness-Silence of the Great Ocean of Meditation is not static but dynamic. It is in this place of absolute safety and security, where there is no false self that requires protecting, that our karma that needs cleansing can arise to be purified in the Ocean of Meditation. And it is in this Place that what is truly good to do can manifest.

It takes courage to dive deep into the Ocean of Meditation precisely because it means the letting go of the illusory security of the familiar–if false–self. (To repurpose an old saying, “Better the devil you know than the angel you have not yet met.”) And, the regular practice of letting go reinforces the courage. This training never stops, for there is no bottom to the Great Ocean of Meditation, no limit to the depths we can know (and no limit to the past karma that needs cleansing). Without practice and training, we stay in the shallows and never know the “deeper purpose for which we train.”

This…Place, Condition, State, Experience. Samadhi…call It what you will, of deep Stillness-Silence is not owned by Buddhism. It is the birthright and natural state of every living being (and some animals seem to live it more naturally than human beings). It is the source of the forms and disciplines and teachings of all true religion, at least the parts that point to and guide the adherent to It. It is the Source of Precepts and right conduct that aids in the “deep dive.”

The Stillness-Silence known in the Ocean of deep meditation soaks into us and washes through the activities of daily life. Then, even as we are tossed about by the waves of transitory experience, the deepest part of ourselves–our True Self–remains still in its own True Place.

NEWS OF THE TEMPLES