July 2022

In this issue:

mind of meditation

Mind of Meditation
Rev. Master Bennet Laraway

I recently learned of a scientific study being done at the University of Wisconsin. In the early 2000’s, as various forms of meditation gained general popularity, a researcher there wondered just what affect meditation had on the brain. To that end, for a number of years he and his group have studied both Zen and Tibetan Buddhist monks. These have been experienced meditators with thousands of hours of meditation over their lifetimes, some beginning formal meditation as children.

The researcher hooked the monks up to various instruments, including an MRI. One instrument was an electroencephalograph (EEG), which measures brain waves. This diagram is representative of the results, with the top wave showing “normal” brain activity, and the bottom wave a meditating brain:

Now, I am not interested in this phenomenon from a physiological, mechanistic viewpoint; that would be like being fascinated with an artist’s paints and brushes rather than the beautiful work of art created with them. Rather, as I pondered this image, it occurred to me that it might be a good metaphor for the mind in meditation, as distinct from the brain in meditation as the tool for the experience. Whatever might be happening physically in the brain, there is much more going on spiritually.

For this metaphor I will take the paper the brain waves are drawn upon to represent the Ultimate, all-inclusive Reality described in the Udana scripture as Unborn, Undying, Uncreated, Unformed and in the Scripture of Great Wisdom as “void, unstained, and pure.” Among still other descriptions, It is sometimes referred to as the Buddha Mind, which is apt for the purposes of this metaphor. It is the Reality that is unbounded by time and space, i.e., Eternal, or That Which is Greater than Ourselves. It is not static or inert, but always alive and present and available to us in a way that cannot be described in words but can be intuitively experienced by the heart-mind. It is That in which “we live and move and have our being.” Although impossible, really, to represent, I will attempt to point to Its being unbound and eternal by this outline:

In an EEG machine it is the paper that moves, scrolling from right to left as the recording needle fluctuates with the brain waves. But in this metaphor it is the Buddha Mind that is stable and the human mind that moves through time. In Genjo-koan Dogen writes, “It is normal for a man, whilst sailing and observing the shore, to think that the shore is moving instead of the boat but, should he look carefully, he will find that it is the boat which is doing the actual moving.”1 In our ego-centric state of mind we think we are the unchanging center of the universe and everything else flows past us and either threatens or supports us, when the reality is we are the storm-tossed boat sailing through time and the Eternal is the shore we set out from at birth and return to at death. And in between, in this life, through meditation and training we can, at times, ground our time-driven selves on the sanctuary of its timeless shore. Then when death comes we know where to orient ourselves and sail home.

The paper in the EEG simply records the fluctuations generated by brain activity, however wild they might be. The Eternal, too, just accepts—without judgment—the perturbations and fluctuations we generate by our actions of body, speech, and mind. That is, they do not “matter” to the Eternal…they do matter to us. The all-accepting, non-interference of the Eternal in our lives is great compassion because it allows the Law of Karma to teach us—if we pay attention. It teaches us, through the consequences of our actions, which choices lead us to harmony with It, and which choices result in discord, suffering, and spiritual blockage. The Eternal does not “save” us from the consequences of our actions, and neither does It judge them. Our own actions condemn us to suffering, or deliver us to joy.

In some sense our actions are “recorded" by the Eternal—actions that are karmically fraught with greed, hate, and delusion and not converted in this lifetime are not returned to the Eternal but remain as “flotsam,” so to speak, to be picked up by the life of a future being. In the meantime, for us in this lifetime, they manifest as “spiky” experiences of thought and emotions:

Note how this agitated state of mind, preoccupied with the things of this world and of the self, blocks the pure background of the Eternal; “We see as through a glass darkly”—our consciousness of our True Nature darkened to the degree to which the passing, transitory phenomena of our experience dominate the foreground of our life while the Eternal is relegated to the background. The process of Serene Reflection Meditation (Zazen) and daily life lived by the Precepts reverses this dynamic and allows our awareness of the ever-present Buddha Mind to expand in our heart-mind.

It sometimes amazes me to reflect on the fact that the seemingly simple teaching we are given in our very first meditation instruction applies equally to our very last meditation period at the end of life, however many years later; it is the alpha and omega of our life of training. And that teaching is to let whatever transitory thoughts and emotions—whatever “comes up” out of the self—arise, have their moments in feeling, and pass away without grasping after the pleasant ones or rejecting the unpleasant. This is the compassionate detachment of the Buddha Mind, enabling us to finally free ourselves from the tyranny of clingy, deluded self-identification with passing thoughts, passing emotions, passing fears, passing memories of the past and anxieties about the future. These are not who we truly are.

This state of meditative all-acceptance is a reflection of the all-acceptance of the Eternal. In our metaphor, it is represented in the brain wave of the meditator:

Note how much more of the background is revealed in this state of mind. The “waves” of the self are gentler, and remind me of the beautiful line of T. S. Eliot in “Little Gidding”—“The stillness between two waves of the sea.” There is more spaciousness between them, allowing the luminous Buddha Mind to shine through like the sun through clouds. Being less obstructed by the dense, agitated, spiky barrier of self, the unobstructed awareness of Its Purity can arise in us. With this Purity in the foreground of our awareness, the vicissitudes of life that so of dominate our consciousness are put in proper perspective. Life becomes an exhilarating voyage of discovery rather than a frightening, storm-tossed disaster at sea.

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1Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett, Zen is Eternal Life, Shasta Abbey Press, p. 206.