Transmuting Buddha Neuroses - Concentration & Wisdom
Transforming Self-Absorption & Dullness into All-encompassing Awareness through Concentration & Wisdom
It may seem strange that the Buddha Family, that has the most to do with awareness and calmness, can benefit the most from Concentration and Wisdom. This is true because, though Buddha Family dominated people focus on awareness and understanding, they usually grasp at, or cling to, a specific level of these two and therefore need to learn how to go beyond their current level of calmness and understanding without imploding or exploding. The other extreme is that they are hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive and so shut down and try, to varying degrees, to avoid the whole idea of awareness.
Because they can be too attached to space, quiet, and calmness, they tend to diminish or ignore the importance of the relative world. They tend to be on the side of total detachment, rejection or indifference to the outside world, whereas other families tend to be on the side of total involvement and attachment. They need to find the middle ground and recognize the importance of the relative world. They need to learn how to cope with the relative world and they need to learn its value and why it shouldn't be rejected. Meditation is the biggest tool in helping with this. Once they have experienced the relative world within the safety of meditation, they can begin to contemplate the value and purpose of interconnected existence, which then leads to increased Wisdom. Through this Wisdom, they learn how to combine their love of calmness with the active benefits of working in the relative world.
One of the main benefits for Buddha neuroses that comes from meditation and the concentration that it develops is that we learn keep our focus on whatever we wish and not be overwhelmed by the mind-states and outside circumstances that we may otherwise feel would distract us, hinder us, or harm us. We learn that these are all impermanent.
We begin to recognize that mind-states and circumstances that appear harmful may only harm our current suppositions about reality and may not really be harmful to us personally. Also, we learn that harmful states and circumstances do not last and their causes and conditions can be abandoned. Beneficial circumstances and mind-states can also be created and strengthened through our own efforts, patience, and perseverance.
Buddha Neuroses fail to recognize that relative reality is actually a good testing ground for the stability and strength of our understanding, calmness and non-attachment. Also, Buddha Family members have the tendency to negate form, feelings, perceptions, and intentions. They do not realize that part of the skill of calmness and awareness is to be able to be calm and non-attached while we work with all of these parts of our existence.
This is a large part of their ignorance and why members of other families can sometimes seem a lot smarter than Buddha Family members. Their inattention and avoidance or dismissal of the details of their world is often their undoing. Practicing Meditation and gaining Wisdom can help them deal with the level of detail that's present in the world and helps them maintain their calmness at the same time.
Another aspect is that, with Buddha Family neuroses, we tend to think of, or react as if, levels of awareness, knowledge, and understanding are fixed and permanent. With the practice of meditation, we begin to see the temporariness of our current position. We begin to see the possibility of there being more to the world than what we currently believe or there may be another way of seeing the world, other than our own, that could be equally valid. This counteracts our sense of self-absorption and can take us outside of our own little worlds. It opens up the idea that there is a chance of more pleasant and fulfilling experiences outside of our current world and allows us to see how our attachment to our current comfort level can actually be limiting and could very well be harming us in the long run.
We also have our sense of self-agrandisement diminished when we realize that our current state still contains some coarseness and fixedness which means that there is a lack of understanding still present and our current mind-state still has the potential to lead to suffering. We may begin to notice that trying to maintain a blissful state in spite of a contrary reality is also a painful experience. We gradually end up with the motivation to move to the next level in the search for a state that's really completely free of the potential for suffering. The new motivation also comes from the recognition that there actually IS a level of understanding or a view of reality that is purer, more aware, more joyful, and freer than our current one.
We begin to see how being too proud of our knowledge can actually stunt our growth and limit our knowledge and understanding. Recognizing that awareness and the objects of awareness are always changing, cuts off that tendency to cling to our current level of understanding. Seeing the transitoriness of the mind and circumstances during meditation helps to reinforce this idea of a constantly changing and fluid Awareness.
Meditation actually helps us to get back in touch with things that we ignore. Once we have the experience of recognizing that our current level of understanding is not fixed, then the things that we stopped paying attention to become noticable. Our wisdom actually increases once we stop being attached to our current level of understanding.
It is why the teachings talk about approaching life with a beginner's mind. The situations around us are constantly brand new and to approach them with completely the same understanding and assumptions actually blinds us to any changes that have occurred. When we realize this wisdom through our meditation practice, we can begin to nourish a curiousity and a fresh examination of the world around us in each moment.
Becoming comfortable with the illusory and transitory nature of the world around us will help to make us be less afraid of our circumstances. We begin to recognize that the effects of our circumstances are temporary and that situations are always open to improvement through our own efforts of thought, speech, and action. This is first recognized during meditation and then, with the contemplations that lead to understanding how to work with the temporariness and interconnectiveness, we develop the wisdom of being able to see what those changes could be. This allows us to apply this principle to all circumstances. As this happens, we begin to be able to have more confidence in our responses to all of the situations that we find ourselves in.
We begin to have a sense of control because we begin to see the effects that we can create based on how we respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in. We also begin to recognize that, by changing the way we view what's happening to us, we can change our approach to any situation and thereby improve the final results. This sense of control helps us come out of our shell and begin to engage more skillfully in the world around us.
