Attaining Enlightenment Through Meditation

<Attaining Enlightenment
Through Meditation>

(Questioner) Hi Sunim, thanks
for giving me a chance to ask a question.

So, I have a question on meditation
and studying Buddhist scripture.

I learned that the Buddha achieved
a peaceful mind and profound enlightenment

through meditation.

I am trying to practice meditation
for the same purpose,

but as a beginner who hasn't gone
through the path, I have some doubts

about how I can achieve such a deep state
of enlightenment through not thinking.

Could you explain how meditation can lead
to such peace of mind and enlightenment?

(Sunim) All suffering actually happens
because we think too much.

So, we need to truly liberate ourselves
from our preconceptions of ethics,

morality, religious faith, and other
paradigms. Those guard our thoughts.

For example:

Say a man and a woman who like
each other have become lovers.

So, in a regular relationship between
two ordinary people, you like each other.

However, if you are Buddhist clergy
or Catholic clergy, you have been taught

not to engage in relationship with,
in a sexual relationships.

So, those people
who are trained in that way,

while they enjoy being with the other
person in a romantic relationship,

also feel guilt.

So, all that guilt, that negative feeling,
is not a result of having this romantic

relationship with another person you like.

It comes from your own preconceptions
that you shouldn't be doing this.

So, a lot of the suffering and issues
we experience today actually happen

because of the contradiction or collision
between what is happening in reality,

what we experience in reality, and our
preconceptions of how things should be.

That suffering disappears
when you erase the contradiction

of choosing abandoning a preconception
and accepting reality

or adhering to that preconception
and foregoing your desires.

However, we can never solve this problem
as long as we simultaneously adhere

to a preconception and desire
what we want in reality;

that contradiction will persist.

So, another example:

If traditional ethics dictate
that men and women of certain age

cannot be romantic partners,
then such relationships create suffering.

Similarly, if we are taught that divorce
is unacceptable after marriage,

yet circumstances call for separation,
this contradiction creates suffering.

However, observing the natural course
of relationships,

people come together and separate
all the time.

It is all part of coming together.

It shows that separation or divorce is
not inherently a cause of suffering.

It's your preconceptions of "what ought to
be" that actually causes you suffering,

whether it's a first meeting
or a separation.

If you can just erase
"what ought to be",

then you eliminate
much suffering from internal conflict.

For example, when we teach our daughters
that premarital sex is a sin,

it causes them internal suffering
when they engage in it.

But we do not teach our sons
this to the same extent,

so they may not feel the same guilt.

This is all due to the preconceptions
we instill in our children.

For example, if you stop thinking
right now, there is no cost to suffer.

That's why the foundation of
our meditation is stopping your thinking.

What posture you take, how you breathe,
none of that really matters.

Many people say they are meditating,
but they end up thinking quietly.

That is thinking, not meditating.

Thinking good thoughts does not mean
you meditate well.

Meditation is
a state of absence of thoughts.

If your thinking stops,
most of your suffering will go away.

But once you try it, you will find
your thinking does not stop easily.

Your thinking is naturally amplified
many times over.

So when you are meditating,
your body may be still,

but you are always thinking.

How do you stop thinking?
Intending to stop thinking amplifies it.

So the old teachers said:

There's dust flying in the room.

We don't see it well.
It is almost invisible.

When a ray of sunlight shines
into the room from the outside,

we realized that dust floats in the room.

We are trying to get rid of dust
in the room with something.

Then, we are realizing that
trying to do so only creates more dust.

What do we do?
We just have to let it be.

As time passes,
most dust will gradually settle.

They mean we constantly live in a flux
of thoughts and distractions,

but we do not realize it without that
"ray of light" to illuminate it.

Realizing how "dusty" your mind is
isn't a meditation failure;

it is part of the process
of meditation to recognize that.

It's the same as seeing that ray of light
illuminate all that dust.

The first key is to realize
that "I live amidst distracting thoughts".

When you practice
performance-oriented meditation,

which aims to meditate better and faster,
it creates more distractions.

It causes more dust fly.

You have to just let it be.

But it doesn't really settle that quickly
because it just flies around.

That's why the strategy is
to focus your thoughts on one thing.

The easiest place to focus your thought on
is your breath.

Basically, it is a strategy
of focusing

on the inhalation and exhalation
of your breath.

In Pali, it is called Ānāpāna.

Another strategy that came up
during the Zen Buddhist tradition is

to focus on one single thought.

Or one single question, like "Who am I?".

Just focus on that single question.

Other thoughts will constantly be there.

You just let them be.

But the only thing you actually focus on
is that single question.

For example, say I read a book
in the middle of the forest.

You know, there are birds tweeting.

You hear a stream.

And you have cars down the road.

I can't really focus if the cars were not running, if the birds would stop tweeting, if the stream would stop running then I can actually focus in a quiet forest right?

But we can't stop those.

Just because you stop those externalities doesn't guarantee that you can focus.

So but if you really focused on the book and you get really into the substance of the book Dancing Birds may tweet but you don't pay attention to it.
The cars may be running on the road next to it but you don't really pay attention nor do you pay attention to the stream actually running beside you because you're really focused you are in that zone of focus.

So meditation is all about the absence of thoughts but from a strategy perspective, it's all about focusing on that one single thought.

Let's say we focus on the breath in and breath out.

So when the breath comes in to know that the breath is coming in.

So you're not thinking about the breath coming in.

This is a kind of an experience of your sensation of the flow of the air as it actually travels over your skin, through your nostrils as it enters your lungs

and you also feel that kind of tactile sense of the breath leaf in your nose.
So this is our thought. This is experiencing.
You're just experiencing that breath.
You might think of your mother at that time.

But once you actually get distracted by the thought of your mom, you start thinking, oh, what about the time we went on a picnic with my mom?
What about the time we had an argument with her?
So you actually create narratives around those stores and this becomes distraction.

So you can't really stop the thought of your mom kind of rising.
But despite whatever thoughts come to you, you keep focusing on that but basically do not pay attention or energy to that thought.
And then the thoughts kind of dissipate.
Then other thoughts will come you'll think about but nevertheless you focus on their brain the thought of coffee dissipates.

So you'll have connous thoughts rise and fall, rise and fall as long as you don't pay attention to it.

But once if you start actually start doing it, when you think of coffee, you kind of follow it and create a story out of it.
What kind of coffee do I want you?
With whom do I want this coffe?

At that time you already lost that focus on that breath

because our attention can only focus on one thing at a time.
If I focus on here, I lose focus there and if I pay attention there, I lose attention here.

Thoughts are just that as long as you don't pay attention to it, it'll just rise and fall, rise and fall.

So when we say we're distracted, those random thoughts are not distractions of themselves.
It really becomes a source of distraction when you start creating stories around those thoughts.

So if you keep on practicing your time that you can sustain that focus on that single breath, it can be one minute before you're distracted, then five minutes and 10 minutes it'll actually increase.

So the attention span on that single breath is going to continue to increase and less dractions you'll experience less distraction.

Then you start actually gaining autonomy.
You're no longer beholding your past memories or future hopes.

The reason you get angry, you get sad, you feel this emotion and that is because all these past memories come haunting you

and you become fearful and anxious and nervous because you're thinking about the future.

So if you're not captured by the thoughts of the future, then all your anxiety and nervousness goes away.

So that's why we teach to be awakened here and now without being captured by your past memories or the future that has not come yet.

So even if Buddha's a thought about Buddha comes unbidden to you or doing meditation, that's just another distraction.

So just singular focus on that breath everything else is a distress.

If it's a Zencen, anything that actually falls outside the scope of the exploration of that question is a distraction.

And so in that state, even what you read in the scriptures, sutras or even Buddha's own teachings, they're just distractions.

That's why there's teaching if you see a Buddha, if you think about the Buddha, kill the Buddha.
If you encounter your teacher, kill the teacher.

So we don't really mean literally kill them but obviously what we are saying is that do not pay them any mind.
They're just distractions.
Sorry for the lengthy response.
Thanks.