Meditation is often called "stilling the sixth mind" or "calming the sixth consciousness" in Buddhism because the "sixth consciousness (mind)" is the Buddhist term for the discriminatory consciousness.
When your discriminatory mind of intellectual commenting or wandering thoughts calms down and becomes pure, that's when you can attain samadhi. You'll also gain superpowers and experience all sorts of physical transformations. It all results naturally from stilling the mind.
How does it happen? Simply by letting go of your thoughts so as to cultivate a mind of emptiness. Let go of thoughts, your chi arises, your chi arises causes your chi channels to open, when they're open and clear and you are empty then your chi rotates, your body reaches a state of pacification and starts transforming, your chi and consciousness become purified, and all sorts of gong-fu and superpowers arise AS NATURAL PHENOMENA or NATURAL CAPABILITIES of the mind.
It's just natural -- you don't have to force yourself or practice anything other than letting go. Let go of mentally clinging and everything happens. Meditation, then, is to teach you how to let go of clinging.
Remember, emptiness does not mean you don't know anything (so don't suppress thoughts, it just means a mind free of excessive mental chatter. You attain that state just by watching your thoughts, detaching from them, realizing they are not you and thereby dis-identifying from them so that they can die down.
Chi and consciousness are linked, so when you calm your consciousness (mind) in this way, your chi (vital energies) will calm down, too. As consciousness purifies, your chi will become purified, and all your chi channels will open up inside your body. That's why you'll develop superpowers and all sorts of higher mental states. If your chi channels don't open up, however, this isn't possible. At the lower stages of spiritual cultivation, psychic powers are almost all due to chi.
How do you open up your chi channels? Not by concentrating on them but by letting go of your thoughts. By letting go of your thoughts you'll let go of your chi, and when it isn't constrained your chi will naturally start to circulate and open up your chi channels. But if you try to accomplish that through thoughts or visualizations, it will never ever happen.
Chi and consciousness are linked, so when you practice meditation correctly, your breath will tend to calm down. That's going to be our next set of lessons. The most important thing, however, is to start detaching from thoughts so that they no longer impel you, and that's how you'll start changing bad habits. That's how meditation leads to personal transformation. That's how you can change your fortune.
When you watch your thoughts you'll see an undercurrent of habits you never noticed before. If you no longer let these impulsive habits impel you, they won't control you any more and you can change your fortune.
You can check the internet for the story of "Liao Fan" and his lessons to see how this is done, or pick up my book, White Fat Cow, to see how Benjamin Franklin, Confucius, Liao Fan, John Climacus and many others did this. They changed their fortune by (1) doing lots of good deeds, (2)watching their thoughts, and (3) through mantra practice asking for heavenly assistance.
White Fat Cow is available at:
http://www.meditationexpert.com/WhiteFatCow.htm
By the way, Confucius also taught people to watch their thoughts. He taught a seven step process of cultivation and the first step was cultivating awareness, just as we're doing here.
Next he said you'd reach a stage of stopping, just as we have noticed. From that stopping, he said you'd reach a state of peacefulness and then bliss and prajna wisdom, so once again all those results fall out of meditation. Awareness produces stopping and then physical transformations (bliss and gong-fu, just as Tantra, yoga, Taoism and Buddhism describe) and from that samadhi your wisdom can be born.
Now you've already started on this path, which is hopefully what you want because it's preparing you to see the Tao, so one day we'll start talking about breathing practices and the connection between your chi and thoughts or consciousness.
For now, here's a reminder of the proper way to practice cessation-contemplation meditation:
Step One
First we have to quietly and calmly observe and examine our own inner
consciousness and thoughts, and then make a simple analysis in two parts. The first part consists of the thoughts and ideas produced from sensory feelings like pain, pleasure, fullness and warmth, hunger, cold, and so on. All of these belong to the domain of sensory awareness; from them are derived activities of cognitive awareness, such as association and imagination. The other part consists of consciousness and thought produced by cognitive awareness, such as vague emotions, anxieties, anguish, discriminating thoughts regarding people, oneself, and inner or outer phenomena, and so on. Of course the latter part also includes intellectual and scholastic thinking, as well as the very capacity one has to observe one's own psychological functions.
Step Two
The next step comes when you have arrived at the point where you are well able to understand the activity of your own psychological functions. Whether they be in the domain of sensory awareness or in the domain of cognitive awareness, they are each referred to generally as a single thought: when you can reach the point where in the interval of each thought you can clearly observe each idea or thought that occurs to your mind, without any further absentmindedness, awareness, or vagueness, then you can process them into three levels of observation.
Generally speaking, the preceding thought (thinking consciousness) that has just passed is called the past mind, or the prior thought; the succeeding thought (thinking consciousness) that has just arrived is called the present mind, or the immediate thought; while that which has yet to come is of course the future mind, or the latter thought. However, since the latter thought has not yet come, you do not concern yourself with it. But you must not forget that when you take note that the latter thought has not yet come, this itself is the present immediate thought; and the moment you realize it is present, it has at once already become past.
Step Three
Now the next step is when you have practiced this inner observation successfully for a long time. You watch the past mind, present mind, and future mind with lucid clarity and then develop familiarity with the state of mind of the immediate present, when the past mind of the former thought has not yet come. This state of mind in the instant of the immediate present then should subtly and gradually present an open blankness.
But this open blankness is not stupor, lightheadedness, or like the state before death. It is an open awareness that is lucid and clear, numinous and luminous. This is what the Zen masters of the Sung and Ming dynasties used to call the time of radiant awareness.
If you really arrive at this state, you will then feel that your own consciousness and thinking, whether in the domain of sensory awareness or in the domain of cognitive awareness, are all like reflections on flowing water, like geese going through the endless sky, like the breeze coming over the surface of water, like flying swans over the now: no tracks or traces can be found. Then you will finally realize that everything you think and do in everyday life is all nothing more than floating dust or reflections of light; there is fundamentally no way to grasp it, fundamentally no basis to rely upon. Then you will attain experiential understanding of the psychological state in which "the past mind cannot be apprehended, the future mind cannot be apprehended, the present mind cannot be apprehended."
Step Four
Next after that, if you really understand the ungraspability of the past, present, and future mind and thought, when you look into yourself it will turn into a laugh.
By this means you will recognize that everything and every activity in this mind is all the ordinary person disturbing himself. From here, take another step further to examine and break through the pressure produced by biological sensation and physical action and movement stimulated by thought, seeing it all as like bubbles, flecks of foam, or flowers in the sky. Even when you are not deliberately practicing self-examination, on the surface it seems like all of this is a linear continuity of activity; in reality what we call our activity is just like an electric current, like a wheel of fire, like flowing water: it only constitutes a single linear continuity by virtue of the connecting of countless successive thoughts. Ultimately there is no real thing at all therein. Therefore you will naturally come to feel that mountains are not mountains, rivers are not rivers, the body is not the body, the mind is not the mind. Every bit of all of this is just a dreamlike floating and si
nking in the world, that is all. Thus you will spontaneously understand "enlivening the mind without dwelling on anything." In reality, this is already the subtle function of "arousing the mind fundamentally having no place of abode."
Step Five
Next, after you can maintain this state where you have clarified the
consciousness and thinking in your mind, you should preserve this radiant, numinous awareness all the time, whether in the midst of stillness or in the midst of activity, maintaining it like a clear sky extending thousands of miles, not keeping any obscuring phenomena in your mind. Then when you have fully experienced this, you will finally be able to understand the truth of human life, and find a state of peace that is a true refuge. But you should not take this condition to be the clarification of mind and perception of essential nature to which Zen refers! And you should not take this to be the enlightenment to which Zen refers! The reason for this is because at this time there exists the function of radiant awareness, and you still don't know its comings and goings, and where it arises. This time is precisely what Han-shan, the great Ming dynasty master, meant when he said, "It is easy to set foot in a forest of thorns; it is hard to turn around at the window screen shini
ng in the moonlight." (The Story of Chinese Zen, Nan Huai-Chin, trans. by Thomas Cleary, (Charles E. Tuttle, Boston, 1995), pp. 94-98.)
This is how to watch your thoughts, and later you should learn how to combine it with watching your breath so that you are cultivating your chi.
Ultimately you want to reach a state of emptiness where your breath slows to a halt and your real chi ignites, as we've been explaining. That only happens when your mind stops, meaning you reach a stage of emptiness, and so we say you want thoughts and breath to combine into one, meaning you want both to become empty.
You want breathing to stop and thoughts to stop, and when that happens your central chi channel will open naturally and your kundalini will arise. You don't need any other fancy techniques other than this, which is what the Zen school says (and they get a lot of people who succeed on the path). But until then, continue your daily practice of "contemplating mind to discern the real you."
That's it for a short lesson on one type of meditation practice, and how to use it to change your fortune.
See you next time,
Bill
MeditationExpert.com
Top Shape Publishing, LLC
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Reno, Nevada 89502
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