The Awareness of Meditation

Meditation is the art of breathing - breathing out and breathing in.

The universe, which is beyond understanding and description, is always breathing out and breathing in. It breathes in our lives and then it breathes them out. It breathes in dimensions, beings, feelings, understandings, mind itself. It breathes it in and breathes it out. We could say that life is a cycle, but that implies there's something that is observing it or that's outside of the cycle. There's really only breathing. It's very simple, really.

Meditation is a process in which we're essentially, at first, breathing out. We're exhaling. We're taking all the thoughts, impressions, feelings, vibrations, understandings, all the self-importance, attitudes, desires, loves, hates, passions, dispassions, meanings, lack of meanings, confused states, illumined states, bored states. We're taking everything - the concept of everything; that which perceives everything, that which is beyond perception, that which is beyond perceiving - everything must go. We're exhaling existence, taking it out of the mind, and the mind out of the mind.

After meditation, we inhale. We experience life. But we've changed. We're different because in the purification process of meditation we have touched a deeper threshold within ourselves, of eternity. Mind appears to exist because of the diverse attributes of existence that it perceives as itself. Mind by itself is nothing. It's colorless. It doesn't have a substance or a form. Mind only comes into apparent existence through the action of perception. Mind appears to exist because it perceives. It perceives the perfection of existence. As it perceives it, it is that. But by and of itself, mind not separated from mind is qualityless.

The action of perception is inhalation. The action of perception is mind perceiving something as other than itself. The qualityless mind cannot perceive itself in that there's nothing to perceive. Mind is an essence. It doesn't take a formation. In other words, we tend to think of mind as who we are, "My mind, it's what I think with, it's what I experience with, it is my mind." Some people are a little further in their understanding of mind, and they think, "Well no, mind isn't a tool, it isn't a case tool. Mind isn't something that I think with. It's not like my foot that I walk with. Mind isn't just an appendage, it's not brain, but I am mind. I am the mind. I who can think or perceive or even construe that a mind exists, that is mind. All that can be said to be existent is mind. There's nothing else but mind."

Someone a little further along in their cosmology would say, "Well, there is only mind. But truly, mind is qualityless." This is the Tibetan Buddhist realization, that mind does not have any particular qualities or attributes of its own. It's clear. We say that the mind is composed of clear light, "clear" indicating that it doesn't have a definite shape, color or destination or point of origination. It is always existent. It is beyond cycles of existence. It will always exist. There's only one mind, and that is infinity.

The perception of mind in its variegated states, the perception of mind as different roses - yellow rose, red rose, black rose, primrose, various roses - variegation, coloration shifts, subtle or great changes in intonation - that is mind perceiving other than mind. Mind, if it were only perceiving itself, cannot do so since there's nothing there to perceive. It's qualityless.