Inner Meanings - implicit aspects of meditation

So I mentioned else where on the blog about this practice of meditation.

This particular practice was described in terms of 3 aspects:

Relaxing
Allowing
Observing

In this practice you take the appropriate posture [such as sitting cross legged or upright in a chair] and utilize those three aspects or directives [of relaxing, allowing, observing] to gently guide or direct you to a deeper level of awareness, a deeper non-conceptual experience of all this THING we call life - that is one explanation.

This meditation has [as described] has these three aspects and this can be viewed as the "outer meaning" or "outer explanation" of the meditation.

In Buddhism [especially Tibetan Buddhism] there is often talk of the "outer" , "inner", and even "secret" meanings to certain teachings. There is even sometimes an "inner-most" or "deepest" meaning. These are all just expedients, just methods to bring you to a clearer understanding of something that is extremely subtle to our normally coarse level of cognition.

When things get explained sometimes in stages instead of all at once it becomes easier to understand them. If you encounter these approaches to teachings or practices [as I just explained] then you shouldn't become enamored or put-off by words like "secret" or "inner meaning". These are just ways to help point out something difficult to discern.

And so, in my understanding and explanation here, we have this outer meaning of the meditation practice described as relaxing, allowing, observing.

But now I want to explain what you could call the "inner" meaning or explanation of this meditation. Here I will take each of these three aspects individually and explain them in a deeper context.

What is the inner meaning of "relaxing"?

Relaxing means to 'settle into this moment'. You relax your body, your mind, your emotions too - just settle down right NOW into just this, into now.

When you're not relaxed, you're not really here, you are not in the now, you are distracted and you want to be somewhere or experience something else. So this experience of "now-ness" is very important to meditation. Meditation only occurs now. Life and death only occurs now. Release and benefit only occurs now. There is no other place really.

Where does experience happen? Now, right here and now.

When does experience happen? Now, right here and now.

Any THING, any conceptual appearance, in fact, any intent or impulse only takes us away from what is presently happening, from now. This is very important to understand, to contemplate. It [any experience other than now] takes us away from reality, takes us away from present knowing. So the inner meaning of relaxing is just this, be here, now, completely.

Although meditation is supposed to be a non-conceptual (not thinking) experience, it may seem like we simply exchanged one word "relaxing" for another word "now". To be honest, yes, that we did. But if you bring this inner understanding, this insight along with the word, then the word as a THING becomes less of a problem because the inner meaning is a subtler, deeper, truer level of experience. So again, the inner meaning of relaxing is concisely stated as "now".

What is the inner meaning of "allowing"?

Allowing means this: From the first, because of voidness, there is no-THING there [within any thought or experience] that is an obstacle.

The outer meaning of "allowing" was that during meditation, you simply "allowed" all thoughts to come in and go out of your mind without judging them as good or bad thoughts, you just allowed them to come and go.

But here now, the inner meaning of allowing is that the very nature of thoughts themselves is that they are void of being any-THING, void of being a problem in any way.

If you have studied and understood Buddhist teachings of voidness [emptiness-interdependence] then you will SEE NOW [directly in meditation] that all thoughts do not exist as obstacles in your meditation - they don't exist as THINGS and so they can't be a problem at all.

What is a thought? It is merely a collection of conditions, there is no thought-THING in itself. So their [the thoughts that appear in meditation] 'voidness' is the inner meaning of allowing. Thoughts can't arise as obstacles if they don't exist as THINGS.

What is the inner meaning of "observing"?

Observing [in it's inner meaning] is the actual SEEING [or experiencing of] the voidness of all thoughts [durring meditation]. You NOTICE that from the very first [or what is called "primordially", meaning "it's always been this way"] there has never been any-THING what so ever that could possibly act as an obstacle to meditation. This SEEING is exactly "observing" but in a very clarified form.

The best word to use here is "noticing". The reason is, is that "noticing" has the connotation of being quick and sharp, and also fleeting. This is how you will experience the inner meaning of observing when you first recognize it - it will be a quick, sharp and fleeting recognition.

So here we have this explanation of meditation. I'm not saying this in this way to trick you, impress you or make you think this is something esoteric. For me this is just the clearest explanation for meditation the way I know it to be.

We have the "outer" explanation of meditation that is to..

Relax
Allow
Observe

We have the "inner" explanation of meditation that is concisely described as..

Now
Voidness
Notice

You can see that the explainations get more subtle as you go.

So my advice is to balance the 'analytical' [intellectual] aspect of studying voidness, studying texts, or listening to teachings, with the 'non-analytical' aspect that is meditation practice. Always start with the outer meaning, the outer explanations first before going deeper.