Expert: Joe McSorley - 3/1/2004

Question
I have a few questions about Buddhism and meditation. I have been practicing meditation for a few years, but there are a few questions I would like to ask.

~It seems that I cannot part with my ego. Whenever something happens to me while meditating (a hallucination, etc), I get scared and stop the excersize. I feel like I am too grounded in reality. How do I give this up?

~One time while meditating, I came to a point where it was as if my ears were clogged. I couldn't hear anything. This really scared me, so I stopped the excersize. Is this normal, and is this safe? Is meditation safe?

~The ultimate goal of meditation is to escape the cycles of birth and death (correct?) If this is so, once one reaches enlightenment, does their body die? If not, what is it like to walk around in a constant state of enlightenment?

Thank you so much for your time and answers.

~Kristen Sund


Answer
Hi Kristen,
  If you were grounded in reality you would not be having these problems, it's precisely because we are not grounded in reality that this fear arises with you.  And you are correct, you cannot part with the ego, we are the ego.  It is the mistaken belief that we are something that has an ego and we must fight that ego but we are the ego. That which seeks to silence the ego is the ego itself.  I know this sounds like a lot of confusing language but try to understand it.  We are separate from the universe/ourselves.  This separation is what makes us the individual we are.  This process of separating is called ego consciousness.  We become ourselves by realizing that we are separate.  You are Kristen because you are not me, a tree or anything else.  We separate from nature to be a person.  So to part with the ego is to lose ourselves.  The ego trying to overcome itself is often described as trying to pick up a mat you are sitting on.  That which is creating the problem is trying to solve the problem.  In this sense to try to solve the problem and become awakened is furthering the problem.  
Here is a essay I wrote on meditation in general:
  I realize that in most Zen schools the point is to meditate but that is really wrong. The point is to overcome meditation.  Here's an example.  To become proficient at playing a musical instrument you need to practice.  This practice is ‘doing'.  The more you practice the more you are ‘doing' but you hope to reach a point where your playing becomes unconscious so that you are no longer ‘doing'.  When you reach this point you are doing it without doing, no voluntary action, you are moving freely.  Now practicing the scales got you there but practicing the scales is not ‘it'.  You need to transcend the doing to get to the non-doing.  Most people mistake this non-doing as being placid and blank but it is the exact opposite, it is active and dynamic.  So through meditation or any other practice you strive to reach the point that you are no longer doing it, you are ‘it'.  So the teacher pushes the technique of counting and someone else pushes another technique; both are inadequate.  Most Zen people become good at practicing Zen but never reach Zen.  It's like being good at practicing guitar and never being able to really play.  Meditation is extremely important but only with ‘correct understanding.'
 Zen people talk about ego consciousness and overcoming it through meditation.  The problem of ‘ego consciousness' is something else that is greatly misunderstood.  Zen people talk about ‘emptying ourselves' to be or create ‘no-self' but how can one empty their self?  The very act of doing so creates the self that is doing the emptying, it is a self negating process. . In the Zen understanding of the human condition man only knows things by contradistinction, by dividing one from the other.  We know good because it is not bad and bad because it is not good.  We know light apart from darkness and vice versa.  This is called differentiated thinking. We know that we are a subject but only know ourselves as an object.  We know that we are but not who we are.  This is the act of separating to know things that the human consciousness does.  It is this act of separation of self from other that creates the ‘I'.  I am I because I am not you.  This is the ego, the act of separating to be a self apart from and alienated from the rest of the world.  We do not see things as they are but as they are differentiated from us.  In reality this separation of self from other does not really exist.  We as egos, cannot live in the present, our minds flit between past and future but in the present we have no relativity so we cannot exist.  So our minds dance like drunken monkeys.  Self is other, other is self, we are mutually creating, mutually defining.  Without self there is no other, without other there is no self, therefore I am everything and everything is me. This is called the interpenetration of things or interdependent co-origination, non-duality or rightly: non-dual duality.  Since self is not just self but relative to other there is no one to be saved, no self, other, God, Buddha; these are all creations of the differentiated self but not of the True self.  The saying “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!' is an articulation of this meaning.  If you meet the Buddha, then he is outside of you, apart from you, thus not you, so then he is not the Buddha but your minds creation of the Buddha.    Nothing apart from self , self apart from Nothing
 So meditation as something that you do, actually separates you from your goal.  That is why mediation must be overcome.  It must be ‘mind and body fallen off' as Hisamatsu put it.  There are no levels of meditation here or different depths of understanding, there is just the attempt to become awakened at each and every moment of your life, here, now, always and not just those moments when you are actually sitting.  Meditation is sitting, standing, eating, drinking and sleeping or it is useless.


     So you need to approach meditation as an every moment practice and not as just something you do in isolation.  You might go through many physical oddities when meditating just try to ignore them.  If it's overwhelming then get up and shake it off and start over again.  It will pass and you can't be hurt.
   You don't die with awakening in the sense you are asking.  If you did would we have any of the words of the historical Buddha? No, he would have died and not passed down anything.  What happens is that you die to the ego, the separation and awaken to a greater reality.  To realize this is to be totally free and is indescribable.
 I'm sorry if some of this is too academic.  Please don't hesitate to write again and ask more questions.
  Take care,
        Joe