Friday, May 6, 2011

The now

Chimpanzees have no thinking mind. They don’t create religions or ideologies and they don’t worry about tomorrow. They live in the now.

Human beings have a thinking mind. We have a language. We talk and we think. We create theories. We invent religions and ideologies and we worry about the future. We are rarely in the here and now. We are almost always somewhere else.

Buddhist mindfullness meditation practice is about practicing being in the now. When the mind drifts off into the future or in to other dream worlds it is gently pulled back.

Eckhart Tolle claims that no meditation practice is necessary. The thinking mind simply calms down and falls silent after the awakening and there is nothing we can do in order to wake up. Awakening is spontaneous when the time is right. It’s like when we are waking up in the morning from a nightmare.

So the question is, is spiritual awakening about to silence the gibbering mind or is it that the mind becomes silent by itself? Is spiritual awakening to return to an animal way of looking at things, to be conscious without thoughts?