In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte and#8220;and#8220;Becoming More Natural,and#8221; Kamalashila encourages us to approach meditation as a kind of prayer that exposes artificiality through awareness of experience as it brings to into being greater authenticity and truth.
Excerpted from the well-loved talk and#8220;Simplicityand#8221; by Kamalashila, 2004.
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] I sort of think about this. Why should it matter how artificially we live? Why should it matter? I can't easily answer this, but I think meditation might help us understand it. Just doing meditation, because meditation works, I think, by exposing our artificiality and then somehow dissolving it through a process of awareness. It purifies us of our artificiality simply by our paying attention to our experience, as we were doing just now. And I think that's meditation in a nutshell, giving attention to experience. But the attention isn't just mental. The attention we give is also something we do with our heart. I think this is very important. The heart, what is the heart? You know, the heart is all about what we wish and hope for. It's about what we want. And what we want in meditation, I think, is to find the truth in some way. Find some kind of truth. So, looking at meditation in that way, meditation becomes something like a kind of prayer. Because in our heart we want authenticity. It's because we badly need something real, something genuine. That's why we give our attention in meditation. And this very heartfelt attention that is meditation brings new awareness. Our awareness of ourselves, of others, of our senses, and of the whole world is continually refreshed as we practice. And in the long term, after much practice and reflection, we come to what we can call a more philosophical awareness, a kind of sensitivity to reality itself, of the ultimate truth of the nature of existence. And that's the beginning of wisdom. I think, obviously, it takes a long, long time for our wisdom to come to fruition. But still, I think some of it starts sprouting in this right from the very beginning. So, just to summarize what I just said, we can say that on the Buddhist path, our artificiality gradually drops away and we become more natural and real. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] You [BLANK_AUDIO]
