Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, is titled and#8220;Buddhism and the Mindand#8221; is an excerpt from the talk and#8220;Meditation: the Expanding Consciousnessand#8221; by Sangharakshita. A traditional exposition of Buddhist meditation looking at why we meditate; preparation for meditation; the five meditation practices designed to counteract the five mental poisons; and the three stages of meditation.
Talk given in 1967.
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] Now all this is of very great interest from the point of view specifically of Buddhism. We all know I am sure that Buddhism is very greatly concerned with the mind. We may even go so far as to say that Buddhism is concerned with very little else than with the mind. For instance, as some of you may remember who have heard the talks on Zen Buddhism, Zen is defined in one of the four lines of the four line verse which gives his essence. Zen is defined as a direct pointing to the mind. This is all that Zen does in a sense. It just says look at your own mind. It directs attention to the mind. So this is very characteristic, very typical of Buddhism. Almost every school of Buddhism is saying in one way or another, in one form or another, look at your mind. Look at yourself. Be aware of the heights and the depths of your own consciousness. So Buddhism knows quite well from the very beginning, as known for thousands of years, that the mind, so-called ordinary everyday mind, has heights and has depths of which normally, or usually I should say we are unaware. Now we'll be going into all this or many aspects of all this later on in the year, when we have a course of lectures at the Kingsway Hall on aspects of Buddhist psychology, in which many of these topics will be systematically explored. We shall of course not only then, but now be more concerned with the heights than with the depths and concerned not only theoretically, but practically, whereas the emphasis of Buddhism all the time is not just on the theoretical, but on the practical. It not only envisages heights of mind beyond mind, but is also concerned with the scaling of those heights. It's also concerned, we may say, with the expansion of consciousness, of the expansion of awareness, beyond its present limits to the very heights of mind. But of course the question arises, how is this to be done? How are we to scale those heights? How are we to expand our minds, expand our awareness, expand our consciousness? And the answer, the traditional answer of Buddhism is in all its schools, that this is to be done through the practice of meditation. Meditation in fact may be defined for general purposes as the systematic expansion of awareness or consciousness. Now, most of you, most of you I know are practicing meditation or at least concentration in one form or another regularly or fairly regularly. Many of you I know attained the weekly meditation classes which we hold at Sakora, and quite a number of you have participated also in our two retreat weeks, which we had at Hazel near recently. So most of you that is to say have experienced, as a result of your own practice of meditation, some degree of expansion or consciousness of awareness of the mind. And meditation indeed is something to be practiced, something to be experienced, and not so much talked about, not even perhaps really lectured about. At the same time it is very useful for us to have a general idea of what we are supposed to be doing when we meditate. With that we are supposed to be going. Otherwise we may practice, we may get a certain benefit out of the practice, but we may at the same time feel that we are rather groping in the dark. We may have no real sense of direction in our practice. So therefore this morning I want to deal with this topic of meditation, of the expanding consciousness in a very practical way, to help mainly those who are actually practicing to orient themselves and to deal with it by wherever consideration of four principal themes or topics. First of all, why we meditate? That will be the first topic. Secondly, the preparations for meditation. Next, the five basic methods of meditation. And fourth and lastly the three progressive stages of meditational experience. And as I've already said, the emphasis here will be practical rather than theoretical. And we shall be aiming at helping those who are actually meditating to get their bearings and to help them be more clearly aware of what it is that they are doing when they sit down and meditate. Now as I say several people have got notebooks and pieces of paper up, let me just repeat these four topics so you can get them down and use them either sort of aid memoir later on. First of all, why we meditate? Why we meditate? It's amazing sometimes how even a short note of this sort can refresh your memory long after you've heard the lecture. So first of all, why we meditate? Secondly, preparations for meditation. Thirdly, the five basic methods of meditation. The five basic methods of meditation. And fourth and lastly, the three progressive stages of meditational experience. These are the four topics which we shall be considering this morning. Yes, the three progressive stages of meditational experience. All right, one, why we meditate? Two preparations for meditation, three, the five basic methods of meditation, and four, the three progressive stages of meditational experience. If we have these four headings, then we can fit in. All the things which have to be said on the subject of meditation, the expanding consciousness. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. 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