Meditation Essentials The Path of Meditation

This image, a traditional teaching tool from Tibetan Buddhism, depicts a person beginning the path to meditation who starts at the bottom as a total beginner, and scientifically, logically, practically, step by step, moves through a progression of stages in order to reach the state of meditation. We are going to explain those stages so that all of us understand where we are in our meditation practice and what is needed to advance further.

As we explained in this course, meditation is not an idea or a theory; it is not a belief. Neither is it a practice or a behavior to imitate. Meditation, properly defined, is a state of consciousness. Meditation is something any living thing can experience, because the state of meditation is the natural, unconditioned state of the consciousness itself. When the consciousness is able to perceive and understand without the influence of any trauma, desire, fear, anger, pride, lust, greed, gluttony, avarice — all of those limited, conditioning factors: aggregates, samskaras, kleshas, egos, defects, sins, or whatever you want to call them. When those veils are taken off of the consciousness, it is able to perceive reality and understand. This is a natural capacity of every living thing in its own level, because consciousness has many levels.

That is what is depicted in this other image, called the Tree of Life.

Every living thing has consciousness at its level, from the simplest organisms to the most sophisticated and most beautiful. From the tiniest atoms and molecules and particles — even including light itself at its most basic level — has consciousness in its level. The whole Tree of Life represents levels of consciousness, from the tiniest and simplest all the way up to the levels of angels, buddhas, gods, and those beings that we from our perspective admire because of their perfection. Of course, we want to be like that, perfect, beautiful, serene, happy, powerful, and wise. The capacity for us to become like that is the consciousness itself.

If we remove the filters that condition the consciousness and cause us to suffer, and likewise expand and grow the consciousness, we raise our level of being. That is what meditation is for.

The state of meditation is essential for any person, who is interested in developing themselves as a human being. In the state of meditation you experience what it is to actually be human. Since most of us lack that experience, we are left knowing only the conditioning factors that cause us to suffer: desire, lust, anger, pride, greed, jealousy, fear. Therefore, we mistakenly believe that these conditions are normal. These conditioned qualities that we know as life are not normal, nor are they real “living.” Instead they are states of conditioned experience, limited experience, which we can call “suffering.”

We can remove those veils through the process of meditation, the science of meditation, and thereby experience what it means to be a real human being, and then from there grow and expand to become something more than human, something truly incredible. That process of change is scientific. It is not about beliefs; it is not about accepting or rejecting, disbelieving, believing. It has nothing to do with our concepts or beliefs. This is a scientific and experiential process that anyone can utilize and understand through their own experience, if they work with the facts.

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