However, this type of concentration practice can lead to a type of ignorance when it’s taken as the whole practice. In Buddhism, there is another practice called ‘vipassana’ or ‘insight meditation’ which is the balancing practice to shamata. It’s where you use your stable awareness to investigate the nature of reality and your own mind. This is where you start to see the emptiness of things and the impermanence of all phenomena. This insight practice can break the illusion of a fixed self and the inherent existence of objects which can lead to a deeper level of liberation.
So my second suggestion to move beyond being stuck in mindfulness is to include some form of insight practice. This could be as simple as asking yourself questions about the nature of your experience in meditation or contemplating the impermanence of all things. This can open up a whole new dimension to your practice and lead to a more profound understanding of yourself and the world around you.
This has enormous value in creating a very calm and peaceful state of mind and body which alleviates stress, anxiety and any number of strong disturbing emotions and also subdues a distracted hyperactive mind. This would seem to be of enormous value in today’s busy world and indeed I believe it is valuable.
However, two thousand five hundred years ago Gautama Buddha declared that people were stuck in this type of mindfulness practice and were not truly liberating themselves from the roots of suffering. Instead, they were temporarily pacifying mental and emotional afflictions. He went on to say that a person needs to develop the wisdom that comprehends the true nature of themselves so they can be fully liberated from the suffering of this world.
This is why discernment or an analytical mind was included in Buddhist mindfulness training which could distinguish that every single aspect of your experience was constantly changing and therefore knowing that there is no fixed permanent self became direct knowledge which did have the power to completely free you from egoic ignorance and its subsequent suffering. This aspect of meditation is called Vipassana and is to be united with the calm abiding of mindfulness meditation to be a complete practice.
Buddhist psychology states that discernment is actually an omnipresent mental factor, which means that discernment is always present in your mind even when you are focusing on one thing. In other words, bare attention is never bare; it nearly always has a quality of subtly distinguishing and perceiving what it’s focusing on. Therefore, without this knowledge, your mindfulness practice of bare attention can subtly reinforce your concepts of things and can even strengthen your ego. Transforming this ever-present aspect of discernment into deep wisdom aligned with the way things really exist is fundamental to Buddhist mindfulness practice.
Essentially, Buddhists use a calm and focused mind not only as an intervention to practice skillful and virtuous actions but also as a tool to penetrate the veils of delusion and develop the wisdom that understands the true nature of reality.
Mindfulness Stuck In Duality
Firstly, before getting too deep, it’s worth mentioning that classic Buddhist mindfulness training is derived from a text called the four foundations of mindfulness. The four foundations are the objects you focus on which are the body, feelings, mind, and phenomena. Along with the discernment of these things as being impermanent as discussed above, they are also viewed in an impersonal way without containing a separate self. The Buddha advised to view these foundations “in and of themselves.”
To go deeper, the most subtle conception that you perceive when focusing your mindfulness is what’s known as the subject/object duality. The sense that there is something doing the focusing and something entirely separate that you are focused on. The mystic schools in all the wisdom traditions have discovered that the world is based on an underlying seamless unity which is expressed as multiplicity. Ultimately, you are intimately connected to all things and the experience of being separate is an illusion.
To fully drop all thoughts and really come to a non-conceptual awareness of the present moment, it is necessary to eventually even drop the object of meditation. Letting go and expanding awareness so you don’t centralize yourself into a narrow laser beam focus and artificially divide the world into separate parts. An advanced meditation instruction found in Dzogchen is “there is nothing to focus on, yet don’t get distracted.”
As one Tibetan meditation master warns, “don’t mentally split into two when meditating, one part of the mind watching the other like a cat watching a mouse.” This is where people can easily get stuck, and it’s actually a stressful place to be because it requires a high degree of forced concentration.
Since the great mystics and meditation masters have told us that at our core we are actually one with everything and already perfect in that regard; therefore to let go of duality actually implies to rest naturally in your true nature without any effort at all. It’s this great release from the dualistic grasping of the small mind that allows us to move beyond mindfulness and directly experience the ultimate relaxation of the sublime realization of reality.
The ultimate mindfulness is totally natural and non-dualistic, it’s more concerned with resting in an open presence than focusing or concentrating. This type of non-dual open presence resting is the most serene and profound type of meditation and the culmination of practice. As a man, incorporating meditation into your daily routine can bring about significant benefits for your overall well-being. Chad Foreman, the founder of The Way of Meditation, is a seasoned meditation teacher with over two decades of experience in guiding individuals on their spiritual journey.
Chad emphasizes the importance of starting with dualistic mindfulness practices, such as watching the breath with stable attention, deep breathing, and heart-centeredness. These foundational practices pave the way for a seamless transition from effort to effortlessness in meditation, allowing you to explore the depths of heartfulness and let go of the constraints of ego.
To help men like you embark on this transformative meditation journey, Chad has developed the 21 Day Meditation Challenge. This program is designed to facilitate your spiritual growth and introduce you to the myriad benefits that meditation has to offer. By participating in this challenge, you can unlock new levels of awareness, tap into your inner energy, and cultivate a profound sense of being.
Whether you’re a beginner looking to explore mindfulness or a seasoned practitioner seeking to deepen your practice, the 21 Day Meditation Challenge is tailored to meet you where you are on your journey. Through Chad’s guidance, you can gradually progress from basic mindfulness exercises to profound states of awareness, all from the comfort of your own home.
In addition to the 21 Day Meditation Challenge, Chad offers a range of online programs to support your meditation practice. From Breath-work meditation to manage stress and enhance your meditation experience, to The Bliss of Inner Fire, a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks, Chad’s teachings are designed to help you thrive on your spiritual path.
To learn more about Chad Foreman’s transformative meditation programs and to embark on your own meditation journey, visit The Way of Meditation website. Begin your quest for inner peace, self-discovery, and spiritual growth today.
