Post by zendancer on Jul 18, 2019 15:53:59 GMT -5
I'm sorry if I lost the track of this thread, and went in a different direction, but I can answer the questions you posed.
1. What is meditation? It depends upon how one defines the word. Generally speaking, meditation is a concentrated focus of attention, usually upon something specific, such as the breath, the sense of existence, a sound, a sight, a feeling, an existential question, or simply nothingness.
2. Is everyone meditating 24/7? Of course not.
3. Saying that you don't want SR does not mean that you understand what I'm pointing to.
4. If all is one, so what? Well, that depends upon whether the knowing of oneness is conceptual or non-conceptual. If it's non-conceptual, it can bring an end to the spiritual search, and that can be life changing. For some people that's a big deal.
Someone at a retreat once asked, "What do you get if you find all the answers to the questions that bother you?" The answer is, "No more seeking."
.
And further, what is the value of meditation versus, for example, not crossing the center line.
So now you have made/acknowledged such a distinction. .....But I guess I will not proceed as I know what your answer will be...
(For zd there is no distinction, that's why you answered earlier as you did...)...(That actually boggles my mind...)...
I think the confusion may lie between what awareness is (the nature of awareness) and what awareness is aware of (the content of awareness). Ordinary everyday awareness is non-dual, and it's present as long as one is awake. Awareness continues during sleep, and consciously so for some people, but that's another matter. Duality, and the sense of dualiity, is a product of the intellect. Lots of sages have students do the awareness investigation thingy where they ask the student to remember some vivid past experience and then compare their awareness during that experience with their present experience. The sage will ask, "Has the awareness, itself, changed in any way? Has it aged? Has it increased or decreased? Has it become sharper or dimmer?" etc. The student all often realize, sometimes with a shock, that their present awareness is exactly the same as it was when they were a child or at any other point in their life. That's because awareness is a foundational property of what we call "reality." Even in nirvikalpa samadhi where there are no thoughts or objects of perception awareness continues.
Some people may refer to awareness in NS as non-dual (which it is), but that's simply because there's nothing else there. The quality of awareness is not really different, but because there are no distracting thoughts or perceptions everything disappears into a state of absolute unity.
The value of meditation can be significant for people who do it regularly. It promotes physical health, triggers the relaxation response, can rewire the brain in positive ways, and can silence the intellect sufficiently for realizations to occur. Realizations inform the intellect, and this can allow people to discover the non-dual nature of reality and penetrate numerous other illusions created by the intellect.