Chapter 6 Overview of Meditation Methods

Skills are helpful and can save time. Skills are helpful because they are scientific and can help people avoid getting lost and groping in the dark. If a person doesn't know any skills, they will certainly spend a very long time. With a master who has scientific skills, a person can save a lot of time, opportunities, and energy. Even over several lifetimes, a person cannot grow that much, but sometimes, in seconds, a person can grow a great deal. If the right skills are applied, growth will be stimulated. These skills have been used in practice for thousands of years; they were not designed by one person, but by many accomplished individuals.

Everyone will reach their goal because, unless a person's life energy reaches a point where it can no longer move, it will continue to move, constantly striving towards the highest peak. That's why a person is born again and again. So, if it comes from a person's own development, they will also reach their goal, but they will have a very, very long journey, and this journey will be very tedious and boring.

But we must be clearly aware that techniques are not meditation itself, but rather tools to help achieve meditation. All techniques can be helpful, but strictly speaking, they are not meditation; they are merely ropes in the darkness. One day, suddenly, you become an observer—for example, when you are doing tantric practice, or Kundalini meditation, or static meditation. Suddenly one day, you continue, but you no longer identify with it. You sit quietly in the back, and you observe it—that's when meditation happens. That's when techniques are no longer an obstacle, nor are they a help. Of course, if you like, you can still enjoy it, like a kind of exercise; it simply provides vitality. But now, you no longer need it—because true meditation has occurred. Meditation is observation; meditation means becoming observation. Meditation is not a technique at all!

This will confuse you greatly because I keep giving you techniques, but in the final awakening, meditation is not a technique; meditation is an awareness, a realization. However, people need techniques because that ultimate awareness is very far away, hidden within, yet still very far from yourself. You may reach it, or you may not, because the mind continues, so techniques will fill that gap; they are always connected to that gap.

Therefore, an important principle is: techniques must eventually be discarded. All the greatest masters have said this. One day, you must discard your methods, and the faster the better. When you reach that moment, your inner awareness is also released, so immediately discard the methods.

The Buddha repeatedly told a story: Five fools were passing through a village when the people were astonished to see them carrying a boat on their heads. The boat was so large that they were almost crushed by its weight. Someone asked, "What are you doing?" They replied, "We cannot leave this boat. It is the boat that helped us get from the other side to this side. How can we abandon it? With it, we were able to get here. Without it, we would have died on the other side. At night, there are wild beasts on the other side, and we would undoubtedly be eaten by morning. We will never leave this boat; we will always owe it a debt of gratitude. We carry it on our heads out of thanks."

Therefore, methods are dangerous only when people are unaware of them! Conversely, they can be applied wonderfully. So, do you think that boat is dangerous? If, out of pure gratitude, you want to carry that boat on your head for the rest of your life, then it is dangerous; otherwise, it's just a lifeboat, to be discarded after use, never to be looked back upon—useless, meaningless! Naturally, you begin to return to your true nature.