[Makalah ini saya sajikan pada Seminar “Socio-spirituality” di Program Pascasarjana Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, pada tanggal 8 – 9 Mei 2008. Kalau ada teman yang menginginkan makalah ini diterjemahkan ke bahasa Indonesia, silakan menyurati saya di milis ini, dan saya akan menerjemahkannya. /hudoyo]
INSIGHT MEDITATION: A JOURNEY FOR BREAKING-THROUGH OUR MIND
By: Hudoyo Hupudio [ii]
The human mind has evolved the intellect as the crown of its development, which distinguished itself from the minds of other life-forms. With their intellect human beings have dominated all life on planet Earth, creating abundance and comfort for themselves. But on the other side, despite their intellect and goodwill, human beings have never succeeded in creating a lasting peace and harmony among themselves; wars occur every day in some part or other of the world throughout the history of humanity. Despite the abundance and comfort created by technology, there is also widespread poverty and hunger, an ever-widening inequality in welfare among humans, and planet Earth is being more and more polluted by the greed of its inhabitants. Not only globally, nationally and locally, even within their own minds human beings are beset with strife, conflicts and contradictions: conflicting ideas, desires, and goals bringing untold miseries and suffering among a large proportion of humanity. These individual problems become more serious and dangerous as we enter the 21st century. At the present time an increasing—rather than decreasing—number of people than ever before have to seek help from psychologists and psychiatrists to resolve their inner conflicts.
To understand the underlying causes of this predicament, we have to examine the nature of thinking and thoughts, which are the highest process and product of the human mind. From the beginning of its evolution, thinking serves for the sole purpose of the survival of the human individual. It serves its purpose by creating the self, the ego, the ‘me’, as opposed to the ‘not-me’, the ‘others’. “I think, therefore I am,” said Descartes. Later on, the ‘me’ is extended to include ‘my family’, ‘my tribe’, ‘my party’, ‘my co-religionists’, ‘my ideology’, ‘my nationality’, ‘my religion’, etc. The ‘me’ is so deeply entrenched in the human mind, so that almost all human beings take the ‘me’ for granted as self-evidently existing as a concrete, lasting and even immortal entity. And thinking, as the creator of the ‘me’, is seen as an indispensable, necessary, unstoppable process of the mind. Thus, the
most fundamental duality—the duality of subject versus objects, the duality between the ‘me’ on the one side versus ‘you’ and the ‘others’ on the other side—is created by the thinking process, which cannot be stopped. To be sure, this duality is non-existent in the consciousness before thinking starts, for instance, during stupefying moments, or during a deep meditation. This duality is the source of all strife and all suffering in the human mind, and consequently in the world at large, while serving to promote the survival of the individual entity.
Facing this dilemmatic situation, obvious questions arise: Can the human mind transcend thinking? Can human beings survive without thinking, without the ‘me’, in this modern world of rising competition?
Surely, thinking is indispensable for survival, to accomplish tasks which need the intellect for their completion. On the other hand, surely one does not need to think all the time during one’s waking time. But, since the ‘me’ is the creation of thinking, hence for the ‘me’ to exist at all time thinking must go on ceaselessly, even if only in the form of daydreaming. One has practically never experienced a mode of consciousness where there is no thinking at all.
For one who has ever experienced the cessation of thinking in full awareness, it is an enlightening and transforming experience. It gives one a realization of a more “real” existence than the ordinary waking consciousness, where thinking goes on all the time. It is not unlike a perception of waking up from a dreaming state. In that state of ‘nonthinking’, one knows the difference between the ‘nonthinking’ state and the everyday state of ongoing thinking; it is not unlike the difference between the awakened state and the dreaming state. On the other hand, one who has never experienced the ‘nonthinking’ mode of consciousness could never conceive the exact nature of that state of mind, like a fish who can never imagine an existence outside water.
This ‘nonthinking’ state of mind can be experienced during moments of deep awe or stupefying moments, or during a deep meditation. But the kind of meditation in which the ‘nonthinking’ state of mind can arise is a special kind of meditation; it cannot be experienced in most other kinds of meditation.
Usually in meditation one concentrates or focuses one’s attention on a single fixed object, like on the in- and out-breathing, or on certain word(s) which is(are) repeated endlessly. By this means one may achieve a deep state of concentration called absorption, which gives a very deep and satisfying calmness and bliss, but in which one is not aware of the stimuli coming in from the senses; therefore one is not aware of the impermanent nature of all phenomena. In this kind of meditation one does not achieve a perception and understanding of the real nature of existence, which is impermanent, unsatisfactory and without self (insubstantial). In short, this kind of meditation does not produce insight, wisdom and liberation (enlightenment).
There is a much rarer kind of meditation which does not involve any concentration at all. This meditation is initially taught by only two persons throughout the recorded history of humanity, i.e., by
the Buddha, more than 2500 years ago, and, independently, by Jiddu Krishnamurti, in the 20th century. To distinguish it from the other kinds of meditation, this meditation is called
‘insight meditation’ or
vipassana meditation in Pali language (the Buddha’s language).
In lieu of concentration, insight meditation emphasizes
awareness or
mindfulness, i.e. to be aware or mindful of every phenomenon that occurs or arises in the physical body and in the mind from moment to moment at all times, when thinking is not needed. ‘Everything in the physical body’ includes all physical sensations, the movements of the body, breathing etc. ‘Everything in the mind’ includes all thoughts, emotions, will, intention, desires, anger, hopes, frustrations, boredom, fleeting happiness, sorrow, pain, miseries, passing pleasures, etc. One should be aware and mindful passively of any of those phenomena—without reacting in any way to it—when it arises and disappears in the consciousness.
That is the gist of insight meditation. The key words are:
awareness/mindfulness, passiveness, and
being in the present moment continuously. In a famous short discourse by the Buddha to Bahiya, a monk who was not his disciple, he said:
“Bahiya, be in this state: in the seen is only the seen [meaning: do not react with thinking], in the heard is only the heard, in the sensed (with the other senses) is only the sensed, in the remembered is only the remembered. If you could be in that state, then you are no more; and that, and only that, is the end of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness).”Initially, to be effective insight meditation should be conducted in a extended retreat of a few days’ duration. When practised in a conducive environment, where there is little need to do something else, where the mind can remain being aware of itself most of the times, then at an unexpected moment, suddenly the mind enters into a deep stillness, where thinking and the ‘me’ stop completely. In this moment of truth, the meditator sees a ‘Vastness’, in which there is a ‘Movement’ not of the mind nor of the ‘me’, in which there is a ‘Benediction’ not coming from anyone, and an ‘Intelligence’ not of the intellect, and a ‘Love’ not of the ‘me’. For want of an adequate word, the meditator can only call it
The Unknown. To be there implies that the ‘me’, thinking, knowledge, experience, time and space are no more. As J. Krishnamurti said, using the term “God” as a colloquial of the ‘The Unknown’:
“God is, when I am not; when I am, God is not.” [iii]
Is this mode of consciousness compatible with daily living in this modern competitive world? The answer is yes, if by ‘compatible’ one means having each mode of consciousness at different moments in our day-to-day living. As J. Krishnamurti challenges us:
“Can thinking stop, and move only when it is really needed?” – Yes, that mode of consciousness is compatible with daily living. One could even say, that it is the
only life worth living, because then one lives in the world, relating to others, to nature and to ideas, while remaining tangibly aware of the ‘The Unknown’ as the Source and Destination of all that is.
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Notes:
Presented at The 3rd (International) Postgraduate Consortium on Accounting: “Socio-spirituality: Breaking the Traditional Convention of Accounting and Business”, Brawijaya University, Malang, 8-9 May 2008.
[ii] Hudoyo Hupudio, MD, MPH, is a retiree from the Indonesia Ministry of Health, and currently teaches insight meditation.
[iii] The complete and permanent cessation of the self was experienced by a Roman Catholic mother from California, Bernadette Roberts, who has not any previous notion and anticipation that such event could happen at all. She is an accomplished Christian mystic, who at the age of 15 entered a convent to become a nun and remained as such for 10 years. During her service as a nun, she experienced the pinnacle of the Christian mystical path, which is a permanent union with God. She said that she could enter “the still point” at the bottom of her being, and be with God inseparably, whenever she wanted and for whatever length of time she liked. Eventually she left the convent, married and raised a family of four boys, and continued her study to become a Master in psychology. She thought that there was nothing else to attain in terms of mystical experience, since union with God is the highest goal of all Christian mystics. But twenty years later, while she was in her forties, a bewildering event occurred unexpectedly: She could no longer find the “still point” in her mind; and she was more baffled when she realized that she could no longer “look” reflexively into her self: she has no affective life anymore and no self-consciousness or subjective notion and feelings at all. And the most baffling of all is that with the disappearance of her self, God also disappeared forever from her mind. In its place, she realizes later that wherever she turns her eyes on, there is something that permeates every particular thing, animate or inanimate; that “something” she instantly knows as the Source of all that is. She named it “The Unknown”. She needed two years to adapt herself to a life without a self with her husband and boys. While in the adaptation phase, she wrote down her experiences beautifully, clearly and consistently in a book, THE EXPERIENCE OF NO-SELF. An outline of the book can be downloaded from http://www.nonduality.com/berna.htm.
Topic: MMD (Meditasi Mengenal Diri) (Read 569180 times)