I was listening last night again to a lecture on the Tibetan concept of Kun Zhi. The idea is that all of the traumas and difficulties and things that made us stop and contract form a sort of barrier between us and our authentic, happy, spontaneously joyful selves. It has to be digested, chewed, processed. This is one of the primary purposes of meditation, in the early stages.
As I have said often, in my own practice, that of Kum Nye, as taught by Tarthang Tulku, in my understanding there are three broad categories of activity: first relaxation, then mindfulness, then concentration. They all happen at the same time, of course, but each has its own purpose and focus.
Relaxation allows you to see what is actually there. It is like floating down in the water of your self, to see what is in the deeps. Until you slow down enough to allow these voices to speak, they influence you without you seeing them.
Then you have to live with them for a while. You have to see and match their forms, and be aware of them. With time, they dissolve. You integrate them with your breath, with your flow of energy, with your flow of life energy.
And once this barrier becomes porous and begins to dissolve, you come into contact with the life of your life, with your spirit. The purpose of life on Earth is to learn how to express this spirit. It is that simple. It is not to be kind: kindness is a RESULT. Kindness, expressed externally, is an outer form, that can be done reflexively by callous and cruel people, for their own purposes. In my view, many of the people talking the most about kindness and compassion have a great deal of darkness in their hearts. They are using the concept of kindness as a wedge to separate themselves from others, which in turn creates the space for them to be cruel from what they consider a morally superior vantage point.
Concentration, then, is feeling this energy, and accumulating it, and learning to live in it, and to live it openly. It is bringing true, honest, spiritual joy into this dark and mean world. It is not an easy process, which is why few people do it. I’m certainly not doing it yet. I am no doubt guilty of much of what I accuse others of. That is why I can see them so clearly: I am one of them, in my own way.
But I have plotted my escape. That is, in my view, the key difference.