buddhism – Kynan Tan Meditation

Standing at the Edge of the Void

Look at the screen. Faces, a room, someone talking. Now find one small patch of it and see only colour. Points of light. The mind has to reach in to make those points into a person. Tune into that reaching, and the screen starts to thin. Paper thin.

Settle first. Let the body be heavy and relaxed, filled with bright awareness, until the whole body is held at once. Then notice how things appear now. Whatever you arrived carrying may have a little more room around it. Nothing was removed. It is being built differently.

Try seeing the body as empty. Not as an idea – as a way of perceiving. Notice what happens when the word itself arrives.

Whenever there is belief that things are real,
desire and hatred are generated.
Without that belief no defilements can occur.
And when this is completely understood,
all views and afflictions dissolve.

– Nāgārjuna, Yuktiṣaṣṭikā (translated by Rob Burbea)

Something in you may lean towards this. Something else may pull back. Fear, excitement, a voice saying this is too big to begin. Let each of them be here. How do you see yourself, standing in relation to this?

Then take the view, lightly, as an experiment. Everything you are experiencing lacks inherent existence. Vividly appearing, yet insubstantial. Points of sensation, glued by the mind into a self and a world.

Open your eyes and look at the screen again.

Just the Seen

In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen.
In reference to the heard, only the heard.
In reference to the sensed, only the sensed.
In reference to the cognized, only the cognized.

— Bāhiya Sutta (Udāna 1.10), translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Nothing added, nothing pushed away. When a sound arrives, note it lightly: hear. Not the car or the voice, just the act of hearing, acknowledged and let go as the next sound comes. With eyes open or closed, see. Light, darkness, colour, shape. Then the body — the contact where you are held up, the hands, the breath. Feel.

Then turn inward and find the same three. A felt sense in the chest, an emotion hard to name: feel in. Rest attention where thoughts seem to happen and wait, as if in the cinema of the mind. A picture of dinner arrives. A voice says you have to cook something. See in, hear in. If you get caught up, replay the last moment. Was it an image, a sound, or a feeling that drew you in?

Is there anything you know that did not come through the senses?

Just seeing, hearing, and feeling, with no you in it. Then open your eyes, and keep looking this way.

Not Me, Not Mine

You cut your fingernails and brush the clippings away. A moment ago they were you. You don’t go back for them.

Settle. Let the body be heavy, the belly soft, awareness wide enough to hold the whole of it. Then listen. A car, a voice, the hum of an appliance. As each sound arrives, label it silently and lightly: not me, not mine. This one is easy — obviously the sound isn’t you, obviously you can’t keep it. Notice what happens when you say so anyway.

Widen from there. The pressure of sitting, an ache, the rise and fall of the belly. The breath has been going all day without your permission; the air was outside a moment ago and will be outside again. If you were going to possess a breath, which one would it be, and how would you hold it? Then feeling — warmth, unease, whatever tone is here — already shifting as you turn to look. Then thoughts. Where did that one come from? Was there a decision before it arrived? Thoughts happen on their own; we take the credit after the fact.

Then look for your sense of self. It might be tight, everything glued together and about you. It might be loose and open. Either way, it is arising. Not me, not mine.

Nothing here is being got rid of. A rainbow is vividly there and has nothing solid in it. Open your eyes, look around the room, and keep looking that way.

The Self-sense Spectrum

A sound wakes you in the night. Nothing much has happened, and within a minute the body is tight and the mind is looping — what was that, who caused it, why this, why me. Hours later you are walking in the sun and everything is fine. The body is open. There is nothing to cling to. Same person, same day.

Place a number between zero and ten on what is being felt. Zero: the self-sense faint, thin, perhaps completely gone. Ten: contracted, fixated, everything is about you. Most of the time you are drifting somewhere in the middle without noticing.

Sensation first: what you can hear, see, feel. Then feeling — not the story of the emotion, just its energy in the body. Then thought: distinct images and inner sounds, or a stream bubbling away.

Then ask: what is my self-sense right now?

It’s a strange question. It doesn’t land the first time.

Now watch how the mind binds it all together. A sound, an agitation, a thought about who did this — glued into a solid, fixed, “you”. When the gluing runs unwatched, the contraction is strongest. See it clearly, and relax.

Suppose a magician were to hold a magic show at the four crossroads, and a keen-sighted person were to see it, reflect on it, and examine it radically. Even as they see it, they would find it empty; they would find it hollow; they would find it void of essence.

— Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta, SN 22.95

Examine the self-sense that closely and release clinging. Not gone — vividly appearing, but without the solidity it seemed to have. Rest as what knows this.

This Fleeting World

Thus should you think of all this fleeting world:

Like a drop of dew, or like a star at dawn;

A bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning

In a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream…

See through the lens of change. Sounds arise out of silence and disappear back into it, and even the constant ones waver. Bring the body forward: look at the edge of a sensation that feels solid, and find the flicker there. You never take the same breath twice. Then thoughts — each with a beginning and an end, or one stream, flowing, never the same for long.

The mind gives solidity to what has none. Look this way for a while and notice what loosens. There is often relief in it: nothing here to hold.

Then open your eyes, and notice what lens you are looking through now.

— Vajrachedikā (Diamond) Sūtra, translated by Rob Burbea

Presence and Buddha Nature (talk)

Video recording of a Dharma Talk from Day of Practice (14:10)

Audio only:

This is an excerpt from a talk at the Day of Practice. I offer some thoughts on Presence, Buddha Nature, and Awakening. For me, I got into meditation to experience benefits such as relaxing, focusing, and improving my mental health. While these did come, the biggest shifts occurred when the practice opened to something more profound. Here I offer a way of thinking about what we are doing in meditation and where the path leads — towards recognising the interconnectedness and relatedness of all things, and to understanding ourselves as an integral part of the whole.

I’m currently available to meet one-on-one with new students.