Turning the Light Around

Finishing my meditations this morning, a memory floated by. Under a redwood tree in 1991 a realization swept away years of problems in meditation. I was reading Thomas Cleary's translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower, a Chinese classic that blends wisdom both from Taoism and the Chinese Chan Buddhist traditions. It was the fourth section, titled Turning the Light Around and Tuning the Breathing:

On the whole, beginners suffer from two kinds of problems: oblivion and distraction. There is a device to get rid of them, which is simply to rest the mind on the breath.

The first moment sitting back in 1984 instantly acquainted me with distraction. If it wasn't the pain in my knees from the shock of sitting in an unfamiliar position, it was work. Or it was something that someone said that hurt me. Or it was my wanting to get up and move. My first teacher called it monkey mind: the distracted flitting between thoughts. Meditation was a direct attack on the fragmented tripping between disconnected thoughts. The real connection, of course, is all the thoughts were rooted in my conventional sense of myself as a disconnected, autonomous entity.

But what was the cure? My early teaching in Zen Buddhism from American monks tended toward the idea that real enlightenment is a state of narcotized tranquillity. But The Secret of the Golden Flower is clear:

Should one have no thoughts? It is impossible to have no thoughts. Should one not breathe? It is impossible not to breathe.

It's not getting away from it all, it's coming to balance. And the notion that no-mind means turning off the mind is ridiculous. The ideal in meditation is regulating the mind and self between the poles of distraction - monkey-mind - and oblivion where the spirit is detached and inert. Oblivion is actually more dangerous than distraction.

Distraction means the spirit is racing; oblivion means the spirit is unclear… Oblivion means the lower soul is in control… Oblivion is ruled by pure darkness and negativity.

In the Western Mysteries, the same metaphor exists. The sealed vessel is where the alchemist does transformative reactions. If the heat's too low, nothing ever reacts. That's oblivion. If the heat's too high, the pressure insight may cause the vessel to burst, releasing the virtue inside - that's distraction.

From the East or from the West, the secret is the same. Spiritual transformation occurs in the middle zone, where inner energies are alive, vital, and supple, but where the distractions of multiplied concerns do not disorient the real purpose - of attending to clarity.

Try an experiment! Grab a few minutes today for meditation. As you watch your distractions arise, drop your gaze downward and continue to follow your breathing. If you begin to become drowsy - oblivious - raise your eyes and breathe a bit more quickly. Learning to regulate inner states through the gaze and the breath is a key to all work with the Mysteries.