Meditation and Our Beliefs

Meditation is a matter of practice, not doctrine; this accounts for much of its appeal. So are our philosophical views or religious beliefs important when we come to meditation? Some may say that they are not, and even that meditation should be based on, and approached with, as few religious or philosophical ideas as possible, and ideally none at all.

The difficulty with this view is that we all have a philosophy of life, a more or less conscious and examined sense of what is real and what is important. It might be said that we should believe only what our senses clearly reveal and our reason can prove and that there is nothing beyond this. Still, that is itself a philosophical view and a belief in relation to religious questions. (And one which turns out to be less than straightforward under scrutiny.)

The practical side of the traditional teachings on Self-knowledge recognises this, and that our background ideas do affect how we will progress and persevere in meditation. And so it is recommended that alongside our meditations we reflect on the philosophy of non-duality that underlies the practices.

This non-dual philosophy (advaita vedanta) is wide and deep, as wide and deep as it needs to be to meet all the questions that might arise in the minds of all sorts of enquirers at every stage. So for each of us only certain aspects will be relevant. We are not advised to study this philosophy as an abstruse intellectual subject, but to consider it as a direct, practicable guide to what is most important to us personally.

It will help our meditation if we have understood, or are at least familiar with and open to, a few key ideas. The most important of these could be summarised in four points.

The first is that we cannot know everything through our senses and minds; they cannot reveal to us the ultimate nature of Reality. This is simply a reminder not to become fixed and dogmatic in our thinking. However much we have studied and learned of any subject, it will not be the complete and final truth. Truth itself exceeds the range of our minds, which are details within it. This principle is at the root of all the wisdom traditions, which unanimously stress the value of humility; and the root of true humility is to remember that however much we know, it is far from the whole of Reality. Isaac Newton famously expressed this quality when, after all his scientific achievements, he seemed to himself ‘only like a boy playing on the seashore… while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.’ Many centuries before, the world was taught not to worship idols. An idol is any limited form in our mind that we take as ultimate, allowing ourselves to forget that Reality transcends anything that can fit into a mind.

The second of our foundational ideas is positive: it is that Reality is there, it does exist (better, it is existence). Being beyond the reach of our minds and senses, it is sometimes called the Transcendent or the Divine: all these are names and salutations, not definitions, for what cannot be fully defined. Sometimes it is asked if this existence can be proven. One might respond, can it be doubted? Could the parts exist without a whole? If Reality were not there, could we be here to ask about it? We do not claim to know anything specific about the nature of this Absolute reality. We do not insist that it meets the idea of a creator God. In the Wholeness of Reality, causal processes like creation need not arise as they do among phenomena. The point is simply that beyond our thoughts, our minds, our theories, our knowledge and our ignorance, there is the Reality they assume.

The third foundational insight is that Reality is the ground of our being. In this sense it is ‘in’ us; it is what we are ultimately ‘made of’. It is not revealed to our senses and minds because it is not an object different from what we are; it is that in which we live and move and have our being. Again, on reflection, can this be doubted? If we were not grounded in what is Real, could we be here asking these questions?

The fourth idea is that while Reality cannot be revealed to our senses and minds, it may be known, or realised, or discovered, not as an object, but as our own Being, the true Self. This is accomplished not so much by thinking, but by stilling, purifying and lightening the mind in order to remove from our inner vision what obscures the Reality in which the mind abides. This is the aim of all the wisdom traditions and the highest human potential. The great teachers, from the Upanishadic, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and all authentic traditions, have taught that this is the ultimate goal and resolution of life and its mysteries. This idea follows closely from the three points mentioned before, although it differs from them in that it is not so logically self-evident: whether it is true or not is a matter of experience, rather than logic. It is not suggested that we should simply accept this as a dogma, but to take it as reasonable advice from the wise and compassionate teachers who offer us a way of finding the lasting fulfilment and freedom we long for, which worldly gains seem to promise but not deliver.

These then are four key ideas which, if intelligently considered, will ease our journey of discovery into meditation: the mind cannot know all of Reality; Reality is there; Reality is within us; Reality may be realised as Self, not by the active mind, but through the purified mind. This is the final goal of meditation. Along the way it is likely that we shall be much occupied with learning to master our inner world, but we shall draw strength, vitality and a sense of direction from the living truth within us that is expressed in these four propositions. Every mind is different, and so we are all invited to make our own study and reflection on the non-dual teachings and to incorporate into our own hearts and minds the full implications of the teaching that ultimately there is one non-dual Reality.

P.H.