“DD” CONCENTRATION
(The Lankavatara Sutra) One achieves self-realization by practicing mental concentration. He will thus come to the state of Noble Wisdom.
What does mental concentration have to do with self-realization? Quite a bit actually, until it doesn’t at all anymore. What does surrender and forgiveness have to do with reaching a subjective reality where there’s more happiness than sadness present? Quite a bit actually.
In this context, mental concentration is not about learning a new language or directing one’s sight on the mastery of a new skill, it’s about watching your thoughts, feelings and emotions arise without trying to change them or engage in their circular pattern of rising and falling. Practicing mental concentration is important only up until the point you realize you’re not your thoughts to begin with, then mental concentration becomes directed by intent, and at that point you will have realized a great truth.
Those who allow their minds to play God, are the same people stuck in samsara, stuck in misery, stuck in a world with little realization of noteworthy expression. The mind is only useful up until a point, and then it is seen as woefully insufficient to go further in realizing the highest truths.
You are not the mind. You are not your thoughts. You are not your feelings. You are not your emotions. You are not the body. You are not anything seen out in the world by the eyes. The “you” I’m referring to is only witnessed and observed, rarely experienced, but always present.
In the quote above, “self-realization” is spelled with lower case letters on purpose. Because the pathway of mental concentration does not produce Self-realization as a singular pathway, only moments of clarity which serve to move you towards the possibility of enlightenment.
If you choose to practice mental concentration, you have chosen a mighty path. Once your eyes begin to open to higher realizations about God, Truth, and Life, you’ll start being pulled faster and faster towards ultimate truths. The practice of mental concentration in this lifetime for me started with a choice: to engage with negative thoughts or immediately surrender them over without attachment.
To practice mental concentration, it is paramount you know how to do so. You need a compass, a map, and the right mental attire for the journey. Watch your thoughts arise as stimuli. Don’t attempt to change the stimuli. Surrender over all attachment to the stimuli. Forgive everyone for everything, including yourself for your projections out into the world.
A thought comes in, the thought gets surrendered. Another thought comes in, and then that one gets surrendered. Negativity arises through the onslaught of another thought, and that too gets surrendered over. We don’t actively play in the mud of negative thoughts, but instead watch them come up and recede away again like waves crashing upon the shore. We ride the crest of the wave, not in front or behind it. We swim with the current of thoughts, not upstream trying to change them or judging ourselves because they’re present.
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