Sit with stillness and clear knowing as one lamp

Sit with the sense that calm and clear knowing are not two separate achievements, in the way a lamp and its light are not two things.

Por qué funciona

The Meditation and Wisdom chapter says meditation is the essence of wisdom and wisdom is the function of meditation, and compares them to a lamp and its light: when the lamp exists there is light, and the light is the lamp’s function. The two differ in name but are fundamentally one. The sūtra warns against treating one as prior to the other, because that makes the Dharma have “two characteristics.” The practice tests whether stillness is being used as a precondition for seeing, rather than being seen together with the clarity it already contains.

Cómo hacerlo

1. Settle the body, feeling the seat and both feet, and let the eyes be half open.
2. Let the body be still without forcing a special stillness, and let the breath be whatever it is.
3. Notice the quiet of the mind and, in the same moment, the plain knowing that it is quiet. Look for these as one event rather than two steps.
4. If the sitting becomes dull or agitated, check whether you are treating one as a means to reach the other, and return to plain, open awareness.
5. After the sitting, notice how the calm and the clarity show up in an ordinary moment, such as reading a message or waiting for the kettle.
6. Chan sitting is best learned with a teacher and a community; if you can, bring what you notice to one.

Evidencia

The lamp simile and the statement that meditation and wisdom are of one essence are in the Meditation and Wisdom chapter of McRae’s translation. Any comparison with the shamatha and vipassana distinction in other lineages is the page’s own and was not drawn from a source reviewed here. (anecdotal)

The unity of meditation and wisdom is a doctrinal claim. It is not a report of how calm and insight are practised or measured in other traditions.

Fuentes

• McRae, John R. (trans.) (2000). The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Taishō vol. 48, no. 2008). BDK English Tripiṭaka. Moraga, CA: BDK America. Free PDF from the publisher.

Error común

Waiting to become calm before allowing yourself to look at anything. The sūtra calls holding one as prior to the other a teaching with two characteristics, and the error is the sequence, not the calm.