Buddha essentially brought meditation to all. He meticulously explained the process and philosophy to his confidant, Ananda, who apparently documented it.  What he taught about the functioning and disciplining of the mind is amazing; it’s one of the best practical accounts of meditation, ancient or modern… At the highest level, what Buddha did is to de-emphasize the Tat (that) part of Tat Twam Asi (That You Are), which simplified the theories and interpretations enormously.   Also, with Tat went all the rituals, because rituals are meditations modeled in the external world.

Basically, Buddha changed the course of the application of the theories of rishis before him, and detailed them out with significant emphasis on communication.  The evidence is clear from historic accounts that Buddha was extremely frustrated with a few gurus he tried; especially with the extreme austerity methods, which probably resulted from their own confusion with Tat-Twam correspondence.   Animal sacrifices in rituals is a great example of this problem, which exists even today, in some parts of the world. This confusion is also the most probable reason as to why the Vedas remain inaccessible to comprehension even today.  What we know are only a few bits and pieces.

What is not clear is whether Buddha came to the realization to decouple Tat-Twam by deduction or through intuition.  Either way, he took the Twam part and took it all the way to the end, nirvana.   This personal demonstration also helped remove the precondition of having a “guru” or an “expert” for personal progress.   He is probably the best psychoanalyst the human race has ever known.  Also the reason why modern schools rushed to explore Buddhist theories in a rational way; every university now offers some sort of a course on this topic.    With that, here are the few details that  we discussed in our sessions (quoted material from Dhammapada by Eknath Easwaran, followed by a few quick notes):

1. Buddha on why meditation:

Someone asked Buddha skeptically, “what have you gained through meditation?”

Buddha replied, “Nothing at all”

Then the skeptic asked: “Why meditate, what good is it?”

Then Buddha replied:  “Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death.  That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana”.

If you think about it, this is an amazing medical discovery!  Rishis always maintained – seeds of all maladies germinate in the thought-field first, and then they flow down into the physical body…. Mind manifested in the physical-plane is the body.

2. Buddha’s most profound observation:

[from Eknath Eswaran’s Dhammapada]

“Buddha, I think, would not have been surprised by the discoveries of this century which turned classical physics upside down.  The essential discontinuity in nature observed by quantum physicists follows naturally from Buddha’s experience of the discontinuity of thought (in twam).  So does the idea that time is discontinuous, which may find a place in external physics also (in Tat).  …When we examine the universe closely, it dissolves into discontinuity and a flux of fields of energy.  In Buddha (and rishis’) terms, these are fields in consciousness (chit).”

Notice the internal world-external world correspondence in discontinuities…

3. A story….

“In a Zen story, two monks approaching a rising river, see a young woman who has no means of getting across.  One of the monks carries her over and gently puts her down on the other side.  On the way to the monastery, the other monk is so obsessed by what his friend has done that he can talk of nothing else.  “A monk is not even supposed to touch a woman,” he keeps saying, “let alone carry her around in his arms.  What have you done?”.  Finally his friend puts an end to it. ” I left the woman on the bank, while you are still carrying her.”  So, it is the mental state created by experience that is all-important [the knowledge construct of karma yoga].  Without the emotional charge, the experience itself is insignificant.  Basically, we never really experience the world: what we experience is our own nervous system!”

We carry the world in in our nervous system!!  So the Tat-Twam connector is the nervous system!

We will look at meditation from a modern science standpoint next.

May we all be blessed with an expansive nervous system _/\_/\_/\_