I understand mindfulness as a purposeful practice wherein one attempts to remain present and aware of everything that's happening. It includes looking and listening both inside (thoughts, words, images) and outside (the physical world of sights and sounds, etc) without attaching to anything perceived. It is a practice that is pursued by someone who is doing something in order to get something.
All practices are like this, and it illustrates the problem with all practices--the idea that there is someone who needs to do something in order to get something. The practice becomes self-referential, and the individual periodically "checks" to see if progress is being made. A common thought is, "I'm becoming calmer and clearer which proves that I am making progress by pursuing this practice." It is not realized that "checking back" is a habit that reinforces the sense of selfhood at the center of everything that is the very thing needing to be transcended.
I understand dropping knowledge as the purposeful letting go of intellectual knowledge in favor of body knowledge and direct knowing. It is the purposeful effort to look at the world without making distinctions. It is the practicing of non-conceptual awareness rather than conceptual awareness.
Every adult who sets out to discover the truth begins with a felt sense of selfhood and a lot of ideas about who they are. This is a powerful and unavoidable illusion, and in order to penetrate the illusion of selfhood different traditions use different methodologies. The Zen method goes something like this:
1. Sit down and shut up
2. Count breaths until there is enough mental space to watch the breathing process without counting
3. Follow the breath or watch the breath until there is enough mental space and silence to practice zazen
4. Practice zazen (pure awareness without focus or content)
5. Zazen will lead to deep states of samadhi, which is a type of unity consciousness called "the dropping off of body and mind"
6. Deep states of samadhi will lead to mind unification and various realizations, insights, and understandings. It will eventually lead to the collapse of selfhood.
Other traditions point to the same sort of process and emphasize practices such as mindfulness, neti neti, questioning, self inquiry, etc.
After selfhood collapses, it becomes obvious that the whole practicing process was pursued under the illusion that there was someone practicing to get somewhere, and it is seen that there is nowhere to get. Who we are is always here and now and unimaginable. It becomes obvious that there is never anything separate from "what is," and after these realizations, there is only the freedom of pure being and non-abidance.
It then no longer matters what the body/mind does. Everything is seen as the perfect functioning of the totality of all being. I am that I am, eternal, whole, complete, and manifesting just like this (at this point the body gets up, dances a little jig, smiles broadly, and sits back down.) Ha ha.
From this body/mind's perspective both mindfulness and dropping knowledge are useful tools for finding the truth, but things that can be dropped after the truth is found. Are they the same? Not exactly. Mindfulness makes no attempt to drop knowledge; it dispassionately watches all phenomena, including thoughts. Dropping knowledege seems to me like a stronger effort to stop thoughts and become empty of knowing (but that may just be my interpretation of the words).
The Buddha, in reference to meditation and other practices, said that after crossing a lake and getting to the far shore, the boat can be left behind.
After crossing the lake, the boat is seen as empty, and even the lake fades away as part of an old dream. Beyond, only the empty, sacred, numinous, ineffable, eternal world of limitless being.
All practices are like this, and it illustrates the problem with all practices--the idea that there is someone who needs to do something in order to get something. The practice becomes self-referential, and the individual periodically "checks" to see if progress is being made. A common thought is, "I'm becoming calmer and clearer which proves that I am making progress by pursuing this practice." It is not realized that "checking back" is a habit that reinforces the sense of selfhood at the center of everything that is the very thing needing to be transcended.
I understand dropping knowledge as the purposeful letting go of intellectual knowledge in favor of body knowledge and direct knowing. It is the purposeful effort to look at the world without making distinctions. It is the practicing of non-conceptual awareness rather than conceptual awareness.
Every adult who sets out to discover the truth begins with a felt sense of selfhood and a lot of ideas about who they are. This is a powerful and unavoidable illusion, and in order to penetrate the illusion of selfhood different traditions use different methodologies. The Zen method goes something like this:
1. Sit down and shut up
2. Count breaths until there is enough mental space to watch the breathing process without counting
3. Follow the breath or watch the breath until there is enough mental space and silence to practice zazen
4. Practice zazen (pure awareness without focus or content)
5. Zazen will lead to deep states of samadhi, which is a type of unity consciousness called "the dropping off of body and mind"
6. Deep states of samadhi will lead to mind unification and various realizations, insights, and understandings. It will eventually lead to the collapse of selfhood.
Other traditions point to the same sort of process and emphasize practices such as mindfulness, neti neti, questioning, self inquiry, etc.
After selfhood collapses, it becomes obvious that the whole practicing process was pursued under the illusion that there was someone practicing to get somewhere, and it is seen that there is nowhere to get. Who we are is always here and now and unimaginable. It becomes obvious that there is never anything separate from "what is," and after these realizations, there is only the freedom of pure being and non-abidance.
It then no longer matters what the body/mind does. Everything is seen as the perfect functioning of the totality of all being. I am that I am, eternal, whole, complete, and manifesting just like this (at this point the body gets up, dances a little jig, smiles broadly, and sits back down.) Ha ha.
From this body/mind's perspective both mindfulness and dropping knowledge are useful tools for finding the truth, but things that can be dropped after the truth is found. Are they the same? Not exactly. Mindfulness makes no attempt to drop knowledge; it dispassionately watches all phenomena, including thoughts. Dropping knowledege seems to me like a stronger effort to stop thoughts and become empty of knowing (but that may just be my interpretation of the words).
The Buddha, in reference to meditation and other practices, said that after crossing a lake and getting to the far shore, the boat can be left behind.
After crossing the lake, the boat is seen as empty, and even the lake fades away as part of an old dream. Beyond, only the empty, sacred, numinous, ineffable, eternal world of limitless being.
