Oakville Zen Meditation
Demystifying Awakening
In fact, it is simply waking up away from our mind-made fictional worlds.
The opposite of being Awakened is what Zen calls humans :“ Day sleep walkers, trapped in their own fictional mind-made worlds. Therefore, when being out of our daydreaming worlds, awakening will appear in all of us all the time.
Again,in Zen practice, awakening (often called Satori or Kensho) isn't about gaining a new superpower or reaching a mystical destination. Instead, it is described as waking up to things/ events / people as they actually are concretely, rather than how we think about them.
In simple terms, Awakening's core attributes include the following:
Most of our thinking is spent travelling in zillions of fictional "past / future" spacetimes regretting the past or being anxious of the future - . Awakening is the shift into this concrete present, the only existing time where you are alive. It is a profound discovery to discover that this exact moment, just as it is, is complete and enough whatever its content.
Usually, we see the world through a thick fog of illusions made of opinions, judgments, labels, and plenty of negative feelings (e.g., "This rain is annoying," or "I am a failure" or “ If I get this I will be happier). Awakening is the moment when our foggy illusions are cleared up. You see the rain simply as it is and yourself simply as a living being, without the heavy, and useless baggage of labelling, and judgment.Your mind becomes a mirror reflecting things as they are. So: use your mind only when you need it rather than your mind using you all the time.
We often feel like a small "I" trapped inside a body, separate from everything else. Awakening is the intuitive realization that the boundary between "you" and "the rest of the world" is an artificial conceptual product. It’s like a wave suddenly realizing it isn't just a wave—it’s the entire ocean.In other words: the self does not exist as an independent, separate , self-sustained entity. This is why It is called the “No-self”.
b- That we do not control anything including our own mind, nor our own body.
c- That everything is transient, nothing lasts.
d- That our mind is a great tool but also our worst enemy.
e- That the majority of our + and - feelings are generated when we are in the past, and future.
f- That thoughts/feelings do not necessary represent truth or concrete reality.
A famousZen Saying: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."
The activities of your life and your mental ones don't necessarily change, but the way you experience them does. The burden of the "self" lightens, leaving you with a sense of clarity, ease, less stress, and serenity.
