Buddhism Path: Right AspirationGuru Sergey Bugaev | Question Three
Translated by Anrew Turivnuj
Question: But what if the outer circumstances can still knock a practitioner out of his inner state? How one can avoid it?
When a man moves deeper in the inner state, then even on the level of meditation, nothing outer can affect him any more. And then he won’t feel any dependence on whether a man, who stands in front of him is positive or negative person, whether he would talk to this man or not, whether he would discuss some issue with this man or not. It won’t matter for such man whether he would do one physical job or another; whether he would observe one thoughts or another; whether he would observe the desires that look good in the eyes of society or the desires that don’t look good. Nothing of these things will matter for the man because he will be firmly established in this state. So, he’ll be able to go even deeper in this state, accelerating the process, while going on living any outer life. And on this stage, the conflict with the outer activity will vanish and the practice of concentration will go on further without being interrupted by any circumstances. Until this moment, the practice of concentration is very fragile and a lot of outer circumstances can interfere with it and destroy it, and it can be even razed to the ground. And in this case a man has to start afresh. But at the above mentioned stage no circumstances can interfere and the man will be able to move deeper and deeper into the state of meditation and find there quite a new knowledge.
The real practice starts only from this zero-point; they call it secret or esoteric practices. These practices start only when the man gets deeper into the state of meditation. All what had been before this point was still the outer practice. As a matter of fact, the level of concentration is still the outer practice because on this primary level the man is guided by the outer acts, some mental motivation and mental sets. All these things weight upon him in significant degree and a lot of people can interfere and knock him out of the practice. But when the man gets deeper into the state of meditation, nobody’s actions can interfere with him. It happens because the state of meditation itself shows the Path and the man already stands firmly on certain way and sees which way he should go further. Although there is still an unknown territory lays ahead because the state of meditation doesn’t mean the end of the practice. The man has only seen clearly the way that he should go forward but ahead is still a very long way to go and a lot of different obstacles.
One of the main obstacles here is that the people stop practicing concentration at this moment. One can’t break the concentration in any circumstances, even if he achieved the state of meditation or some other state, higher or lower – it doesn’t matter. If the man stopped the practice of concentration then, sooner or later, he’ll shift his attention to something outer. And the outer will capture his energy then, and the man will fall and deflate like a balloon. He’ll lose everything irrespectively of how much energy he accumulated and he’ll have to start from the level of the concentration again. Sure, he’ll have some advantages: he has already had some experience; he knows what can lead him to the mistakes and what can definitely lead him to the needed results. Nevertheless, he’ll have to go through the whole way from the very beginning again. He’ll have to go through all the stages consistently and continue his way from the point he fell.
Usually everybody make such mistake when they achieve the state of meditation and stay there without making any efforts and without practicing the concentration. It’s just the result of the previous job when certain amount of energy was accumulated. But if the man doesn’t practice concentration then he loses the control over his attention. Actually, you can watch TV or be involved in any outer activity and keep your state. If your attention is focused on the inner object, the energy doesn’t spend, it accumulates, and it doesn’t matter whether this job physical or mental. So it’ll be the practice in a daily life and it’ll be the beginning. Then, even if the man feels tired physically or mentally, it can be a tiredness of any sort, he doesn’t spend the energy, he accumulates it because all the energy goes to the inner objects and it stays there, and all this flow of energy keeps on accumulating inside. But it takes only to shift the attention towards the outer and everything that the man aspired to, will be lost at once.
The right aspiration helps to maintain and continue the practice of concentration in any conditions. It’s the guarantee that the practice will continue in any outer circumstances and any mental sets. Even if there is a wrong mental set and the man mentally comprehends some idea incorrectly, (it doesn’t matter why) but he has the right aspiration, he’ll move in the right direction anyway. Many people describe such kind of thing this way, “Well, you see this is usual things now, I’ve read about it in some book but inside I feel that it isn’t quite so” or “My conscience tells me that it can’t be so.” It means that these people feel that this mental idea, even if they agree with it, doesn’t match their inner aspiration anyway. And if the inner aspiration stays unchanged then the mental idea which the man has in his head won’t be dictating how he should act but the aspiration will. So the right aspiration is of great magnitude.
As soon as the people achieve the state of meditation and stop practicing concentration, they fall very quickly. And why is it so? It happens because they form certain skill in concentration; they become accustomed to concentrating their attention on any object, on whatever they do. And if the practitioner turns his attention to some outer object at some moment (it can be a thought, a desire), he’ll make it with more concentration than other people do. It means that he puts more energy into his action than an average person. This is why after the classes of concentration people throw out more energy through outer activity: they laugh more and they are more excited. And because of it, they fall more quickly than the average person would.
Really, the practice is a one way ticket travel. A man who starts practicing inevitably moves to the result, otherwise, there is only one way out for him – stay an average person like everybody. That’s why the practice can’t go halfway, a man can’t practice sometimes and sometimes don’t. Some people say, “I won’t practice concentration. But at any moment if only I wish, I’ll achieve the state of meditation at once.” But this is very far from the practice. Such people won’t reach the real heights of the spiritual practice because they don’t have consistent advancement along the way. Even if they make some effort and suddenly achieve some state, it’ll be lost very quickly and they will never be able to go deeper into this state. They will reach some level but because of their mental set, which motivates them, they deny the possibility to reach the real heights at once. Such people achieve certain standard that is higher than the standard of average people but it doesn’t make any sense. They’ll never achieve the real heights because they limit themselves by their set “I want – I don’t want”. They could have some notion about the practice and the states. They can confidently judge something, tell that they have some experience and nevertheless they are very far from the experience of the real heights of the practice. That’s why it can be said that these people have nothing to do with the real spiritual practice. But the people, who have the right aspiration and practice very slowly and diligently, and achieve small results but regularly, have more correct understanding of the spiritual practice. And they also have deeper and more valuable experience than those genii who achieve some states in a second and then everything terminates.
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