Lao Tzu on two fundamental types of meditation. May 1, 1988

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, gives a detailed explanation of Lao Tzu’s notion that there are two basic types of meditation one should practice. One of emptiness only, and one of concentration.Sitting with pure, empty mind:The first he described as meditating without desire. Chuang-Tzu called it “just sitting and forgetting” meditation. During this practice, we empty the mind of all impediments and sit with only pure mind. Easier said than done. Most of us sit, and only once in a while do e actually meditate. Most of us don’t want to really sit because we don’t want to give up anything.To sit this way, just empty, it does not mean to blank out, or be unconscious. Just be quiet, still, every day. In the Pure Mind. When the mind is empty, Lao Tzu says it is like still water. It can then reflect. Without thoughts, which are activity, disturbances in the water. The clearness of the mind already exists.It is this we often call the mirror mind, that mind which is clear, empty, and able to reflect. Then we can become that mirror.2. Using the Pure Mind to concentrate on something—a word, a sound, a question.Lao Tzu suggests also using a second method where we focus, and develop our concentration.He says we should use both methods of meditation. Learn to find the Pure Mind. And use it to focus.Plotinus, a Neo-platonist, had similar thinking to Lao Tzu in 250 A.D.“The perfect and unchangeable life of the Divine Spirit overflows in an incessant stream of creative activity, which spends itself only when it has reached the lowest confines of being, so that every possible manifestation of Divine energy, every hue of the Divine radiance, every variety in degree as well as in kind, is realized somewhere and somehow. And by the side of this outward flow of creative energy there is another current which carries all the creatures back toward the source of their being. It is this centripetal movement that directs the active life of all creatures endowed with Soul. They were created and sent into the world that they might be moulded a little nearer to the Divine image by yearning for the home which they have left. This aspiration, which slumbers even in unconscious beings, is the mainspring of the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic life of mankind.Lola explains that many look to our outward life to find fulfillment. In creating, achieving, jobs, creating families. But ultimately, fulfillment, she says, is found within.But life should not be just one or the other. We should find fulfillment in both the outer and the inner.How does an oyster know to open itself in order to eat? It doesn’t think. What about the oyster knows to do that?When we look in the eyes of a cat or dog, or bird, we can, if we know how to look, see that divine miracle within them too. We should be in awe of life. But we’re usually not. Our pure intelligence is clouded by our thoughts.As Jesus said, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man. The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”Allow your intelligence to become wisdom.May 1, 1988