Often, the reason why people come to be interested in practicing the dharma is, strangely enough, to run away from something.
well, i think.. it's ok to run away if the situation is too overwhelming. we all need fresh air to breathe...in that sense, sitting meditation seems to be a good antidote--at least, we give ourselves some more time to really and simply breathe...
However, people seem to get too complicated by messing up their hope and fear with this simple activity. They often feel as if they are doing some exotic, religious activities that will help purify them to be somewhat holy. Then, I would say with hope and fear, we are gone somewhere else rather than being fully with ourselves. At first, almost all of us have done it this way. We somehow fake to sit, fake to meditate, fake to live our life. Our head is full of concepts of who we think we are, what we think we do. We can't just simply live, simply breathe, simply sit, and simply learn. We live a completely fake life.
Then, at one point, while we are faking to sit and meditate as usual, things begin to get intense--all kinds of shit, emotion, pain, trauma, neurosis, whatsoever. But that's great...keep faking...keep spinning until your aggrandized illusion collapses on the spot. At that point, there's no faking anymore coz you are out of control totally. You have lost track of who you are and of course, you are totally shocked and somehow awake. You begin to realize how completely fucked up you are.
Then, when nothing is left, the first thing we do to bring ourselves back is to breathe... we begin to simply sit and breath without any expectation. There's nothing left to hope for or fear of anymore. There's nothing to lose, so we are able to relate to whatever we experience at that moment real nakedly.
That's when the real meditation begins...
