Meditation in China

Meditation in Chán isn’t about getting to a state of Nirvāṇa–tranquility. That, for Chán, is to block the ongoing transformation of Dào, to separate yourself from it. Instead, meditation in Chán is about reintegrating consciousness with Dao, with the ongoing unfurling of the cosmos. If you watch, you see thoughts appearing out of nothing, evolving, and returning to nothing, exactly like the ten thousand things. So consciousness is in fact part of the same tissue as the empirical world, it is not separate from it.

But Chán takes it further. As I said, Chán wants us to live our everyday lives at the origin, to act as that source. This functions in meditation, but it’s more clearly present in Gōng-Àn (Koan) practice. The point of Gōng-Àn practice in early Chán is learning to act as the cosmos unfurling from the source. The student is given puzzles or questions and needs to learn how to respond, not through abstract thinking and analysis but out of no-mind, out of empty-mind, acting directly from that source. So Gōng-Àn practice is about returning consciousness to inhabit, to dwell as part of that unfurling of the cosmos, or the ongoing process of Dào.

Returning to meditation: when thoughts completely stop and you’re dwelling as that generative emptiness, that generative source, then you can act as cosmos. Because there you are at the source, and whatever happens comes right out of that source. That’s when meditation transforms into a distinctively Chán form, and that’s where Gōng-Àn practice can happen.