Read a quote somewhere from the book “Cultivating the Empty Field” - about the Chinese Zen (Chan) Master Hongzhi:
“Silent illumination, however, involves withdrawal from exclusive focus on a particular sensory or mental object to allow intent apprehension of all phenomena as a unified totality.”
Zhengjue; Cheng-chüeh. Cultivating the Empty Field (Tuttle Library Of Enlightenment) (p. 1). Tuttle Publishing. Kindle Edition.
I’ve been practicing “choiceless awareness” - not using a specific object of meditation, but letting whatever comes into consciousness as the object, then moving on the the next - but this seems to be a lot opener and freer. Allowing the awareness to remain very wide and open to the totality of what’s happening.
Practicing formal meditation this way allowed me to perceive a much wider range of perceptions, and often, a much faster transition from one perception to another. Practicing this awareness in active life allowed the same kind of openness and quickness.
Hongzhi often mentions this open awareness as light: “silent illumination”, “vast, luminous Buddha field”, “the field of vast brightness”. Practicing formally one day, I took a sip of my usual morning tea, in the usual tall, cream-colored cup. Awareness opened from this practice, I saw the cup as very illuminated, along with its surroundings!
I plan to continue this very free-form practice and experience this illumination more and more!!
Photo by Kyle Wong