16/10/2026
Meditation is just the immediate awareness of our life, our mind, our phenomenological existence. As such, itâs not something we can do â itâs just the awakening of pure perception. Nonetheless, there are many practices â things that we can do â that are called meditation and that are useful. These useful practices are outer meditation practices as opposed to the inner practice of pure perception. Outer practices include the inner smile, the inner breath, guru yoga, the light body practices of Kabbalah, vipassana, zazen, mantra⌠in fact everything that is not pure perception.
The outer practices have existed for millennia because they are very useful preparatory exercises for inner practice. The purpose of outer practices is to calm and still the mind to make it easier to notice our immediate existence. In effect, they prepare the way for inner practice.
Our minds are very tricky and we can benefit greatly from doing these outer practices. They help to calm the conscious mind when we are disturbed by our thoughts and we feel like our mind is driving us crazy and they can also help us to deal with subconscious attitudes and holding patterns of our mind. When we practice simple outer practices for a while and have developed the real patience of sitting still â then mindfulness is an automatic phenomenon that happens to us. This is just because when we are really effortlessly still, we become aware enough to begin to notice how we are. This is the inner practice. This is not because we move on to what we consider is a deeper practice when we think we have reached a goal, but rather because we cannot avoid beginning to notice how we are in this immediate moment. The simplicity of outer practices is elegance itself. Sit, breathe, feelâŚand the rest will take care of itself.
