Editor's Introduction

Each of our lives is a kind of spiritual laboratory in which we test the teachings we encounter in the fire of our own experience. Ultimately, what matters are not the truths other people tell us or the practices that we are able to mimic, but the spiritual discoveries we make through personal investigation.

When I first spoke with Adyashanti (whose name literally means 'primordial peace'), I knew I was speaking with a spiritual teacher who had made some very real and personal discoveries. Although he claimed to have 'woken up out of Zen,' it was his longtime Zen teacher, Arvis Justi, who encouraged him to begin teaching in 1996 at the age of thirty-four. Hearing that people often experienced breakthrough insights in his presence, I knew I wanted to add his input into the spiritual laboratory of my life.

So, in November 2004, I attended a five-day retreat with Adyashanti. During this retreat, Adyashanti gave talks during which retreatants had the opportunity to converse with him publicly about their innermost questions and concerns. We also spent four to five hours each day in silent sitting. During this time, we were to engage in what Adya calls True Meditation. At the retreat, the basic instruction we received to orient ourselves during these silent sittings was two words: No manipulation.

As someone who has spent more than twenty years attending various kinds of meditation retreats and experimenting with dozens of different techniques and approaches, I felt a bit baffled. 'No manipulation? That's it?' Could I slouch? What about my discursive mind? Was this really a form of meditation, or was Adya simply giving us permission to space out? What is 'True Meditation,' anyway?

In addition to receiving the instruction 'No manipulation,' there was a one-page handout we could read and contemplate. 'Thank God,' I thought. 'Everyone else here may be familiar with Adya and this approach, but I need more information.' Maybe the handout would help. Here's what it said:

True Meditation

True Meditation has no direction, goals, or method. All methods aim at achieving a certain state of mind. All states are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascination with states leads only to bondage and dependency. True Meditation is abidance as primordial consciousness.

True Meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not fixated on objects of perception. When you first start to meditate, you notice that awareness is always focused on some object: on thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, memories, sounds, etc. This is because the mind is conditioned to focus and contract upon objects. Then the mind compulsively interprets what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.

In True Meditation all objects are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to manipulate or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness: not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness (consciousness) is the source in which all objects arise and subside. As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind's compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

Silence and stillness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the non-state in which all states arise and subside. Silence, stillness, and awareness are not states and can never be perceived in their totality as objects. Silence is itself the eternal witness without form or attributes. As you rest more profoundly as the witness, all objects take on their natural functionality, and awareness becomes free of the mind's compulsive contractions and identifications, and returns to its natural non-state of Presence.

The simple yet profound question, 'Who Am I?,' can then reveal one's self not to be the endless tyranny of the ego-personality, but objectless Freedom of Being-Primordial Consciousness in which all states and all objects come and go as manifestations of the Eternal Unborn Self that YOU ARE.

Folding up this handout and sticking it in the pocket of my jeans, I spent the five-day retreat alternately practicing the meditation techniques I was familiar with and simply relaxing, listening, and being without manipulation. But at the end of the retreat, I had to admit I had far more questions than answers. What is the role of technique in meditation? Does this approach work for meditators of all levels, or only for advanced practitioners who have already spent years familiarizing themselves with quieting the mind? What about posture and the physical and emotional pain that can often arise during periods of meditation?

Filled with questions, I asked Adyashanti if he would be willing to work with Sounds True to create a teaching program on True Meditation. He agreed, and this book and CD combination is the result. I handed Adya a list of questions and he responded by giving two dharma talks on the topic of True Meditation: one talk on 'Allowing Everything To Be As It Is' and a second talk on 'Meditative Self-Inquiry.' He also recorded two guided meditations (on the enclosed CD) so that listeners can explore these teachings in their own introspective way.

According to Adyashanti, spiritual discoveries are self-authenticating. What matters most is not what others affirm but what you realize in your own being. It is my hope that this book and CD offering on True Meditation will further your own process of genuine discovery, for the benefit of all beings.

Tami Simon
Publisher, Sounds True
May 2006, Boulder, Colorado