Head Games vs Direct Engagement

“study without practice is like a ladle in a pot of soup. The ladle is in the pot of soup every day, but it does not know the taste of the soup.” Ajahn Chah

Shankman R. The experience of Samadhi. An in-depth exploration of Buddhist meditation. Shambhala, Boston, 2009.

Ordinary consciousness is one long game of pretending - all that we perceive is automatically edited & reconfigured to conform to our current sociatal & personal comfort zone. This particularly applies to the wisdom traditions, which were originally meant to be radically transformative. But radical transformation is way out of our personal & sociatal comfort zones, so we process even wisdom traditions' teachings until they're "lite" and "comfy". Studying mindfulness - be it the secular (MBSR) or original Buddhist version - can easily become just another head game. Rather than changing how we actually live, information about mindfulness can just be added to our collection of intellectual possessions, and nothing changes.

Practice is the means by which we directly experience or taste the full flavour - the transformative power - of a wisdom tradition. By letting words / concepts / ideas be, letting them arise & dissipate, we can engage reality as it is - unfiltered, unprocessed, undenatured. Dining starts after we put down the menue.