*Tricycle's Daily Dharma*
Experiencing the Ground of Consciousness
People often confuse meditation with prayer, devotion, or vision. They
are not the same. Meditation as a practice does not address itself to a
deity or present itself as an opportunity for revelation. This is not to
say that people who are meditating do not occasionally think they have
received a revelation or experienced visions. They do. But to those for
whom meditation is their central practice, a vision or a revelation is
seen as just another phenomenon of consciousness and as such is not to
be taken as exceptional.
The meditator simply experiences the ground of consciousness, and in
doing so avoids excluding or excessively elevating any thought or
feeling. To do this one must release all sense of the "I" as
experiencer, even the "I" that might think it is privileged to
communicate with the divine.
--Gary Snyder, /Tricycle: The Buddhist Review,/ Vol.I, #1
