Ritual Minima: An Appropriate Exit for Meditation

Now what would be an appropriate category of vipaka to exit meditation th<i|esi>s morning? Perhaps the vipaka from the kamma of intending to travel across, through and near people’s quiet abodes.

Maybe the aircraft flying overhead would be some good vipaka to signal the exit of meditation.

Maybe the vipaka of kamma intending to compete over the supply of precious nourishing nectar as hummingbirds fighting over the bee balm. Maybe this would be an appropriate exit for meditation.

And finally, maybe the vipaka of kamma intending to move and hide away from beings as insects hiding away and burrowing. Maybe this would be an appropriate exit for meditation.

Seeing cause, condition, and result, this is a way in which a noble practitioner begins and ends meditation seeing the suffering and causes, conditions, and results, establishing the cessation of these, and arriving at the path of its extinguishment.

Seeing dependent origination directly.

In surveying the realm for a suitable meditation marker, it is seen, “this meditation marker is suitable, it is noble, it is leading to the cessation of suffering, for the benefit of limitless beings,” and the thought occurred, “how does one established rightly know the most suitable, the most beneficial, given the halting and trolly problem one knows?”

And what then is the vipaka shared amongst limitless beings, what is the result of limitless kamma arriving in great frequency, duration, amplitude, and the least latency? What is the appropriate exit common to limitless beings?

And the mind’s eye, turned toward breathing, the undulation of breath, in and out, moving, changing, as the great sea of samsara. Just as intent seeks change, the fruits are as breath in and out.

And just then an aircraft passed overhead, recollected amongst the span of breathing out long, changing to breathing in short.

The fruit of traveling noisily near people’s quiet abodes.

Just, like, this.

And in this, the noble practitioner is growing insight along with tranquility. For some tranquility may precede insight, for some insight may precede tranquility, just as actualism in science. Yet these precedings may change order, may shift and stretch, and contract, just as geological processes of earth. This is the course of samsara.

To say that samsara is mind is valid, to say that samsara is not mind is valid, to say that samsara is both mind and not mind is valid, to say that samsara is neither mind nor not mind is valid. Why is this so? Insight will share, because it is the very tetralemma that is samsara, it is the changing order of perspectives, tossed about on the raging sea. The “is”, the “not is”, the “and”, the “neither” as processes are exactly samsara. Process is exactly samsara, it is beyond “is”, beyond limitless equality.

Regardless of heap, the heaps are subject to suffering and cessation.

And here is the “and” now ceased.

For the benefit of limitless beings.