Sitting Meditation: The Silence Where Afflictions Cease

During Chan practice, meditating on primordial awareness engenders a sense of stability. This is because primordial awareness is not something newly acquired, but rather what has been inherently within each of us. Yet, desire and conceptual knowledge have obscured such awareness, veiling its original face and preventing us from realizing its true nature. What we call “the original state” is this primordial awareness—it is not a fabrication, nor is it a miraculous occurrence; awareness simply is our original state of mind. 

“Awareness” means clarity, and “nature” means emptiness, being devoid of any inherent existence. Through consistent Chan practice, the mind gradually settles into tranquility and peacefulness. The proliferations of conceptions and doubts concerning phenomena eventually dissolve. Thus, as we remain stably grounded in the original face of awareness, all conceptions and doubts fade away. Such “cessation” does not mean a state of nothingness, as though everything has disappeared; rather, it signifies that conflicts between people, between people and events, or between people and matters cease to arise. Everything becomes serene and peaceful, pervaded by loving-kindness and harmony. 

Therefore, Chan practice enables us to return to our original face. The essence of this original face does not lie in the physical body, but in awareness itself. When the body perishes, where does awareness go? The body decays, but awareness does not. Our original face is unarising and unceasing, notionless and beyond phenomenal appearance; our awareness itself is devoid of phenomenal characteristics.

Our karmic memory serves as the basis for samsara. All memories constitute the foundation of the cycle of birth and death. When we contemplate awareness, this memory drive of karma gradually dissolves—both wholesome and unwholesome imprints alike. “Dissolving” here means that they no longer accumulate as the karmic seeds of further samsaric continuity. Thus, once we have uncovered and clearly realized this awareness, which remains immutable and unchanging, we can abide within it. There is then nothing further to fabricate.

We are not creating anything new but merely uncovering what has always been so. We uncover that our original face has always been thus. Knowing how to return to this state of mind, we return to the origin and find inner stability. The reason for this stability is that the nature of awareness is of emptiness—it does not depend on possessing or amassing anything. As our clarity deepens, our stability strengthens, and our mind becomes ever more luminous, we eventually reach a state of mindfulness free from the afflictions of birth and death. At that point, we have truly returned to our original face, and sorrow and affliction no longer arise.