To live entirely as a dropout requires a love of wisdom that is unconditional

The Wild Swans, by Anton Lomaev

To live as an outskirter, as someone who totally has dropped out, requires a love of wisdom that is unconditional. This is meditation as an art of life.

Meditation in that sense is not a trick of the mind confronting itself with an insoluble problem and so forcing itself to be quiet. A stunned mind obviously has become insensitive, not responsive, and so incapable of seeing anything new. And the new is not the opposite of the old.

Meditation is the uncovering of this whole process of becoming and being—the negation of becoming in order to be. All this can be seen by a meditative mind at a glance, and this glance doesn’t involve time at all. Seeing truth is not a matter of time; either you see or you don’t see. The incapacity to see cannot become capable of seeing.

So negation is the movement of meditation, and there is no way, no path, no system that can lead a chattering, shallow mind to the heights of bliss. The seeing of this instantly is the truth that frees the shallow mind from itself.

And humility is always at the beginning—but there is no beginning and no end. And this is the bliss beyond measure.