Remember that thoughts are only the product of the momentary confluence of a great number of factors. In themselves they do not exist. Thus, the moment they arise, recognize that their nature is emptiness. They will immediately lose their power to produce other thoughts, and the chain of illusion will be broken. Recognize the emptiness of thoughts and let them relax into the natural clarity of the transparent and unaltered mind.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, quoted by Mathieu Ricard in The Art of Meditation

In my last post I wrote of the conscious state of illumination (often referred to by Catholic writers as “contemplation” or “infused contemplation” – a different usage to “contemplative practice” as I employ the phrase here) is a gift. It cannot be achieved. It seems to me that intent needs simply to disappear in the practice of contemplation. How this is to be achieved is indeed a paradox: the falling away of purposive action isn’t an achievement at all. An achievement would be the result of purposive action. But nevertheless the absence of intent, replaced with a simple dwelling in the presence of what is, now, is the only sure way I know to becoming vulnerable and available to illumination, to open objectless awareness.

The obstacle, of course, is the incessant passage of thoughts through the mind – a stream which of course we cannot halt, since they are in this context no more than noise thrown off by the machinery of the conscious mind. But mere recognition will loosen their grip on our attention; and as Dilgo Khyentse points out, they will fall away of themselves from the awakening mind.

Simplicity, poverty of intent, remains at the heart of practice for me. The beauty, it seems to me, of practices such as hesychasm (contemplative practice based on the Jesus Prayer) and the Nembutsu is their extreme simplicity, coupled with their explicit renunciation of any sense that it is the practitioner’s hard work that is at stake in the process of awakening. But really, faithfully and regularly sitting still – whether formally, as in shikantaza, or just resting for a moment on the way – is all that is needed in the end.