The Life and Understanding
of
Franklin Jones
Copyright 1971 By Franklin Jones
All rights reserved
Read 2004 version of Chapter 19
Chapter 19: Understanding as Meditation
Meditation doesn’t do anything for you. It has no purpose. When a person begins some form of seeking, he immediately turns to an effective, remedial technique that will get him quickly to his goal. Thus, when a man adapts to various kinds of religious and spiritual effort, he begins almost immediately to meditate in some way. The Christian and the devotee begin to pray and adapt to religious forms. The spiritual seeker begins to concentrate and internalize the mind. Others use drugs, study, critical thought, relaxation and poetry, pleasure, etc.
But real life, the way of understanding, is not another form of seeking. For the man of understanding, meditation is not adopted for the sake of something else. He does not pursue understanding or reality or any kind of experience through meditation. Real meditation is already a radical activity. It is understanding.
In the logic of Narcissus, the separative mentality, all things are seeking. But the man of understanding perceives the logic of reality and lives as it. Therefore, he is not concerned about meditation. His business is understanding, not ascent, vision, transformation, liberation, or any other goal. The way of understanding belongs to those who recognize the fruitlessness of seeking.
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