"Meditate like a lion, not like a dog."
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche was a buddhist Lama and one of the greatest spiritual practitioners of the 20th century. (You can see his life story in the documentary "Brilliant Moon"). He would often remind his students of the old buddhist adage to "meditate like a lion, not like a dog". This sounds very simple, but in practice, it can take a lifetime to master.
If you have personal planets in Aries, or Aries Rising, you may find meditation difficult, or may not even feel drawn to meditate at all, because sitting 'doing nothing' in meditation may be practically unbearable for you! Why would you even want to?
That's where we need to look at the higher Soul Purpose of Aries, and the higher purpose of meditation. The higher Soul Purpose of Aries is to inspire others with Divine Ideas. This means having crystal clear intuition so that Divine ideas can flow through you. Anyone with personal planets in Aries will be familiar with the tendency towards impulsiveness. It's almost as if the action cannot be differentiated from the impulse and so it 'just happens'. I have Mars in Aries and am very familiar with the experience of acting on something without giving it much thought only to regret it later. But often an impulse turns out to be exactly the right thing, where we can benefit from an opportunity that we may have missed if we didn't act promptly. The key lies in knowing how to tell the difference, and that is where the real purpose of meditation comes into the picture.
People meditate for many different reasons, enjoying benefits such as relaxation, a quiet mind, greater focus and clarity of mind, but for spiritual practitioners, the real purpose of meditation is to awaken. This means becoming familiar with our own mind, so that we can tell the difference between our own true nature, and that which is our conditioning, or learned behavior.
At the personality level, Aries is ruled by Mars, the planet of action. This tells us that in the first stages of the path of Aries our lessons are about our actions, as we learn about how we flow our energy into the world, and what the implications are for ourselves and others, in how we flow our energy (in fact many people with personal planets in Aries make great energy workers due to their ability to choose how and where they flow energy).
At Soul level the ruler of Aries is Mercury. This may surprise some people, but this tells us that as we progress in the process of personality-soul fusion, our lessons become more about the mind. For Aries this means to tame the mind and stop chasing after sticks!
The practice of meditation serves to cultivate stability and equanimity in the mind, so that we can become increasingly familiar with our own real nature, rather than the conditioned thoughts and concepts that are continuously floating through. The analogy that is often used, is that our mind is like the sky, and all the content of our mind is like the clouds that pass. Take a moment and notice what you are thinking.
Now take a moment and notice the part of your mind, that knows you are thinking. That is what this analogy means. You are not the thoughts, but rather your real nature is the awareness itself, that is aware of those thoughts. Your awareness is constantly there, like the sky. Thoughts may come and go. Pleasant thoughts, unpleasant thoughts, you remain aware of all of them. That awareness is you.
For most of us, we become identified with the content of our minds. We think familiar thoughts every day. We act on those thoughts, and think they are who we are. In other words we identify with our thinking mind. This is the illusion that keeps us spiritually asleep. To awaken means to 'wake up' and realize our real nature. When we have glimpses of awareness, and realize we are not our thoughts, we are starting to awaken. Then we need a daily practice to deepen that realization.
When Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche instructed his students to meditate like a lion, he was giving a profound instruction in mind training. If you throw a stick at a dog, it will chase after it. It loses sight of you, and goes after the stick. This is what we do on a daily basis in our minds. We experience a thought and then we chase after it. Apparently (I don't suggest trying this at home), if you throw a stick at a lion, it will ignore the stick and come after you. This refers to the ability to stop chasing after thoughts, and keep your attention on the place where those thoughts originate in the first place: your awareness.
When we can rest fully in this awareness, without identifying with thoughts as they arise, we are said to have developed stability. Using this stability to rest in the awareness of our own true nature is known as equanimity. It is the true inner peace that is never disturbed by external events.
Watching thoughts arise in awareness, and return to awareness, is a lifelong practice that eventually leads to spiritual awakening and enlightenment. When you have cultivated this skill to some degree, you will be able to determine which thoughts are worthy of your attention, in that they have arisen from a higher source, and which are worth letting go because they are just products of your own egoic mind.
When we have cultivated the mind that can truly distinguish the real from the unreal, then we will truly be on the path to Aries highest Soul Purpose of inspiring others with Divine Ideas. Then we may truly understand the deeper meaning of the Soul Keynote for Aries:
"I come forth and from the plane of mind, I rule."
