The Goal of the Meditation Practice
Excerpt from The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young:
Even great musicians still play scales, but we don't call scales the puprose of music. And even very experienced meditators still do formal sitting practices, but formal sitting practice is not the goal of meditation. The concert, the performance is the goal of music. And in the same way, how one lives one's life is the goal of the meditation practice.
The ultimate thing that meditation can do for the individual is show them how their happiness does not need to be dependent on conditions.
When does a person have their happiness not dependent on a condition? Whenever they are having a complete experience. Whenever you have a complete experience of something, the entire universe is present in that experience. Your individual identity is merged with—on one hand, the entire universe, and on the other hand, with the source of the universe.
Any ordinary exprience like washing the dishes, when it is experienced completely, becomes absolutely extraordinary. The state that is beyond conditions is just whatever is happening, but experienced completely. The ultimate stage in the sequence of meditation deepenings comes when one starts to have, during the day, moments of complete experience.
Inside a complete experience, time, space, self, and world—all of creation and the source of creation—are all contained.