Meditation Blog : Archives : Martin Lefevre on Meditation (Redux)

Martin Lefevre on Meditation (Redux)

I recently discovered Martin LeFevre on the New Zealand web site Scoop. Lefevre writes regular columns on meditation (and politics,) and makes a point of differentiating technique-based meditation from simple, unconstructed awareness. His views complement those of Toni Packer and J. Krishnamurti, as discussed in the last two entries.

The biographical note below his Scoop articles reads:

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years.

Some autobiographical information on his interest in meditation can be drawn from his letter to the editor in an issue of The Link, a quarterly publication discussing Krishnamurti's work.

If you are familiar with Krishnamurti's work you will notice a similarity in the way Lefevre expresses himself. For example, when Lefevre speaks of meditation his descriptions are grounded in references to nature—a motif common in Krishnamurti and Packer's writings:

Obviously, it takes goals, planning, and effort to farm the land or build a house. But goals and effort have no place in spiritual life. Indeed, they are antithetical to inner growth.

New Age or old school techniques of meditation still require intentionality—that is, effort and will. And so they perpetuate division and conflict. But true meditation dissolves the duality between the thought and the thinker, and so dissolves at its source the divisiveness that is destroying humanity.

To awaken observation in which there is no observer, just the action of observing, is a difficult art, but I am sure anyone can do it if they question and experiment within themselves. And when enough people begin to end egoistic activity through right observation, a revolution in human consciousness will ignite.

A cold wind bites into the skin as I ride my bike into the country on winter day in California's Central Valley. A mound of snow shimmers in the distance, beyond the foothills that are beginning to green.

Arriving at the little creek at the edge of town, I find that the recent rains have turned it into a small torrent. A short distance away a great sycamore sweeps upward, its white bark gleaming. The trunk bifurcates, forming an exquisitely symmetrical shape. Black and white magpies squawk from its bare, upper branches.

Under the cobalt sky, meditation comes gently, imperceptibly, and as always, unexpectedly.

[Excerpted from "Dissolving the Roots of Division."]

Related: Articles on meditation by Martin Lefevre at Scoop

Authentic Dialogue is the Music of Meaning (3/9/05)

Is Group Meditation an Oxymoron? (3/4/05)

A Balanced Life (12/22/04)

Awareness is Immortal (12/2/04)

Looking Without a Center (12/17/04)

The True Fountain of Youth (11/4/04)

The World Turned Upside Down (9/8/04)

The Crisis of Consciousness (8/18/04)

Bringing Meditation Home (7/22/04)

Unmediated Perception (6/2/04)

B-52 Breakthrough (5/21/04)