alpha
New Member
Posts: 7
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Post by alpha on Nov 5, 2009 18:15:03 GMT -5
ZD and LM thanks for helpful advice, I hope to follow through on it,
one more question ZD, you mentioned meditation, I find that when I meditate there's three stages, 1) sit and relax, witnessing "what is", for me this lasts about twenty minutes, 2)then (when I'm lucky) "something else" seems to take over,(there's a distinct "entry" into this state) a much deeper silence/space that I have nothing to do with, this can last from five to twenty minutes, depending on whether I "interfere" with it or not, the problem is that its so subtle that any movement of the mind "interferes" with it, it seems it comes unnoticed and wants to remain that way, the more I want it to stay, the sooner it goes, and when it does go, 3) then there's a growing unease, to end the meditation, which usually happens within the hour, I once meditated for four hours as an experiment to overcome this unease but to no avail...
I was in my garage recently when I sat down for a rest, just then a small bird (wren) flew in and was hopping around looking for food,I stayed very still as I studied him, he was coming closer,closer, now only six feet away, a tiny bundle of energy,I dare not blink, utter stillness, suddenly he flew up and landed on the peak of the cap I was wearing, for a brief moment I was in heaven, then he was gone, I was glad I dident interfere with him...
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Post by zendancer on Nov 5, 2009 22:00:00 GMT -5
Alpha: I can't believe it. I lost another incredibly long post because I forgot to copy the d**n thing before hitting the reply button. Maybe this will teach me once and for all to copy before sending anything. Oh man, this is sickening. Oh well, let's see if I can reconstruct it.
What you seem to be describing in stage 2, above, is what Zen people call "samadhi." It occurs when there is virtually no intellectual activity. As you say, it is very subtle, and if more than one or two thoughts occur, the state will dissipate. If only one thought drifts by, it may continue, but if two or three thoughts occur in succession, it will end. I started to fall into samadhi one night and thought, "OMG, I'm falling into samadhi. I've been hoping this would happen." That was all it took for it to go away. LOL. To make it continue, there has to be such a strong focus on isness that thoughts do not occur. As you say, it is not something under the control of personal volition. However, it can occur regularly if someone is meditating regularly and with a fair degree of intensity and focus.
There is a distinct entry point into that state, and it is often accompanied by various body phenomena--primarily a skin surface numbness that spreads from the hands to the arms, shoulders, neck, and then head. It is called "the off sensation." Have you felt anything like that?
My first experience with samadhi occurred five months after I started meditating, back in 1984. At that time I was spending almost three hours per day doing some kind of attentiveness practice. I was walking for an hour around a coliseum at lunchtime while watching my breathing; I was walking through the countryside for an hour in the afternoon looking and listening to whatever I could see or hear; and I was doing formal breath-awareness meditation while sitting on a couch at night after my family had gone to bed. I had been meditating about five months. One night I sat down, and started to follow my breath, and then decided to try a variation and just feel the process of breathing. After about ten minutes of intense focus, I became unified with the breathing process. "I" disappeared into the process and became the breathing itself. "I" was being breathed, and "I" ceased to have any involvement in what was happening. As soon as this happened, I felt the backs of my hands grow numb, and the numbness began spreading up my arms. I also had a distinct feeling of coolness. Psychologically, it felt as if I had stepped onto a high-speed elevator going straight down! As the skin surface numbness spread to my shoulders and head, my breathing felt as if it slowed down until it almost stopped. I lost consciousness of the breathing and felt like a stone that was sinking to the bottom of an extremely deep lake. There is no way to remotely describe what that state of total unity was like. There was no "me;" there was only pure awareness. Nothing can be known about that state because the intellect has been de-activated. There were no thoughts at all. After about thirty minutes, one or two self-aware thoughts appeared out of emptiness and "I" reappeared. It felt like I had been a block of ice that was now thawing out. The skin surface numbness retreated from my head back down my arms until it disappeared. When I tried to turn my head, it felt like it was moving in slow motion. One of the first thoughts I remember having after coming back to normal was, "What in the hell was that?" I knew that I had not been present during the experience, and I knew that something extraordinary had happened, but I had never read about anything like that.
The following night I sat down to meditate, and the same thing happened again, but much faster. I fell into a deep samadhi and stayed there for about an hour. It was a fantastic experience--not in a euphoric sense as much as a sense of deeply satisfying peacefulness. The third night it happened again, and I stayed in that state a very long time, maybe two hours. The next morning I went to work and at ten o"clock I had a mind-boggling enlightenment experience during which I forgot my name, met God, had an out-of-body experience, looked through a wall, communed with a cat, read some minds, and had some other fairly unusual things happen. LOL! I suspect that the three nights of samadhi played a role in that, but who knows? This is a rather strange and unknowable sort of universe.
A guy named Sekida Sasaki (if I remember correctly) wrote a book titled, "Zen Training," in which he discusses samadhi at length. He claims that absolute samadhi, the kind described above, is the goal of all serious Zen practitioners, and that letting the body and mind fall off regularly is the foundation of Zen practice.
At one point, in about 1994, I concluded that samadhi was the key to enlightenment (just one of my many crazy ideas along the way), and I started making an effort to get into samadhi by doing some serious formal meditation. Sure enough, after several weeks, I got to where I could fall into a shallow samadhi almost every night, and the key was being able to hold attention so strongly on a sound (I listened to the hissing sound made by some gas logs) that thoughts could not occur. As soon as thoughts stopped, the samadhi would begin, and I would disappear. However, despite my best efforts at staying focused, I never got into states as deep as the ones I experienced ten years earlier.
After a while, I began to have doubts about samadhi as the key to enlightenment, and I went to see a Zen Master who was conducting a retreat in a neary city. The ZM told me that samadhi was not necessary for enlightenment, so I quit pursuing that approach and went back to my old informal practice of bringing my attention back to What Is throughout the day.
If you are able to fall into samadhi on a regular basis, then you must have a fairly silent mind.
How often do you meditate, and how long have you been doing it? Does anything I've written here correlate to your own experiences with this?
FWIW, I probably ought to include a word of advice to other people on the board who don't regularly meditate. What I'm writing about here is not anything special. Be true to yourself and trust yourself 100%. Some people find formal meditation fun and some people hate it. You can't make yourself meditate if it isn;t in the cards for you. If you like meditation, and you do it regularly, then you will probably have experiences that are typical for that kind of practice. I have known people who have made themselves miserable doing things that other people told them to do. Listen to your own inner voice and be true to that. Samadhi is not necessary for waking up, and meditation is not necessary for waking up. Don;t get attached to these kinds of ideas. Have fun, and if formal meditation appeals to you, then experiment with it.
Well, I can't remember the rest of the original post, but this includes most of the main points. Alpha, I loved your story about the bird. I had the same kind of thing happen with a squirrel one time. It was magical. Cheers.
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Post by zendancer on Nov 5, 2009 22:03:15 GMT -5
Alpha: Oh yeah, I forgot one issue. I have never experienced the "unease" you describe when samadhi ends. Maybe someone else will have an idea about that aspect. ZD
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Post by Portto on Nov 6, 2009 12:11:55 GMT -5
Alpha: I can't believe it. I lost another incredibly long post because I forgot to copy the d**n thing before hitting the reply button. Maybe this will teach me once and for all to copy before sending anything. Oh man, this is sickening. Oh well, let's see if I can reconstruct it. What you seem to be describing in stage 2, above, is what Zen people call "samadhi." It occurs when there is virtually no intellectual activity. As you say, it is very subtle, and if more than one or two thoughts occur, the state will dissipate. Hi ZD! Another solution to your "lost post" problem would be to write your posts in a text editor. This would even partially solve the problem of internet or power failures, since most text editors automatically save the documents. Regarding the samadhi: what would be the main differences between samadhi and deep sleep? What do you "see" in deep sleep? |
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Post by zendancer on Nov 6, 2009 12:28:14 GMT -5
Porto: I see nothing at all in deep sleep; all awareness is gone. In samadhi there is also nothing to see, but there is clear brilliant impersonal awareness. What do you see or experience in deep sleep?
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Post by Portto on Nov 6, 2009 13:11:30 GMT -5
Same here: awareness is completely gone in deep sleep as well...
I still don't know exactly what this means - it used to preoccupy me quite a lot. This is what got me very quickly out of identification with "I am". It left me completely empty-handed.
Deep sleep is forcing me to see that our nature is ultimately unknowable. But my mind is not happy about this...
On the other hand, I found a few individuals that seem to be aware while in deep dreamless sleep. One of them is Nisargadatta Maharaj, and one of them is posting on this forum.
For example, in I Am That (1984), p. 28:
Questioner: What do you do when asleep?
Maharaj: I am aware of being asleep.
Q: Is not sleep a state of unconsciousness?
M: Yes, I am aware of being unconscious.
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Post by zendancer on Nov 6, 2009 14:02:10 GMT -5
Porto: Yes, I've read similar statements by other people, but it just hasn't been my experience. Maybe some people are conscious in deep sleep and others are not. I have no idea, but even if it's possible, I don't see any reason to make it a goal.
I remember reading about an exchange between a famous Zen Master and one of his enlightened students. The student told the ZM that he was leaving the monastery in order to start teaching. The ZM asked him if he could keep his enlightened understanding at all times. The student answered that he could. Then the ZM asked him, "Can you keep it even in deep dreamless sleep?" That question paralyzed the student's mind, and he couldn't find an answer. This caused the student to stay and study with the ZM a while longer because it showed him that he still lacked some clarity.
I would have answered the ZM's first question very differently, so I don't know where the conversation would have gone from there. I hope a ZM asks me that kind of question some time in the future, so that I can find out what will happen. LOL.
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Post by question on Nov 6, 2009 19:53:49 GMT -5
Wow that's interesting. How can one claim to participate in the continuity of something absolute if its presence can't be recognized in deep sleep? And if it isn't present in deep sleep, then how can one say that it will be present after death? Unless of course, consciousness is just one of many expressions of the absolute and is not entitled to be continuous or to perceive the continuity of the absolute. But still, how can it be possible to recognize the absolute clearly, if it can't be recognized in the abscence of consciousness?
Btw, the fact that I am not there in deep sleep is one of the reasons why I doubt that awareness is not simply the result of a cerebral process.
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Post by karen on Nov 6, 2009 20:35:20 GMT -5
BTW, if you use firefox, this tool will save form data and recover it should you lose your post in the future. |
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Post by zendancer on Nov 6, 2009 21:30:24 GMT -5
That's a good question, Question, but there is no satisfactory verbal answer to it. You already know the answer, but it is inside you. No one can give it to you. If you are extremely serious about the question, then all you have to do is bear the question in mind and leave reflective thoughts behind. Use the question to burn through the intellect and reveal the truth.
It only takes one glimpse, and if that happens, it will become obvious that who you really are is infinite in time and space. All of your ideas about continuity through deep sleep, birth and death, cerebral processes, etc. will totally evaporate. One glimpse, and I guarantee that you will start laughing uncontrollably.
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Post by Portto on Nov 7, 2009 9:04:10 GMT -5
Thank you for the Zen story, Zendancer.
It's nice to know that a ZM was asking students to investigate deep sleep.
For Question: I have been preoccupied with deep sleep for quite a while. One of the best answers is that continuity is not in the mind, but in consciousness/awareness/being.
We expect the mind to be continuous - and obviously it's not. Mind is a temporary manifestation.
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Post by loverofall on Nov 7, 2009 14:13:05 GMT -5
One of the best suggestions I got from this board was to stop reflecting and fantasizing my experience. I knew my personality type has more of a tendency to live in thoughts but WOW I had no idea how much I reflect on or spice up what is happening to not be present.
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Post by zendancer on Nov 8, 2009 12:19:33 GMT -5
loverofall: You're not alone. Virtually everyone lives in their head until he/she learns that there is a choice. Thinking is an evolutionary development that allowed human beings to control their environment and win the battle of survival, but the habit became too successful. It continued to grow in power until it imprisoned humans in meta-realities and locked them in front of personal internalized TV/computer/graphics-generator screens. We are a bit like those bloated humans in the movie "Wall-E." We lie immobilized in our easy chairs in the brain; we sit and stare, mesmerized, at the images, ideas, symbols and story lines that constantly play out in front of our mind's eye.
It's fun to fantasize, reflect, judge, compare, evaluate, calculate, distinguish, identify, etc. but the cost of doing every minute of the day so is extremely high. We unconsciously allow our intellectual function of mind to be the master of what we perceive, and that is how we lose sight of the kingdom of God (the Garden of Eden, the living truth, etc) on the way from childhood to adulthood. We regain our birthright only when we recognize what's happened, and we change our habits of mind.
When we recognize that we have become lost in an ego-centered fantasy....swoosh! We pull out our awareness sword and cut that sucker off. We switch our attention to what we can see or hear in the moment---NOW. When we find ourselves judging someone.....thwack! Out comes the sword again. When we find ourselves repeating some old story about how we were mistreated by someone.....twock! When we find ourselves comparing our material possessions to someone else......slash! When we find ourselves thinking that we've done something good and deserve a reward.......whack! It takes some effort, but as we leave our old habits of mind behind, we enter the unimaginable world of what is. What is is our true home. What is is the world we lived in as little children. What is is alive, dynamic, transformative, mysterious, and upredictable; it is totally unknowable to the mind. The mind only deals with what is dead; the real world is what Christ called, "the living truth." It is always here, but until we leave the known, we can't see it. Cheers, and keep swinging that sword!
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Post by karen on Nov 8, 2009 17:27:12 GMT -5
I've started to notice the feelings I have when I'm fantasizing about negative stories are the same as the feelings when I'm having my monomaniacal fantasies (i.e. inventing revolutionary technologies where I can then bask in my greatness...).
The feelings seem guttural.
So I'm thinking each feeds the other. The negative fantasies build tension then gets let out by the "positive" fantasy. And following this (pain/pleasure) cycle means I'll get sucked into post traumatic stress-like moments of reliving shameful or otherwise painful events with nothing more than a simple trigger to set them off.
What do you think?
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Post by loverofall on Nov 8, 2009 19:26:56 GMT -5
I totally see the polarities on not being present. If we fantasize on a positive side it sthe polarity will do it in a negative way too. My brother asked me what was wrong with looking forward to things and it made me think real hard and then I totally got it and asked him what happened when his weekends were almost over and he said he started dreading Monday morning and BAM there it was. The habitual pattern cuts both ways.
It makes so much sense. The mind found a way to control what we feel no matter what the outside environment is. Our experience is not though thoughts. As soon as I see I am looking at image in my head I use Zendancer's sword of awareness and go to looking and hearing and realize everything is perfect the way it is.
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