Meditation - Varying degrees of success.

Awaiting_the_fifth

Awaiting_the_fifth

Where is my mind?
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Last night I had a truly amazing experience.

In the year since I started on the buddhist path I have meditated, sometimes twice a day, sometimes not for a month. After meditation I have always felt calm and content and I thought that this was the only effect of meditation.

Then last night, I sat cross legged at my shrine as I have done so many times before and meditated deeper and easier than ever before. I could feel my body, specifically my head as though it was something seperate from me that did not quite fit. At the end of my meditation I was happier than I have been in months, I felt totally at peace and all I could think of was a quote by Shakyamuni shortly after his night of enlightenment.

"This is peace, this is exquisite"

But today when I meditated again, expecting a similar experience I found only the moderate contentment I had always found (which is still a good feeling).

So I would like to ask the other Buddhists of CR, what has been your experience of meditation, how long have you practiced and what benefits has it brought? Has anyone had any strange experiences while meditating?

Please share.
 
Namaste Awaiting,


thank you for the interesting post.

hmm... i've been meditating, off and on, for the better part of 25 years or so... sometimes more "off" than "on", to be sure!

my own experiences in this regard are, i suspect, quite ordinary and not of much interest to anyone other than myself, such that it is. however, there have been a few experiences that may be of some interest to others.

as you know, there are many methods or techniques for entering a meditive state; walking, sitting, jogging... really... any activity can be a condiut to the meditive state, in my view.

Thich Naht Hanh is a wonderful teaching and human being, for those that don't know who he is, you can read about him here:

http://www.iamhome.org/tnh.htm

in one of his teachings, he was speaking about traffic in the cities and how we could use that time (sitting in traffic) for meditation and he explained a quick visualization exercise that has us use the rear bumper and tail lights as the smiling face of the Buddha, thus, eliminating the tension and frustration that one may usually feel when stuck in gridlock traffic.

in any event, given that i drive over an hour to work, this is a meditive technique that i use quite often... i also tend to do a lot of my mantra recitations whilst driving... i'm in the car an hour each way.. might as well put that time to some positive use as well, eh ;)

(an aside, if i may. i am always somewhat hesitant when it comes to describing meditive experience... the Buddha explained that this experience is something that cannot be described.) so... keeping that in mind....

it was a bit later in the day when i was leaving work, late in the autum of the year, with the sun at the right angle to cast long shadows through the woods and give the hazy golden glow to the fields. as i'm driving the car along the old route, i'm beginning the driving meditation with an emphasis on breath and thought resting on each other.

"ziiittt" and suddenly, i'm in.. it seems to happen in the same way for me, often enough.. but, afterwards, it always feels like a bit of a surprise in some sense. when i'm in, my perception is different... the physical objects become jewel-like... glitterting and faceted, interconnected by strands of energy and information with my energy being co-mingled amongst the facets of the jewel strands. each facet reflects the other facets and my awareness begins to extend past my normal senses..... this experience continues for some good time... probably 30 mintues or so....

i find that i'm getting flummoxed in trying to find the right words to describe my experience... so... i'm going to stop :)

in my own case, i find that certain meditive experiences were so strong that i try to "reproduce" the experience with each meditive session. intellectually, i realize that this cannot be done, however, my wisdom is not as developed as my intellect, much to my chagrin.
 
Thank you Vajradhara, I must say that you are a shining light. Your depth of understanding and eloquence in explaining makes me suspect that you actually are the real Vajradhara, the primordial Buddha. I would put more stock in your wisdom than perhaps you would think.
 
Namaste Awaiting,


thank you for the kind words :eek:

i'm destitute of learning and devoid of skill with words... whatever understanding or benefit you derive from my words is due to your own good karma ripening.
 
A humble and very noble point of view Vajradhara, and I would like to believe that it is partially true, but I maintain that since I found this site I have learned more from your posts than from many of the books I have read.

Kelsang Chudda, the resident Teacher at a local Kadampa Dharma Centre once said that the most virtuous act any man can do is to teach and pass on the Dharma. You do it very well.
 
I've been meditating on and off for over a year. I started by visiting a NKT centre, now I lean more towards the soto zen tradition. I manage to sit for between 10 and 40 mins almost every day. If I understand what I've been taught, I'm not expecting any mystical or magical experiences. It's all quite boring, really, After getting details of posture right, all there is to zazen is sitting. Thoughts pop up, but the idea is to take them no further, to avoid getting into the internal dialogue and chatter. It seems that there's no "career path" with zazen. When sitting, relative novices do much the same as practitioners who have been at it for many years. The purpose is not to invoke some sort of external phenomena - as I understand it, we have all we need already. I read somewhere that some teachers consider that we are all enlightened, and what we are working towards is the removal of the illusion of unenlightenment.

I feel I've benefited enourmously through my practice. Being prone to disturbing downward spirals of thought, I now find that I can recognise anger or sadness as it arises and head off the thought trains before I'm too overwhelmed by it all - if that makes sense. After sitting, I always feel more relaxed. Hard to describe, but it seems like in my daily life I'm experiencing everything one step further away, so I see a bigger picture, rather than individual pixels.

Other ideas connected with this concern the sense of self, and one aim is to try and lose that, as many or maybe all of our negative feelings stem from our sense of self. One concept that I often think about is this - it has been said that our self is nothing more than a construct of our minds, an illusion. But, what are our minds other than our thoughts and feelings? What causes thoughts and feelings other than chemical and electrical phenomena in our brains? What or who are we? Recently, when I catch my reflection in a mirror, I often wonder who or what is looking back. I'm not sure if it's "me".
 
I totally understand what you're saying, meditation is far more mundane than your average Kung Fu movie would have us believe, but I do think that there is something "different" to be found in the mind when it is quiet. Also I have spoken to other people who may not be Buddhists but practice meditation as described by the NKT and many of us agreed that there are some strange sensations accociated with it, for example many people independantly said that while meditating they felt that their head was too big or that the whole body was twisted into some odd position. Nothing unpleasant, just wierd.

If you dont mind my asking, Nick, what was it that made you choose Zen over the NKT?
 
Awaiting_the_fifth said:
I totally understand what you're saying, meditation is far more mundane than your average Kung Fu movie would have us believe, but I do think that there is something "different" to be found in the mind when it is quiet. Also I have spoken to other people who may not be Buddhists but practice meditation as described by the NKT and many of us agreed that there are some strange sensations accociated with it, for example many people independantly said that while meditating they felt that their head was too big or that the whole body was twisted into some odd position. Nothing unpleasant, just wierd.

If you dont mind my asking, Nick, what was it that made you choose Zen over the NKT?
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Hi Awaiting_the_fifth

Interesting linkes for you:

http://courses.unt.edu/joy/LPTool/Traverse-the-Current02.pdf
page 10-14 may give you the answer.

also this one
http://courses.unt.edu/joy/LPTool/LineofPractice.pdf

and this
http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/boowa/london.html

I am not sure that your "maditation" means only "samadhi" or something.

In terms of experience and from what I read, you seem to be years ahead of me but I am from Buddhist culture and have heard a lot of Buddhism things (without practicing tho :D). Also, someone told me that one does need to find a really good teacher before he/she starts practicing, otherwise, he may get stuck with vipassanupakkilesa.

sawasdee
 
Awaiting_the_fifth said:
If you dont mind my asking, Nick, what was it that made you choose Zen over the NKT?
Click to expand...
There's a lot of common ground, but I was initially attracted to Zen because of it's emphasis on practice over scriptures, ceremony and all other religeous paraphernalia, and stuck with it. I went to a few talks and guided meditation sessions at the local NKT centre, and a day course, so perhaps I haven't looked into NKT that deeply..but then again, it's not as if I'm choosing a brand of clothing. I found the atmosphere at the NKT centre very peaceful and relaxing, and the talks were very helpful. However, I tend to practice mainly on my own, with the odd visit to a Soto Zen monastery now and again.

Within Zen, there are a few differences. Rinzai emphasises the idea of sudden enlightenment or awakening, maybe after intensive sessions of meditation. Soto would maintain that the enlightenment experience is unnecessary as such. All you have to do is sit. I tend towards Soto.

It's the simplicity of it all that may confuse people. In Zazen, all you do is sit..that's all. But it's also hard to do. As well as sitting, i often find myself thinking, and following these thoughts. Before I know it, I'm daydreaming. As for the idea of some flash-bang-wallop enlightenment experience, I struggled with the idea of not working towards that. But then again, to be working so hard towards that goal, isn't there a danger of beginning to desire the enlightenment experience in the same way that one might desire a faster car or a trendier mobile? One writer sets out how you should practice for the sake of practice. If you practice for the sake of gaining some wondrous experience, your practice is not pure. If your aim is some mind blowing experience, then it would be more efficient to take drugs! That's his opinion not mine, although I personally feel happier working towards not wanting enlightenment.

Essentially, I see a religion or whatever more as a model to help make sense of stuff. My model suits me, other people may choose a different model. As long as it works for each of us.
 
Nick said:
There's a lot of common ground, but I was initially attracted to Zen because of it's emphasis on practice over scriptures, ceremony and all other religeous paraphernalia, and stuck with it. I went to a few talks and guided meditation sessions at the local NKT centre, and a day course, so perhaps I haven't looked into NKT that deeply..but then again, it's not as if I'm choosing a brand of clothing. I found the atmosphere at the NKT centre very peaceful and relaxing, and the talks were very helpful. However, I tend to practice mainly on my own, with the odd visit to a Soto Zen monastery now and again.

Within Zen, there are a few differences. Rinzai emphasises the idea of sudden enlightenment or awakening, maybe after intensive sessions of meditation. Soto would maintain that the enlightenment experience is unnecessary as such. All you have to do is sit. I tend towards Soto.

It's the simplicity of it all that may confuse people. In Zazen, all you do is sit..that's all. But it's also hard to do. As well as sitting, i often find myself thinking, and following these thoughts. Before I know it, I'm daydreaming. As for the idea of some flash-bang-wallop enlightenment experience, I struggled with the idea of not working towards that. But then again, to be working so hard towards that goal, isn't there a danger of beginning to desire the enlightenment experience in the same way that one might desire a faster car or a trendier mobile? One writer sets out how you should practice for the sake of practice. If you practice for the sake of gaining some wondrous experience, your practice is not pure. If your aim is some mind blowing experience, then it would be more efficient to take drugs! That's his opinion not mine, although I personally feel happier working towards not wanting enlightenment.

Essentially, I see a religion or whatever more as a model to help make sense of stuff. My model suits me, other people may choose a different model. As long as it works for each of us.
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Hi Nick and welcome. I, too, ake an essentially zen approach to practice. You touch on a wonderful innate paradox within buddhism in general: the paradox of desiring to be desireless-or at least not addicted to whatever we desire-or the effort to let go of effort. Yes the problem with working toward "enlightenment" is we turn it into an object or a thing to be gained or possessed when it is the mind which turns things into objects to be manipulated that in itself requires the tranformation. I lke John Daido Loori's, (abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in New York) description of zen as being "no gaps," or "no separation" in awareness. So, it's about noticing and moving on-we may notice in that moment distress, joy, or wildflowers. Then it's on to the next moment. String together enough moments of such noticing when we're simply noticing without being somebody doing the noticing and our view of who we thought we were can begin to change. When we let go of those defining ideas about ourselves-the various self-images or identities-we are left with the potentially freeing mystery of "just who/what am I anyway?":) Keep that "Don't Know Mind" and you will go far. As for "enlightenment," I tend to go for "lighten-up-ment" instead as when I think of "perfect enlightenment," it simply reinforces my "perfection of self" button. Enjoy the journey, Earl
 
Hi Earl. Thanks for the reply.

earl said:
Yes the problem with working toward "enlightenment" is we turn it into an object or a thing to be gained or possessed when it is the mind which turns things into objects to be manipulated that in itself requires the tranformation. ..
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I agree. Most things I've aimed for, or been told to aim for, it's ended in one of two ways. Either i get what I want, then find I 've lost some purpose in my life, which needs to be replaced by working towards getting something else. Or I fail to get what I want, and suffer disappointment. I wonder if the enlightenment experience would be the same?

Going back to practice: I feel it's similar to maintaining the tools I use in my work. When I sharpen my axe, should I sharpen it to cut wood , or should I sharpen it to make it sharp ? In the first case, I'm sharpening whilst thinking about and looking forward to the work I need to do, just as soon as I can finish this sharpening task. Whenever I do this, the axe is never as sharp as if I'd sat down and just sharpened.
 
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