A lot of people write me about their experiences. But experiences come and go and mean very little no matter how fantastic or frightening they seem.
When experiences stop coming and going, that is a sign of progress.
When first you begin to practice hard, Kundalini experiences come and go. All kinds of energies and visions come and go. Sometimes oneness experiences come and go. All kinds of physical experiences come and go. All sorts of insights come and go.
The coming and going means the experiences are impermanent and mostly irrelevant, and the understandings will be superseded weeks or months later with something more "advanced." This too is illusion.
Also, when the experiences come and go, people get impatient thinking the harder they practice, or if they practice a different technique, some final experiences will come and not go, or some final insights will come and not go.
But nothing in the mind or consciousness is permanent. It all comes and goes. It is all temporary.
What happens though is when you realize all experiences and understandings come and go, you just step back and watch the coming and going, totally relaxed, as a witness. Then samadhis come and go. Bliss comes and stays a while and goes. Happiness permeates your life. Sitting and meditation become effortless, and you know deep in your being that all flows from you, yet still is not you. A paradox.
You realize you are still separate from these experiences, even when they feel identical to you.
You see, there is no final state to realize. No final understanding to finalize. Instead, you step back and see many things. Consciousness is you, but that consciousness is the same in everyone, from firefly to human. You also understand that consciousness is not you, it is a show happening to you but is not you. A paradox.
You become one with the totality of manifest consciousness, then you become aware of nothingness and realize even the void is not you.
You become like a mountain with all happening around you, the sun rising and setting, people crawling on you, rain wearing away your granite robes, but you are removed and unmoved.
This is when you know you have begun to make real progress. When you sit in meditation you feel large, all encompassing, like a mountain, and when you are not meditating, you are calm like a moon filled cold night where nothing moves.
The easiest way to get here is strong sitting meditation, like Shikantaza with a Zen master at a mountain retreat, or sitting with a great teacher in satsang at an ashram. Group sitting build power more quickly than alone sitting, and formal sitting in padmaasana is far, far more powerful than sitting against the back of a chair or couch, or lying on the floor.
Rajiv is thinking of starting an ashram, or at least sitting meditation sessions in Mumbai. Join him if you are in India. Sergio may be ready to teach within a year also in Italy. These are real Advaitins, not the neos who rule the day now.
Realizing the Manifest Self--the Life Force permeating our humanity--and the Unmanifest source from which it arises.
Ed......
ReplyDeleteBy "padmasaana", are you referring to the sitting postures characteristic of Yoga?(because that was the definition I saw on Google).
And does doing this in the group sitting serve as a kind of catalyst to awakening experiences more than solo sitting ever could as you describe this?
Thank you very much Edji!
ReplyDeleteFor those of us who doesn't manage the padmasana. This video has very good instructions of how to get there. Just like meditation you just have to put in the hours.
http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Get-to-Lotus-Padmasana-79727444
Greetings S.
Group sitting is just more powerful. There is more there than just you. It is easier to sit strongly, and easier to sit strongly alone after a period of strong group sitting. The same thing with chanting. The same thing with Satsang versus reading a book.
ReplyDeleteZen stresses this a lot because so much emphasis is placed on strong meditation in all Zen schools.
"The easiest way to get here is strong sitting meditation, like Shikantaza with a Zen master at a mountain retreat, or sitting with a great teacher in satsang at an ashram."
ReplyDeleteYes, for those who have the predisposition to do it, a strong sitting meditation is easiest. There's certainly no point in fooling around with pranayama or lower forms of meditation if one is able to practice zazen effectively. Sitting with an open heart at the feet of a realized master is even better. Of course, this is Kali Yuga, and this is a kindergarten planet. The number of realized masters with ashrams is very few and far between, and many people have strong rajasic tendencies that make meditation difficult, if not impossible. Each individual's needs and path are unique, and what will be beneficial to one will be a waste of time for another. And of course, in the ultimate sense, there is no easiest, hardest, fastest or slower way. There is only the Way. Absolutely everything, including which sadhana one will practice at any given time, is predetermined, and no practice is causally related to attaining liberation (or anything else). Realization always is, and at the appointed time, we wake up from ignorance and know this.
There are apparently stages that people go through prior to waking up, but no practice or event can ever make realization occur, and it can be counterproductive if one feels otherwise. The jiva no more makes anything happen or controls his destiny in any way than does a character in a novel. But it is as you say: At some point, we simply stop identifying with the drama and become the mountain with all happening around us. Human pleasure and pain, samadhi bliss, doomsday cataclysms -- all come and go, but the Self remains untouched ... unmoved. Even as the mountain is slowly eroded and carried away into the sea, still ... untouched ... unmoved.
How to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! Even more so to reach the place we already are. Practice doesn't cause liberation, but does precede it (in the appearance of things), so it's absolutely necessary. Best may be to completely forget about freedom, yet practice living in silence always, whether though formal sitting meditation or some other means. Rather than practice with the mindset of attaining something, practice can be an offering of love to who and what we really are, now and always.
"You see, there is no final state to realize."
Yes! Realization is: no beginning, no end, all things in no thing, no thing in all things ... fathomless, fathomless mystery of love.
Be Well, Ed.
David
"Practice doesn't cause liberation, but does precede it (in the appearance of things), so it's absolutely necessary. Best may be to completely forget about freedom, yet practice living in silence always, whether though formal sitting meditation or some other means. Rather than practice with the mindset of attaining something, practice can be an offering of love to who and what we really are, now and always."
ReplyDeleteWow!!This is a really beautiful message to us.This mind in us tricks us in all subtle ways to expect things out of meditation or any effort.True devotion can help us overcome this tendency of the mind, I feel..Thank you very much for this very useful post Edji..
My heartfelt thanks to Rajiv bhaiya for all his help..