Bio 2: More on Meditation + Podcast (MP3)
If you’d like to hear some MP3 podcasts about my experiences during meditation… just focusing on the breath you can download them here:
a history of my meditation experience part 1
my meditation experience part 2
A little about my experiences with meditation by focusing on the breath and mindfulness during the day… and states that Buddhists call, “Jhana”.
I practiced Vipassana meditation for about 10 months back in 1997-1998. I experienced what has been explained to me (recently) as the 8 levels of “jhana” and it appears that I was a “stream enterer” or “once-returner” according to pamphlets on the subject given to me by an English speaking abbot at a temple here in Thailand (Wat Pa Nanachat in Warin Chamrap, Ubon Ratchathani province). I read the pamphlets almost 2 years ago when I first arrived here in Thailand and sought out some English speaking monks to help explain what I had experienced years before…
I’m odd in that I have read little about Buddhism and the beliefs, interpretations, stories, tradition, and cultish ‘ism’ that thousands of books have been written about and that practitioners of Buddhism and meditation seem to really believe. I don’t believe anything about it that I’ve heard from others or read in a book. However, what I experienced during the 10 months resembles closely many things that a Buddhist abbot told me he believed was jhana experience. Two other monks have said the same.
I’m also odd in that what people say the Buddha said or did isn’t really any of my concern… I can’t have faith in something that was written by people (created by people) that lived so many years ago… with their dreams, their hopes, their traditions, their political systems they lived under at the time… all influencing what they wrote… I think the one people call “Buddha” did experience nirvana of some sort. However, I’m not sure what happened and why so many people believe the way that he did it - the path that he followed - is the only path, I’m at a loss to explain. I’ve never understood the blind faith that I find common in those that want to believe in a religion - a spiritual leader.
The progression through the jhana ‘levels’ (for lack of a better term) does not need to follow some formula… it does not need your input and guidance so you focus on things that catapult you into the next jhana… I know because I did not follow a formula from a book. I didn’t follow any lengthy prescribed path. Of course I did follow something to get started. I didn’t just sit on my floor and reach jhana. Here is what I followed that I pulled as the bare essence of instruction from S.N. Goenka’s Vipassana book.
I sat in a quiet place on the floor in a room in my house. Legs - in roughly a half-lotus position to keep me steady. I closed my eyes. I put my hands in my lap, palms up. I focused on breathing initially. I watched the breath. Sometimes I counted them. I watched the breath and the mind. After 3-4 weeks I noticed that the mind calmed a bit during sitting sessions and I could focus on things other than breath, pain in my back, feet, legs, and the circus of thoughts that was usually present.
I then watched thoughts more closely. I looked at physical sensation. Emotional sensation. Stress. Feelings. I watched how different things lead to thoughts. I watched how the tiniest sensory input or piece of mind candy can initiate a long chain of thoughts that goes from one thing to another…. and when I noticed that my mind had followed a thought - I re-focused on breathing. In a rather short time - less than 2 months, I reached a point of no-thought sometimes during meditation. The mind just stopped. Not just for seconds, but for minutes at a time. Then tens of minutes.
The ability to get to the state of “no thought” and to lengthen the period of time I was in the state gradually became easier as time went on… after a couple months i entered it most times while sitting… and at times the mind remained in that state for periods of up to an hour. I don’t believe I ever sat more than 2 hours in one day at one time. And it was very rare that I sat that long.
It was during these periods of ‘no thought’ that the jhana experiences occurred… and they were so beyond words that as I sit here and type this and think for a few seconds what I remember of the experience - it leaves me with a feeling of total awe and amazement.
As I remember it now - typing this out this mind becomes empty and it feels as if the process comes back slightly and reminds me of it’s indescribability…. of it’s inexpressability…. it’s unfathomable alteration to perception…
See, I still try to describe it and yet… “it’s like a finger pointing to the moon - don’t look at the finger… or you will miss all the heavenly glory… ” (Bruce Lee quote - though not exact, I’m sure…)
The jhanas didn’t visit me in a specific order all the time… though they nearly always started with the same experience… but as they changed they didn’t change in order like others might have you believe. I don’t believe there’s a right order or wrong order as some would insist on… how could there be? If the meditator manipulated the meditation I guess there could be an exact order, and perhaps that’s what Buddhists are doing. Hardcore Buddhist meditators seem to want everything to go in a very precise way, with heirarchies of levels of meditation. They want to manipulate the jhanas and go from one to the next and control what they are thinking about while in the state.
For me I believe that if you are experiencing jhana - that is the right way… the people that wrote about what the Buddha taught usually insisted that a specific progression take place… and I don’t believe in that, it smells too much like rules that must be followed - that were created to make the experience more like a religion…
The people that wrote about what the Buddha taught said that he said we need to purify our minds first… as a preliminary step to preparing for being able to get to jhana…. and that too - is incorrect… I made no effort to purify myself according to anyone’s principles or morality… and yet, there was jhana… there was the process… it comes anyway, regardless.
There is absolutely no need for any initial outward effort to put yourself in line… to conform to some set of moral standards before you are able to enter jhana… you don’t earn jhana… it comes when it comes… you may have had thoughts of sex that day… you may have had some tea, or coffee with caffeine… you may have drank alcohol of some sort… you may have done something that was not kind to someone… and yet, as you’re sitting on your floor at night jhana may still come… It wouldn’t sound so religious or so special if Buddhists taught that enlightenment could be reached by drunks, but, who knows?
It is after jhana starts coming that there is some kind of movement away from all things that have a negative affect on others or on yourself… it is like a movement of some kind of morality taking yourself over… and yet as an individual during fully conscious times, you don’t need to make any effort to “get” it… it comes… and once it is with you… it is complete… there is no movement by you toward anything that could hurt someone else or affect them in a negative way irresponsibly… there is a natural morality that comes to exist and it is flawless… and it doesn’t have any gaps… there is nothing that can stand against it… it was, for me, part of a very substantial change that wasn’t initiated by me consciously - at all.
For other Buddhists, those that believe in the Buddha as a person and even more so, as a person that has reached nirvana… Buddha is their god. they want to worship the Buddha. They want to read what someone said he said. They want to do what someone said he did. They want to listen to monks that read what someone said he said, or worse they want to listen to monks that heard what someone said they read about what someone said he said and did…
Nirvana isn’t what the Buddha is… following exactly what you think he said may or may not get YOU there… it worked for him, but there is a very good possibility that the message that you think has come straight from him - has been tainted through the millenniums… there’s a very good possibility that what worked for him WON’T work for you - and I think the millions of monks and die-hard followers of the “ism” in Buddhism are proof of that…
How does one meditate for 10 years as a monk in a forest wat and not get there? How long did Buddha say it took him? It took me 10 months… and, no, I’m not ‘there’ (enlightened) if there is more than what I’ve experienced… but i think it’s fair to say i went quickly toward it by experiencing all the jhanas in that amount of time… (there is much more to the description of what happened -but, that post is many pages long and I’ll get to it eventually. Maybe sooner than I think.)
The Buddha and all he was, said, and did is only a finger pointing to nirvana… don’t look at the finger!…
Buddhism and all that’s been written about it - is also a finger… and unfortunately it’s a finger that is very large and it’s pointing the way, but the hand that it’s attached to is very large and heavy and it is resting on your head and pushing you down to your knees to obey the dogma before you reach the prize… it is similar to every religion… obey this first… do this first and then you will be worthy enough to reach the prize, you’ll earn the prize over time if you follow very strictly all of the rules that we set up….maybe you’ll be 70 years old and have meditated for 30 years… and maybe there will be just by coincidence, some temple that needs a new abbot… and you’ll become that abbot and maybe by that time you’ll have experienced jhana… or maybe not. But by then, you can say you did - and others will believe you.
Maybe the prize - nirvana, if there is such a thing, is outside of us… and it comes to us… there is little we need do beyond making ourselves available to it… calming the mind… slowing the mind to the point that it stops… whether that is through a zen koan, through Vipassana, sun-gazing, or whatever it is… I believe that when the mind stops and the process visits… then it can turn into whatever it will…
Other times I believe that this process is endemic to each of us. If we calm the mind to the point of it stopping - there is something in the mind that can start… and it is the process that goes on in it’s own way… tearing apart the life that you once knew as yourself and creating a person that can do no harm to others, and that is in a blissful state of existence with no stress whatsoever. There is no attachment to anything at that point and so nothing has the power to cause you pain.
Either way, I believe the idea that this state is something you have to earn… is wrong. I didn’t deserve what happened. I wasn’t an extremely moral person before I started Vipassana… nor was I for the first few months of practicing. I wasn’t a thief or an hatchet murderer either, but I made no effort to avoid things others consider immoral or ‘necessary to avoid’ in order to practice in some wholesome way…
So - practice as you will… forget the fluff that generations have heaped on top of what the Buddha was said to have said and done… sit, calm the mind, the mind will stop… meditation is a physical action - not magical… the part that you control is entirely physical… and from there maybe the process will come and visit you whether from the inside or the outside… almost like magic.
And when it does you will know… it’s like you’re being touched by a corner of another dimension… you are still here - on earth - but your mind has entered that other dimension… When you’ll really know is when you are walking around at work or at home and you realize that you don’t have an attachment for something anymore. You’ll realize that your new shoes will get dirty sooner or later anyway - why save them by not wearing them as you’re cutting the grass that night?
You’ll realize it when you hear someone gossip to you about something, and there’s no words that come out of your mouth, but just an understanding of the human condition and why we do as we do… and though you understand, you cannot contribute to it anymore…
You’ll realize it one day when you are walking down the street and the entire scene before you changes - like a reality shift… and it’s like the things in front of you are moving through you as you go forward… the things on the side are blurring and are also part of you… You’ll understand for a second, or for minutes perhaps that you are not separate from all that is around you - that everything is connected and of the same substance… of the same dimension… there is no 1st, 2nd, or 3rd dimension - there is one - and you are suddenly aware of it…
And whether it comes to you in 6 days or 6 years is of no consequence… I was there and it took less than a year… maybe you can be there in an instant. Maybe you have this quality that is naturally a part of you in which you can slow down thought and thought stops in just a few minutes…. For you it might take just a few minutes… you won’t know until you try.
You won’t try if you don’t start
- now -
Best of Life!
Podcast: 40 minute podcast detailing some of my experience with meditation…
a history of my meditation experience part 1
my meditation experience part 2
More:
WHY meditate? Why reach enlightenment? (.wmv video, 24Mb)
Enlightenment, no point… Part 1
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
(MP3 audio) about 12Mb for all
More (videos): Not in order - and they don’t correspond to jhana levels or anything like that. I shouldn’t have called them levels in the video - just experiences… not in any particular order at all! If you like this sort of thing I have a full page of multimedia - videos and mp3’s at:
http://www.thaipulse.com/seemlessness/all-meditation-media-files.htm
Experience 1: Body relaxed, mind starts to follow
Exp 2: Breath slows, body starts disappearing
Exp 3: Fatness (jhana 3)
Exp 4: Consciousness expands (jhana 4)
Exp 5: Denseness of body
Exp 6: Bliss & joy (jhana 1-2)
Exp 7: Highly concentrated mind
Exp 8: One pointedness of mind
Exp 9: Dying - no breath (jhana 8)
Exp 10: Interconnected cosmos, at “one with all”
Exp 11: Just as it is…
Exp 12: Visualizations
