Buddha statue at top of a hill at Suan Mokkh

Just south of the small town of Chaiya, which lies north of Surat Thani, Thailand is a Buddhist temple known world wide for it’s quality meditation retreats held monthly. Usually well over 100 persons attend each meditation retreat and some attend many of them. Naturally there are more Europeans than Americans there – Americans not taking long vacations like those in Europe and other countries tend to.

If you’re looking to deepen your meditative practice, then attending this 10-day intensive meditation retreat may be just what the doctor didn’t order – but what you need.

When I lived in Surat Thani I traveled by motorbike to Suan Mokkh more than a dozen times. The temple grounds are expansive – covering many acres. I spent many hours practicing walking meditation through the forest at Suan Mokkh and I ventured across the highway and down the country road to the “International Dhamma Hermitage” where the monthly meditation retreats are held on a couple occasions for photos – not to stay.

Recently a friend created an entire site dedicated to the International Dhamma Hermitage experience at Suan Mokkh. There is more information at this one website than any website I’ve ever seen about Suan Mokkh. The information was gathered primarily through his first hand experiences as he’s been there multiple times over the years to attend the retreats.

Best of Life!

Vern
Any meditation retreats in Hawaii you know about?

In this video podcast or video blog (vlog)I I talk about what I see as the two major types of meditation. There are meditation systems which encompasses a very large, rule-filled system for meditation and there is simple meditation that is almost a pure physical effort without any of the fluff.

Video 3, Meditation: Two Types >

This is a .wmv file and plays with Windows Media Player. The file is about 41MB in size and runs for 37 minutes. This is the largest video – and they likely won’t be this large again. I wish someone could invent the magic video compression codec that gives me 30 minutes at just 1MB.

If you want your audio to sound better, try to copy the settings (in general) from the equalizer image below for Windows Media Player. Vern sounds best at these settings or raising the left side up just a little overall.

Here is a short video about the temple I filmed the video above at. It’s called, “Wat Tum Sang Phet” and is located in Krabi, Thailand. They are developing it to include a road around the limestone karst lined with fruit trees and vegetables. They’ll likely have cave tours. It’s a really quiet Buddhist temple and the abbot there is very kind – always inviting me in for tea and fruit when he sees me.

Wat Tum Sang Phet, Krabi, Thailand >

This video is 9MB and about 8:40 in length.

Enjoy!

Best of Life!

Vern

A cave at the Buddhist temple “Wat Tum Sang Phet”

Over 10 years ago when I started meditating I was in a state of mind where I didn’t want to follow a religion. I didn’t see any truth in religion as many of the beliefs require faith in something that I cannot prove or disprove. I’m a very logical person and faith in the supernatural does not happen for me, unless I experience it directly.

I became interested in Buddhism in about 1995 I think it was. I’ve read a lot about Buddhism over the past 10+ years and I have come to see that there are really 2 types or lines of thought about what Buddhism is. Even here in Thailand there are two camps so to speak.

2. The second type are those that believe in the whole -ism. The whole ball of wax including the hundreds of rules for monks and everything that Buddha and all the important meditators and Buddhists after him said and did. The Buddhist machine here in Thailand is huge and very rich. Superstition plays a large part in Buddhism here and most Buddhists believe that if they give money to the local temple they will earn karma points and go on to better things in this life and in the next life.

Westerners tend to be of this variety. Well heck, the majority of people tend to be of this variety. People love to follow a system and to compare their system to others. They love to talk about their religion and debate all the little points in it. It gives them something to do that they think is worthy of their time and effort.

Buddhadassa Bhikkhu called this type of Buddhism the “tumor” that has distracted us from what Buddhism truly is.

1. The first type of Buddhism is the simple, believe nothing until you try it for yourself line of thinking. I really like this style of Buddhism. Buddha said, believe nothing you hear if it doesn’t jive with your experience. He cautioned people not to believe what HE said without trying it out and finding the truth in it. This means we’re free to experiment with meditation and about anything in the realm of Buddhism on our own. It means we need not follow the entire game of Buddhism and all that has been built up around it to call ourselves ‘Buddhist’.

Buddhadassa Bhikku, founder of Suan Mokkh Buddhist temple in Chaiya, Thailand was someone that believed Buddhism was vastly different from the other religions of the world. He even wrote a book, “No Religion” which details his view on the subject. It’s a very small book and given away freely here in Thailand. Occasionally you can find it at Buddhist temples in the USA. Another of his books which illustrates his ideas about the right kind of Buddhism is, “Handbook for Mankind.” You can download the free PDF version of this book at Buddhanet’s page here. Scroll down to find it. This is a quote from that book…

“The real Buddhism is not books, not manuals, not word for word repetition from the Tipitaka, nor is it rites and rituals. These are not the real Buddhism. The real Buddhism is the practice, by way of body, speech and mind that will destroy the defilements, in part or completely. One need not have anything to do with books or manuals. One ought not to rely on rites and rituals, or anything else external, including spirits and celestial beings. “

And another…

“Buddhism does not demand conjecture or supposition; it demands that we act in accordance with what our own insight reveals and not take anyone elses word for anything. If someone comes and tells us something, we must not believe him without question. We must listen to his statement and examine it. Then if we find it reasonable, we may accept it provisionally and set about trying to verify it for ourselves. This is a key feature of Buddhism, which distinguishes it sharply from other world religions.”

In this video I talk more about Buddhism and the two lines of thought about what Buddhism really is, and what I believe in personally.

Video 2, Buddhism… Two Basic Lines of Belief >

This is a .wmv file and plays with Windows Media Player. The file is about 9MB in size and runs for 22 minutes. This was an experiment at the smaller resolution – 176×144. Future videos will be at 320×240 which will be much bigger!

If you want your audio to sound better, try to copy the settings (in general) from the equalizer image below for Windows Media Player. Vern sounds best at these settings… though in this particular video – the sound from the first 4 minutes is not good. It gets better. I’ve learned something about compressing the video that small!

Enjoy!

Best of Life!

Vern

Psst: I almost forgot, below is a photo of where I shot the video today – awesome place!

In the last post we looked at using dream interpretation as a tool for looking at the subconscious mind using a conscious effort.

In this article I’ll talk about using meditation as a tool to reduce the subconscious popcorn flying around in your head, reducing the amount that can affect your consciousness.

Meditation is an absolutely amazing tool and one that can give you the greatest results if you’re one of those people that can do a few things consistently. Meditation at it’s simplest consists of sitting in one place, closing your eyes, and focusing on the spot where your inhalations and exhalations are felt in your nose or on your upper lip.

Seems pretty simple I know, but that’s all you need to do in order to have the most profound experiences available to you as a human being on this spinning blue ball. Can you handle something like this? Sure you can. If I can do it with attention deficit disorder (ADD) you can do it, I’m sure of it.

Some people tire of meditation. Yes, believe it or not – some have a lot of expectations about where their meditative sessions will lead them – and they become disappointed with the length of time it takes things to happen. Paradoxically, if you are really wanting something to happen – it won’t. Meditation itself is like a zen koan.

One meditates to get somewhere in their mind… to advance through the stages of meditation leading to jhana or other absorption experiences.

However, if one desires overtly to get somewhere. He or she will go nowhere really. Meditation is catch-22 like that. It doesn’t seem like it should make sense, but it does. Just not sense that we can rationalize using our minds. The book, Zen in the Art of Archery teaches how in order to let the perfect arrow fly from your bow you cannot make a conscious decision to let the arrow go. It must just go. If you focus too much on trying not to focus too much – you are focusing too much and the arrow will be off course. Likewise if you focus too much on meditating to reach high levels of meditation and you’re excited about getting there and anxious – you go nowhere.

Meditation takes persistence, I will say that. Though you’re only sitting for 15-30 minutes at a time you would be amazed how difficult it is to focus on the feeling of your breath in the nose for even 1 complete inhale and exhale. Then, once you’re able to do that you’ll be amazed how difficult it is to focus for 2 breaths. And so on… Yet, this is all that’s really required in order to send yourself down the path toward the most exhilarating experiences.

The mind has a natural tendency to produce thoughts. We all know that. However, you’ve likely not really seen thought for what it is. You’ve likely not watched it consciously for any period of time. As you sit and attempt to focus your entire mind on the feeling of the breath you’ll undoubtedly be taken away from that focus toward whatever the mind wants to churn up in the way of thoughts.

Are thoughts conscious or unconscious? You might question that for yourself as you begin meditating. You’ve probably never watched a thought form in your head and followed it to see what it does. As you meditate you will. Your attention will be pulled away from focusing on the breath to something more interesting that the mind cooks up. You might follow that thought as it builds adding more thoughts around the original focus of the thought. Or, you might follow it as it branches off 16 different ways into different thoughts entirely that are all linked loosely to the first thought. The thought-chains that are created can be brought to conscious awareness if you look at them – apply attention to them. Otherwise they are in the background… in the space between conscious and subconscious. They are being fueled by the unconscious during meditation but you could choose to ‘think’ about something and the thoughts become conscious and focused around whatever subject you chose.

The simple act of meditation does a couple things initially:

1. Focuses the mind on a small task with a tiny sensory footprint.
2. Relaxes the body completely so there is no bodily stress or concerns.
3. Trains the mind to re-focus on the area of attention repeatedly so that it becomes second nature after a while.
4. Slows down the barrage of thoughts that are being churned out.

As the number of thoughts becomes lessened the mind starts to achieve a strength that maybe you haven’t known before. It’s a kind of power that enables you to focus for progressively longer periods of time on one very small sensory input – the feeling of your breath coming in and out at some tiny spot around the nose and upper lip.

Eventually the mind-candy slows waaaay down and you’re able to experience brief moments without thought. Eventually these moments get longer. Absorption experiences start. Jhana starts. Eventually this process transforms the mind into something amazing. The mind becomes strong and unaffected by things that used to cause it discomfort… neurosis. You’ll notice that you’re relatively unaffected by things that used to bother you.

Why is that – are you a zombie now?

No! Meditation makes you much more alive than you ever were before. It gives you a new perspective on life as you realize how much time, energy, and efforts were wasted on things that really don’t matter. You’ll begin to experience life in the present moment as you never could have understood before. You may have read books on the present moment, Thich Nhat Hanh – a Vietnamese Buddhist monk has an amazing series of books you can find on mindfulness and the present moment. You might want to read those as you get started, they are a wonderful aid to help you practice getting into the present moment.

One benefit of meditation is that your subconscious that’s filled with fear, anger, and sadness churns out less dysfunctional material over time. See, when you’re sitting there quiet and watching the breath your subconscious will continually throw up a lot of information from the past that it wants you to look at. If you choose to you can look at it.

Everyone has painful memories of experiences from the past. Sitting quietly helps to bring those up. Occasionally you might cry during meditation because all the sudden sad thoughts overwhelm you and your eyes flood with tears. That’s a good thing. For major things like this it’s good to put meditation on hold and really think about the issue that brought tears to your eyes.

What is the reality of the situation? Can you change something? Often times you can change something about it… you can make a phone call, write a letter or even role-play out some interaction from the past with a friend you have now. You can change what happened in the past with the new role play situation and it can change your life from that time forward.

Nothing from the past has the power to affect you once you decide to eliminate it. It can’t. It’s finished. Done with. There is far too much present and future available to continue your life in a different way, a more functional and better way.

In fact, the only thing about the past that is still there – are the memories in your head about it. That’s IT. The action doesn’t exist anymore. It existed at one time and then it disappeared. Nobody in the world can bring it back. The memories you have about the issue are the only thing that exists – and you know – memories are only tiny electrical impulses… Change them by facing them and then doing things differently from today forward.

My father left my mother, me and my brother and sister when I was five or six years old. He did his part to come see us once a week usually and I can’t blame him for leaving as it was the right thing to do. For a long time I had memories of him and they made me feel sad. Sometime about my mid-teens I remember my girlfriend asking me if I missed my dad and if I had sad thoughts all the time about him. I told her, “Sure, I still think about him occasionally.”

But you know what? I spent the next couple days looking at the reality of the situation. He had left nearly 10 years before. He wasn’t mean to me or abusive to me in any way. He was just not there. Society was telling me that he should be there but when I thought about it myself… it didn’t really matter that he wasn’t there. I didn’t really need him close by and part of my life I realized. I got along fine from the time he left and I didn’t really know him.

Why would I want someone I didn’t know to interact with me more? The reality was, overall it really made no difference at all whether he was there or not. At that point I let go whatever dysfunction my memories and my subconscious were churning out. I moved forward. I don’t dislike my father. I just don’t know him. Should I know him? Society would answer – YES, you must know your father. You must care about him. You must do whatever you can to get close and remain close to him.

I think, what for? I’ve known lots of other people… To me it’s neither here nor there now and I’m happy in my own mind not thinking about him on a daily or weekly basis. Since my mid teens I can’t remember a time when I missed him or thought that I was missing out on a part of life for not having him as a close friend.

Even major things like this can be quickly gotten over if you just analyze the reality of the situation and realize that the only thing that exists are your memories. Question them. Question your beliefs. Question what society is telling you. You’re your own person. Nobody else is looking out for you like YOU are. Change you memories or change your present life such that the old memories don’t matter that much or have less power and you change your life.

So, if you’re crying as you sit and meditate that’s a great thing because you’ve just found something from the past that you can look at and eventually rid yourself of. There’s nothing too great, nothing too powerful to screw up the rest of your life. You gave it the power to affect you up until now – and now you can get rid of it. Don’t ignore it. Now’s the perfect opportunity to destroy it.

And so meditation provides this opportunity to quell the craziness in your mind that surely exists to some degree like it does in all of us. In fact, if you had no craziness you wouldn’t dream at all.

After a year of meditation you know what?

I didn’t dream at all for the next five or so years (I didn’t count, I’m using five as a minimum though). It was amazing to realize that the subconscious had no reason to create dreams anymore. Just outrageous really. My mind was so calm and at peace with the past, present and future that it didn’t create dreams for a long time.

Gradually after 5+ years the dreams slowly started again about events that I was stressing out over. I had stopped meditating after a year and I’ve no doubt that if I would have continued the dreamless state would have also.

Today I still have dreams, but they seem to be related to not achieving goals that I have fast enough. I don’t dreams about fear, anxiety or sadness about past events. I have dreams about the future and not being where I want to be. I think this gives me the motivation on a daily level I need to sustain over time so I reach all those goals.

I’ve started meditating again recently and already I’ve noticed that my mind is quiet and balanced when I shut my eyes and focus on my breath. I have little thought – little extraneous material popping into the conscious from that nether region between sub and conscious awareness.

Meditation is an incredible tool and one that is available to you:

1. Today
2. For free.
3. As much as you want.

Mind-blowing benefits are waiting for you with practice of as little as 30 minutes a day.

I think meditation is the most important thing you can possibly do for 30 minutes. I can’t name anything that even approaches it as a close 2nd. Nothing. Nothing has the power to change your life so completely.

I’ve created a 22-Day meditation e-book course on PDF (right click, choose “save target or file as…”) if you’re interested in downloading it:

22-Day Meditation Course, Meditation without Religion >

I’ve considered revising it to add a lot of information but if I do that I’ll likely turn it into a publishable book instead. For now – grab it for free and get started!

If you have any questions about meditation as you begin feel free to write me and I’ll help however I can. I’m not a Buddhist teacher or any other kind of teacher. I follow no religion about meditation myself and I can offer nothing but the reality of how I did it and the truth of what it did for me.

It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced and I know it would be for you too!

Here are some links to videos I did about my experiences with meditation. These are in no particular order, they are just numbered as a series.

Experience 1: Body relaxed, mind starts to follow

Exp 2:  Breath slows, body starts disappearing

Exp 3:  Fatness

Exp 4:  Consciousness expands

Exp 5:  Denseness of body

Exp 6:  Bliss & Joy

Exp 7:  Highly concentrated mind

Exp 8:  One pointedness of mind

Exp 9:  Dying – no breath

Exp 10:  Interconnected cosmos, at “one with all”

Exp 11:  Just as it is…

Exp 12:  Visualizations

Here are two audio links for mp3 files (best to right click and “save target (file) as…”) of me talking about my experience with meditation and what occurred:

Meditation History, Pt. 1 >

Meditation History, Pt. 2 >

Good luck on your path to a higher consciousness through eliminating dysfunctional material in your subconscious!

Best of Life!

Vern

One topic of great interest to me is flow. Flow is that state where a person is totally involved in doing something, so much so that no ego, thought or anything extraneous to the ‘doing’ exists for that person. Runners experience it. Graphic artists experience it. Engineers and artists experience it. Anyone that is doing anything can experience it if the conditions are right. Recently I wrote an article about “Owning the Creative Flow State.”

Flow occurs by definition as we’re ‘doing’ something. Flow operates by pulling huge chunks of data from memory and meshing it together in a stream of action and creativity that is seamless to ourselves and others as we operate in a peak state of doing. The mind is operating in a super-state at it’s optimum efficiency.

As cool as it is… Is flow the purest experience available to us as human beings?

No! There is something much more rare, exciting, and purely awesome to experience.

First, I know you’re wondering what do I mean by the purest experience?

I mean one that is as natural as possible. A pure experience exists when you aren’t doing anything. You are only experiencing. A pure experience is one that hasn’t been tainted by ego, memory, tradition, culture, societal expectation, morals, religious beliefs, or superstitions. The purest experience we can know isn’t tainted by the past or the future. Time is irrelevant. Unfelt. The purest experience is realized in real-time as one is fully immersed in the mindful pureness of the present moment.

Is such a thing even possible? If you think about it for a little while you might recognize that a very small baby might have this state of mind for a short time after it’s born and to a degree over the first couple years of life.

All of our first experiences as infants were of this same, pure quality. We weren’t perceiving anything through the filters of memory or the intricate cognitive schema already in place in an older child or adult. Infants have direct, unadulterated, absolutely pure experience of everything in the world around them. It’s a blissful state of interacting with their environment from the standpoint of having no idea whether they are connected to, or separate from the environment surrounding them.

The good news is I’m not going to ask you to throw on some diapers and revert to childhood to experience what the infant can do by default. To reach this state as an adult will take some effort, but if you choose to pursue it you’ll find peace of mind, balance, and learn a little bit about the depth of your mind and what it’s capable of. Even better, if you dedicate yourself to it you may go on to explore many levels of experience that occur beyond this first level of pure and simple experience. There are many awesome states of mind that can be reached with practice.

I’m speaking about the states of mind Theravada Buddhists recognize as the “Jhanas”.

Jhanas are levels that occur during the simple meditation process of focusing on the breath as you breath in and out. If you can breath, you can meditate on the breath. It’s almost that simple – to begin anyway. There are 4 material Jhanas and 4 immaterial Jhanas. Each of them is the most amazing state you will ever experience, your life will take on new meaning as you enter, one by one these immensely blissful, life-changing states. These are also referred to as states of absorption. Jhanas are bizarre states in that your mind doesn’t function as it has up to this point in your life. These are pure states that are born of concentration on an object or subject, in this case the breath. They are absolutely the purest experience available to us during our lives.

Experiencing the first Jhana occurs as the result of focusing on the breath over a number of sessions. A session might last 15 minutes or 30 minutes. Up to you really. Some meditators like to make a show of how long they can sit in one place meditating for 3 hours, 5 or 10 hours. One need not meditate for more than 20-30 minutes or up to an hour if you’re comfortable enough.

The Jhana states can be elusive for a while. It may take you 5 sessions or 500 sessions, and realistically there are people that have meditated for 20 years and that have not entered Jhana. For myself, flying blind without a teacher or books I experienced the first Jhana in a couple months. It is not that difficult, and I’ll share some secrets about avoiding behaviors that push them away and show you how to attain Jhana quickly in future blog posts I have planned.

I’ll share with you my personal experience of entering the first Jhana below… which, coincidentally (or not) closely parallels a Christian’s ‘ecstatic’ experience. My mother explained to me what she felt the night she became a born-again Christian kneeling on the floor of our living room in front of the TV watching an evangelical pastor and you know what? What she described was VERY similar to what I’ve experienced in the first Jhana while meditating. Really, I believe only the path is different. That night changed her life. She attributed the state of mind she reached as being touched by the hand of God. You too may attribute it to god or something else – and that’s again up to you. It’s a physical, emotional and spiritual feeling that is overwhelming and short-circuits your rationality. It’s not logical or objective… it just is. The most amazing experience of your life, guaranteed.

Over the years I’ve entered the Jhanas many times and it’s no less awesome each time it occurs. I’ll try to relay the essence of it below…

Sitting on the floor of my bedroom, in a half-lotus position on the carpet I was watching the breath go in and out, trying to keep my mind (monkey-mind, beginners sometimes call it) focused on the very small point at the tip of my nose where I felt my breath enter and exit with each inhalation and exhalation. The body was calm, absolutely relaxed and without pain, itch or other discomfort. Being seated in this way felt solid and very relaxing. The mind was slowing down it’s barrage of thought and after 20 minutes thought ceased altogether and I was able to focus clearly on the barely perceptible feeling at the nose’s tip.

After being focused completely on the breath at the nose for eight in and out-breath cycles I noticed that my hands and feet felt light and tingly. Soon my chest felt it too. Then, after a couple more breaths I noticed that my breaths were not deep any more. They were shallow. Smooth. Not forced. They were becoming even lighter. My chest was moving only the slightest bit as my diaphragm appeared to either stop working or to have slowed down to about 5% of normal movement. My entire body tingled and a pin point of bright white light appeared in my mind. My eyes were closed and the room was dark, and yet this tiny light started to grow in radiance with each breath. I was very calm, very relaxed. The mind was free of thought. Not one thought existed in my mind. Soon the dot had grown to be a brilliant circle of the brightest light. I began to feel happy. This general sense of joy crept up and grew slowly in intensity. With it I felt a sense of release… This feeling of release also grew and was amazing in the power it had to free up every fragment of tension in my body and mind. I had no idea my mind was tense, until this release made it grow less and less tense. It was so amazing. Tension in my muscles and mind was ebbing away. As it did the bliss increased. The circle in my mind became larger and more bright during this process. It was as if the brilliant light in my mind was pure bliss… pure love… it was as if it was engulfing me. It seemed that it wouldn’t stop growing and increasing in power.

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it to increase more – it increased more and took me to a new level of bliss, happiness… pure joy that I’ve never experienced ever in my life before. Though I don’t believe that god is available to me here on earth the experience was truly as if god was there wrapping me in bliss. To say anything less doesn’t make sense. Even so, it was a greater feeling than even that. It was so surreal that I began to wonder if my mind and body could stand it anymore. The first few times entering the first Jhana I was a bit tentative about it. But I kept letting go little by little of any concern and the feeling would increase. HOW could it increase more? I wondered. I’d do a mini-experiment and hold back from letting go and then let go just a little more. More bliss! It was phenomenal beyond words.

It was an amazing experience that I could never come close to explaining with just words. I hope my description convinces you to try it for yourself at some point though, as that’s the only way to understand what I mean when I say it’s the purest experience available to us here on earth. You’re pre-wired for them just like me and everyone else.

Oh, I need to clarify. This feeling of amazing bliss is what you experience just before you enter the amazing state of the first Jhana! You’re not even there yet at this point. This first experience is like the doorway to Jhana. It is the first pure experience that you’ll have on the path.

Oh, and this isn’t all there is… there are 8 levels of Jhana and a whole lot more absorption experiences that are different and not of the same type of bliss and ecstasy but that are equally or more phenomenal in their own way. Meditation provides a path into the mind where these states exist already for you and you and you. Everyone can find these states with the right practice. Physical practice, not religious.

Some of you might have preconceived negative ideas about doing a Buddhist meditation if you are Christian or of some other religious background. I mention it as Buddhist meditation because I read about it in a Buddhist book and heard about it from a Buddhist man.

Do you need to be Buddhist to practice this meditation – no, absolutely not. Can you still go forward through the levels of Jhana and not give one thought to becoming Buddhist? Yes, absolutely. Don’t get caught up in the idea that meditation need be a religious act. Watching the breath go in and out doesn’t need to be anything but a physical act.

In 1997 I started to meditate as a result of a couple things. My wife was Buddhist and her father took the time to explain meditation to me in the Theravada tradition. He was a general surgeon at a small hospital in the mid-West. He said he found meditation relaxing, and experienced an equanimity or a balance that helped him during surgery and in dealing with emotional patients and other stresses of the job. He gave me a book by William Hart called, The Art of Living. Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S.N. Goenka which layed out the process in far more detail than I needed. I read the book and pulled the bare essence from it. In other words, I pulled out the physical act of meditation from among the Buddhist vocabulary, beliefs, rules and laws.

I started sitting and focusing on the breath, not believing anything about Buddhism or any other ism. I didn’t purify myself first or in any way seek to abide by some Buddhist criteria for right thoughts, right speech, right action and right occupation. I just wasn’t concerned with any of that since what I knew about the Buddha was that he sat down and entered the Jhanas, and was enlightened. After enlightenment he told the people that they should not believe anything he said as the truth, but try it for themselves. One of the primary beliefs in Buddhism is to test things for yourself and, if true – adopt it. If not, throw it away as worthless for you.

I took that approach.

I hope I’ve piqued your interest about the Jhanas and other states of absorption and you choose to investigate further. If you want to begin meditation you can download a free meditation course I created in e-book format in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format.

22-Day Meditation Course Info Page >

If you’re interested in learning more about my experience with meditation I have a page of audio and video downloads where I detail many of the experiences here at my Bio II page >

Best of Life!

Vern
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Amy, a girl wanting to download an e-book I have on one of my other sites left me a note. I promptly visited her blog and found the next post for Aim for Awesome… Floating inside an Isolation Tank! She describes her other-worldly experience for you at her blog.

Here is her original isolation tank experience >

Since I meditated a long time ago I’ve been wondering about using an isolation tank for that purpose. Would it be silent like a cave here in Thailand is? Caves are absolutely quiet. I’ve never experienced life so devoid of sound. There’s only the sound of your breath – like Amy describes while floating in her Isolation Chamber (Tank).

Did you see the movie where the people would go into these altered states of consciousness while floating in isolation tanks? I can’t remember what it was called, I hope it’s not “Altered States” because that phrase popped into my head and it seems appropriate. Was that it?

During deep meditation levels, levels of jhana or whatever you choose to call them there are profound experiences to be had. If anyone has had experience while meditating (focusing on the breath) while inside one of these isolation chambers I’d love to hear about it!

Best of Life!

I was eating today and realized that now would be a good time to do what I’ve thought about doing over the last couple years here in Thailand.

If all goes as planned over the next day or so I’ll climb about 1237 steep steps leading to a Chedi and Buddha on the top of a mountain at a Buddhist temple close to where I am here in Thailand. I’ll meditate there for a couple/few days to see if all the levels of jhana return and if they do – to what degree – and see if it’s an experience that’s worth doing anymore.

I sat on the floor of the shower on a folded up towel two nights ago and meditated like I used to roughly 10 years ago. The peace and tranquility came quickly and I was in that state hovering around jhana… and some water poured out of the shower nozzle above me and to the left and when it hit the floor and bounced it splashed my folded left leg and arm.

When the water touched the body there was no feeling that the body was “me” or what the me usually thinks of as “me”. Sometimes it’s a dog’s bark that sends me into jhana quickly, other times a mosquito bite… Usually jhana just comes when it comes. The water splashing the body brought jhana and it was a nice half-hour meditation with jhana present and the feeling of “no body, no mind, no Vern”.

I’ve sat like this off and on over the past 10 years – maybe 20 times? Jhana usually comes easily, within minutes and stays as long as the body sits there, sometimes lasting for a while after I’m up and moving about too.

I came to Thailand to find out what the experiences were that came to me during meditation. The experiences were so radically different from anything my “regular” conscious had ever seen. When the experiences started to happen all throughout the day whether I was sitting down to meditate or not – it was quite overwhelming.

The ego was dissolving and it was happening very fast. I had to make a choice to either continue and go the distance so to speak… or, to stop and not meditate again in the hopes that the process would stop too.

I stopped meditating and the process gradually, over years, slowed down to the point it’s at now. I feel the process come over me maybe once per month or a couple times, that’s all. Contrast that with every few minutes or hours when I first decided to stop and it’s quite an improvement.

You might wonder, why would someone run away from what Buddhists call Nirvana? What is there to be afraid of?

Well for me – there was nobody telling me what was going on exactly. I had asked a few monks at temples in Florida where I was when all this happened and they didn’t really understand English as well as what I needed. They couldn’t give me the answers I needed to hear, most of all – was this a safe thing to do without guidance? I mean, there was a very distinct possibility that I was losing my mind, not just my ego!

To me – having “Vern” go away with the possibility never to return was a scary thought. Not that “Vern” was such a great thing, but I was totally unsure of what would come next. I didn’t know WHAT Nirvana was. I STILL don’t understand what it is. I have a hard time believing that Jiddu Krishnamurti, Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and others were enlightened. I think not in fact. I am not sure the Buddha was enlightened because I’ve not met him.

I’ve not met anyone I consider enlightened at ALL with the possible exception of the Abbot at Wat Pah Nanachat, a Temple in Warin Chamrap near the city of Ubon Ratchathani in Thailand’s Northeast. It was with him that I related the meditative experiences of the past and it was he who said, “it sounds like jhana…” His face was beaming – his whole countenance was beaming when he told me that jhana is what all the monks at the temple are hoping to enter.

He told me that I was welcome to stay at the Wat and continue the process for as long as I wished…

I stayed overnight there. It was a full-moon weekend and there were many people that came from outlying villages and cities to spend the night at Wat Pah chanting and meditating. Every full moon they have this type of thing.

It was during some chanting in one of the halls that it hit me again why I didn’t seek out Buddhism first before starting my meditation practice.

BuddhISM is just like every other ISM. There is so much extra added to the religous experience – to the eternal… that it doesn’t feel “right” to me anymore. Me chanting words that I couldn’t understand wasn’t bringing me any closer to a mind free of thought and reaction. It was an “extra” that man had created that helps the religion and those associated with it – to feel better about themselves and their group. It fosters a group cohesiveness type feeling that I don’t really believe in, nor have the need for.

When I meditated I sought out the very basics and I skipped over as much of the ISM associated with it as possible. To this day I don’t know the proper terms Thai Buddhists call “mindfulness” or “Vipassana”. I don’t know because I don’t care.

I care about the experience of the Buddha – what did he DO? The HOW is interesting to me – as I can use that as a base, but I don’t believe for one second that I need to follow EXACTLY everything he did to get where he supposedly got. I am open to the idea that he may have found “one” way to get there. But likely NOT the only way.

There are many other experiences I’ve read about since stopping meditation that sound similar to the state that Vipassana helped me find. I don’t believe that Vipassana offers the only tools to reach the state and start the process.

So anyway, I left Wat Pah Nanachat after spending just one night. I skipped the walking around town in the morning to collect food and walked about 6km until someone picked me up and asked if I wanted a ride into Ubon Ratchathani.

If you’re interested in meditation without all the fluff – I’ve created a 22-day meditation without religion course in Adobe PDF format as a free download in the “Pages” section on this Aim for Awesome site. Download it and have a look. Let me know what you think with a comment or at my email address on the “Contact” page.

Tomorrow I will head up the mountain about 10 am my time and see how it goes. I may be asked to leave at sunset, though I think that it’s such a long climb that the monks don’t go up there daily. If they did find me sitting there, would they ask me to leave? Not sure. If they ask me while I’m deep in Jhana would I hear them?

I’ll take enough food and water up and bring the phone so I can talk into the voice recorder about anything that occurs worth talking about.

OK, I will update you when I return, I’m thinking it will be 2 or 3 days, but I can see me going for a week or so if I take a trip down the mountain for food and then go back up.

You know something that just came to mind… I think the phone works up there on the mountain, as I’ve been there before and I think I remember that. If that’s true, I could take photos and send them to a blogger-blog or send videos to YouTube if the site has been unblocked in Thailand (Youtube has been blocked for months now over a disrespectful video of Thailand’s King). I just checked Youtube and still blocked.

Maybe I’ll delay the trip until the following day if I can get some form of daily blogging going, even if it’s only a brief text comment written from the phone to this blog. I’ll work on it and post again here before I go.

Best of Life!