A Zen Meditator Crosses the Arising & Passing Away

The Arising & Passing Away
I began to gradually increase the frequency of my sits and started attending about one day-long retreat and a half-day retreat per month. I started seeing effects from my increased practice in daily life. In particular, I started noticing impermanence on a much finer level than was possible before. I started noticing that everything was fluxing at the rate of about 20 times per second. Everything started to seem more fluid than ever before. When using this kind of investigation to look at painful sensations, the pain started to seem transparent.

In this time period, I also stumbled across the 'Doing It vs. Getting It Done' podcast in which Kenneth, Daniel Ingram, Hokai Sobol, Vince Horn and Tarin Greco participated ( www.interactivebuddha.com/podcasts.shtml ). Soon after that, I was meditating at home with my wife when her phone rang. I was struck by how focussed I could remain despite that distraction. I then decided to try out the technique described in the above-mentioned podcast, where you invite a vaster observer to look at your achieved state of meditation.

After I did that, my breath began to quicken and I was suddenly enveloped by extremely strong sensations of full-body bliss that were much stronger than anything I had ever felt before in my life in any context. It felt like the crown of my head opened up and the universe flowed into it, melting my concept of self-and-other. The experience was also clearly radiant. The feelings of bliss were visualized as countless tiny spheres of light enveloping my body. I opened my eyes and looked at my meditation timer and noticed that much more time had gone by than seemed to be the case experientially.

I'll start with a little history: About a year of so ago, I became interested in meditation and found that there was a Zen group in my area. I started attending regularly and making the 'shikantaza' (just-sitting) meditation part of my daily life. Initially, I was attracted to the message presented there, which was basically Dogen's description that everyone is already enlightened (or endowed with Buddha-nature) but most people fail to realize it because they don't meditate.

I stuck with the practice faithfully and honestly started to feel a lot better with a solid daily meditation practice, which consisted of a 30-minute sit in the morning and another in the evening. But, after a while, I started to question the practice. Maybe it's my own impatient nature, but I was also put off by the fact that almost no instruction was given whatsoever. The only thing that was stressed was that the spine should be straight.

At some point, I decided to check what the rival Zen school'”Rinzai'”were offering. They also offered sitting meditation but gave different instructions. Instead of 'just-sitting,' the emphasis was solidly on the breath in general and prolonging each exhalation in particular. Beginners were recommended to count the breath. I found this style to be much more conducive for me in settling my mind and it helped me to disassociate with my mental dialogue.

At some point, I also began koan training and began intensely probing into the nature of existence and the observer that seemed to be watching the movie that is my life.

Gradual Ascent
It soon became apparent to me that my way out of this misery was more mediation. So I started fitting in as much meditation into my life as possible while maintaining my 9-5 job and family life. I started focusing on concentration in meditation more than I had in the past and began to notice gradual improvement in that area. Gradually, I started feeling more calm and a growing sense of equanimity in my life.

The Afterglow
For the next couple of weeks after, I felt amazingly light and carefree. Everyone and everything seemed much more pleasant than before. I felt confident like never before and I often had the feeling that everything in the universe was aware. Sometimes, it felt like I could forget myself entirely and inhabit the space surrounding this body. For instance, in this same time period, I went to a yoga class and noticed early into the class that it felt like I had become the whole room. I felt disassociated with my body. Everything in life seemed almost magical. It felt that life before was a dream and I started entertaining the idea that I was enlightened. The event was so literally mind blowing though that it seemed hard to calm back down.

Paradise Lost
Not long after that, I started to get my first taste of the dukkha nanas and eventually discarded the idea that I was enlightened as foolish. Some stressful events had cropped up in my life and I felt the mental anguish with an extraordinary amount of sensitivity. The fact that my concept of self had become so nebulous began to feel terrifying. For the first time in many years, I found myself crying. In many situations, I would notice that a friend or family member was suffering and feel compelled to take on their pain for them. It felt like there was something deep inside me that could extinguish this suffering but I couldn't get to it and instead I would start to feel despair. All of this felt especially hard to deal with considering that my life shortly before seemed so nearly perfect.

A Stumble into the Formless
One night, I was meditating and my bodily sensations became ever more subtle. I saw a field of luminous radiant white energy behind my eyelids. I focused on relaxing as much as possible and then noticed that the luminosity began to dissolve along with my sensation of breathing or having a physical body. This was the first time in my life that anything like this had happened consciously. I started to wonder if this state is something I pass through unconsciously during sleep. I came out of it with the sense that my physical body was very distant and that I had to travel back to it. Admittedly, I first thought this was Emptiness with a capital 'E' but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this experience was not a fruition.

Present
As for now, I am inspired to attain Stream Entry as soon as realistically possible.

Cool notes notbrian!!!

Sounds fairly straightforward. You are definitely on the ride. Owen was/is a rinzai nut and he did all that and 1st path (I think) in the rinzai tradition. He talks at length of his experiences here in some of our podcasts: thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/

Looking forward to hearing your progress to Stream Entry. no doubt with the determination you've shown in your introduction, you'll get there soon enough.

Welcome!!



Nick

Hi Nick,

Thank you very much for your response and for welcoming me here. I found your words very encouraging. I'll check out the link you sent and the podcasts in it.

It's odd how straightforward this thing has unfolded so far because I was initially kind of skeptical of the whole thing. The fact that Zen is so bare bones was initially attractive to me and, after I started doing koan work, I started to get more and more faith in the process. After that, progress seemed to speed up. Maintaining that faith though seems to be an ongoing project though.

The Rinzai approach has a lot going for it. But now I'm also really drawn to the jhanas and I find the meditation maps from Theravada to be really helpful.