4/29 - A new kind of challenge

I had a long, dramatic post written up, but I fear it would be imprudent to post it just yet. In lieu of that, here's the essence of it.

This next stage is interesting. The more I want it, the harder I try, the more I even think about it, the harder it is to achieve. I've had tastes of it, but it's far from stable. The further I go, the more it feels like I'm just sitting there. No doubt this is why the main Zen practice is called shikantaza, which translates as "just sitting," and why it's so hard to describe in words.

If it never stabilizes, oh well. If it does, I should have more to write. In the mean time, I suspect not much of interest will happen.

Monkey and elephant

Here's a nice picturesque representation of what shamatha meditation is all about.

The second half of the page illustrates the stages.

4/25/08 – Ace, Bob, or Aditya?

Imagine, if you will, the local video arcade. Ace and Bob have just finished another long day at the factory, and as usual, are cooling off steam playing Ultimate Fighter Pilot. There's a war going on out there, but both men have somehow, thankfully, avoided the draft.

Blam! Every time he downs a bogey, Bob gleefully imagines he's a true flyboy. It's a good way to distract him from reality. He knows he should be at home with his wife and kids, and the bills surely aren't going to pay themselves. But man, what a rush! Nothing will ever come of it, but he doesn't want to admit that. Maybe, just maybe, an Air Force recruiter will happen by, and SEE, dammit, that he is The One. Then he'll really be somebody...

Ace has always had a funny feeling in the back of his mind. He doesn't know why he's always been attracted to games like this -- but whatever, it's fun. Every now and then, he gets shot down, and wonders why he's wasting his time. But something keeps him there. He doesn't know it -- at least not yet -- but years ago, he was one of Britain's top guns. In his head, just behind the amnesia, a little man is sitting, smiling at the irony. No matter, he thinks; soon, destiny will take its inevitable course, and in a flash of insight, all will become clear...

Meanwhile, next door, Aditya sits writing stupid stories, knowing fully well he should be meditating instead.

4/25 – Get enlightened or become a vegetable trying

So I’m sick of trying to locate the breath below my nostrils. My hay fever is bulldozing right over the Claritin, and besides, I think years of ineptitude with shaving have left the skin above my lips a barren, insensitive wasteland.

So I asked myself today, just wtf IS meditation? Well, I thought I’d try a different version, one that comes with a warning label: “for advanced meditators only!” Now, I’m no advanced meditator, but read the canonical description of shamatha without an object:

By completely abandoning thought and the object of thought
One should let the mind settle in the natural state of an infant.

Hey, I could do that! It sounds like how I spend most of my time (just ask Grant)! In fact, it sounds suspiciously like what I imagined meditation to be before I was disabused of the notion by such statements as this, written by Tibetan Buddhist adept and scholar Alan Wallace in his indispensable The Attention Revolution:

During the early 1970s, I knew of one fellow who decided on his own that the whole point of meditation was to stop thinking, and he diligently applied himself to this goal for days on end. Eventually, he reached this goal by becoming vegetative, unable even to feed himself, and he needed to be hospitalized.

Hmm… Then a few chapters later, we have quotes from Padmasambhava and Tsongkhapa, both founders of Tibetan Buddhist schools:

Vacantly direct your eyes into the space in front of you. See that thoughts pertaining to [everything] are completely cut off.

And

Resolve, “I will settle the mind without thinking about any object.”

So there you have it, folks. It’s all just a big hoax.

Just kidding. Luckily I have a few lamas here to help me sort it out.

4/23 - Not just a fluke

Now for some good news: today's sessions suggest that perhaps I wasn't just lucky these past few weeks. I think I'm doing just fine progress-wise.

4/23 Talking to myself

I was gazing at a tree after meditating outside, and I almost said out loud “wow, isn’t that beautiful.” Not very clever. In fact I wasn’t taking in the beauty at all -- I was only telling myself how obviously beautiful it must be. Sometimes I have to do that, I think: use a few words to remind my brain what I’m “supposed to be” focusing on.

Do you ever do that? Like while working out a problem, talk either out loud or in your head to jump-start the thinking process that got sidetracked, bogged down, or simply faded out a few seconds ago?

4/23 Stream of consciousness

Breathe in… breathe out… breathe STUPID FLY get off my nose! … breathe … why I’ll KILL YOU!! … breathe in … what?! only 12 minutes so far?! … breathe out … gosh I hope I don’t waste all 3 months like this … breathe maybe I should take a nap.

So I’m an impatient, uncompassionate, anxious, neurotic, drowsy wreck. Oh well, at least it’s an improvement over two weeks ago, when I didn’t even know it! Welcome to the untrained mind, I guess.