[Buddha-l] Meditation-Testing the Spirits

[Ngawang Dorje]

Hi,
 
Elizabeth Hillstorm, in her book, Testing the Spirits, 114-115, wrote:
 
"As meditators passively watch their own mental states come and go without trying to control them, these begin to fluctuate more and more rapidly and unpredictably. After a while this chaotic activity creates the strong impression that the mental events are springing into life on their own, from some separate source, rather than the observer's own mind. As meditators persist with this practice, they also notice that there is a definite separation between the mental events being observed and the mind that is doing the observing. As meditation progresses still further, both the mental events and the observing mind begin to seem alien and impersonal, as if they do not really belong to the observer. At about this point the meditator's sense of "self" becomes confused and weakened, and finally it disappears entirely for brief periods of time. This experience of dissolution strongly reinforces the Buddhist notion that there actually is no such thing as an "I"
 or "myself" - that such concepts are actually false constructions of the mind. 

At still deeper levels, meditators eventually reach a stage in which their awareness of events and the events themselves seem inextricably bound together and the whole scene churns in a wild state of flux. Ideas, images and thoughts seem to appear and then dissolve into nothingness with great rapidity. At this point every aspect of mental life (and the physical world itself) seems impermanent, transitory and alien, and disturbed meditators desperately want it all to stop. Relief finally comes when meditators break through Nirvana, a state in which all awareness of physical and mental phenomena ceases, at least for a short time. Reaching this stage ostensibly produces permanent changes in consciousness. Inner processes are set in motion which fill the meditator with equanimity and bliss. These presumably destroy defiling mental states like self-interest, ambition, greed and hatred, and ensure advanced placement in the next life. When interpreted through
 Eastern lenses, these experiences strongly reinforce the Buddhist belief that the physical universe, our concepts of self and even our inner mental life are only illusions."
 
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Any comments?
 
 
Regards,
Rahula