[Buddha-l] Meditation-Testing the Spirits

[Jackhat1 at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/13/2009 1:26:54 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
jehms at xs4all.nl writes:

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. 
====
Maybe but after 12-20 minutes this activity starts to slow down.
=======
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.  
====
More likely is that they notice that the mental events being observed is  
the same as the mind; there is nothing else there; no self exists.
=====
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. 
==
They learn to just observe mental events impersonally and neutrally not  as 
alien events.
====
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. 
====
More likely is they learn peace. They don't want it to stop. They learn  to 
let it all go. You don't have to reach nibbana to experience  equanimity.
===
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."
===
Sure they learn that our concepts of self is an illusion. They don't  learn 
that their mental life is an illusion. The learn that the physical  
universe is transient, ultimately unsatisfactory and selfless. This is  different 
than learning the physical universe doesn't exist.


jack  




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