simmonds@demon.siemens.com (Tom Simmonds) (06/07/91)
The following is a slightly edited piece of an email discussion I had recently. I thought that some of you might find it interesting, so I decided to post it. It's a mix of memories and thoughts about meditation - a sketch of some experiences along a meandering path. Part of it (toward the end) is a repeat of one of my posts from a while ago, regarding a method of meditation from the Surangama Sutra, and my limited interpretation of it. This is quite long, and I apologize for that. I hope you won't be bored by it. >You mentioned your practice of Zen meditation. Since I myself am a >practicer (not just a "theoretician"), I would be interested to >hear of the kind of meditation you employ and what experiences >you have had thus far. Who have you studied under and what texts >have influenced you? Hmm... That's a tough one. I've been at this for such a long time it's hard to pinpoint all the influences. As for teachers, you know my general attitude about that; so there haven't been many, and none for very long. In a way, I consider everyone and everything a teacher. Something my grandfather told me near the end of his life: "You can learn something from every person you meet." Good advice, I think. As a child, I remember feeling that I was not my body, and trying in various ways to free myself from the physical, which I felt was too limiting. I remember closing my eyes and "flying" over the rooftops in my mind. My bed was my magic carpet. My earliest teachers, religiously speaking, were ministers of the Lutheran Church. Somehow, amid all the dogma (which is what eventually drove me away), I did manage to pick up something of a "mystical" idea - life and the universe as the direct manifestation of God. Later on, as I drifted away from the Lutheran Church, my love of nature and my love of literature came together when I read Walden. Something about Thoreau's approach to life resonated in me. Since he credited much of his insight to the Vedas, I went to the local library and read the Upanishads. So began my interest in Eastern religion. >From then on, I read many books about yoga, meditation, Buddhism, Taoism, etc., and experimented with the techniques I read about. I had many experiences of various kinds. On one occasion, for example, I was in a kind of "blank" state, infinite voidness would be a close-enough description, (which, by the way, I only "recognized" as such in retrospect), when suddenly there was a loud noise, like a sharp clap of thunder, and a flash of white light, which seemed to flash everywhere at once, filling the infinite void, sort of "cosmic" thunder and lightning. Immediately, I found myself "back" in my room, sitting on the floor, extremely alert, charged with energy, with an inexplicable feeling of joy and well-being. That condition lasted for several days. I wondered what had happened: Had I "seen" God or Brahman or something? Had I tapped some kind of latent psychic energy, like kundalini? WHAT WAS THAT?! A year or two later, I attended a small gathering of Tantric Buddhists to meet and hear a monk/teacher who was visiting from India and was speaking at the student center (it was the 60's, and that kind of thing was quite common). He spoke about how difficult it is to stay on the path, and about the distractions that can side-track us. He spoke about not getting attached to siddhis that come in the course of practicing meditation. I asked him about that flash of light, and he said: "Sometimes, when people meditate, they have hallucinations. If you get attached to such things, you'll never make any progress. Just forget about it." What a disappointment! A hallucination?! No, it couldn't be. I didn't believe him. Still, I was impressed enough to stick around with his group of followers for a couple of weeks; but when he left and I found myself in the midst of a group of people who practiced something that struck me as a cross between a Catholic ritual/mass and a caricature of an American Indian rain-dance, in a room with a swastika symbol (yes, I know it's ancient and much older than Nazism, but the mental associations were too strong to be conducive to meditation), I dismissed the entire thing, teacher and all, as a sham. The group was called Ananda Marga, by the way. I have since realized that the monk was right about the thunder and lightning. Attachment to some past experience or to some specific "altered state" is an obstacle to enlightenment. He did teach me something after all, even if Ananda Marga was a bust. I became dedicated to discovering the truth for myself. I decided to look for translations of Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese texts (the older the better), so that I could get closer to the sources and roots of Eastern religions. As time went on, the more I read and learned and meditated, the more interested I became in Zen. It seemed to cut through all the complexities: the hoards of deities typical of Indian and Tibetan sects, the elaborate mental visualizations and imaginings of some schools of yoga, the complex models of the structure of reality, the preoccupation with siddhis, mantras, yantras, astrology, rituals, etc. It focused on meditation and direct experience of reality "as it is", and that appealed to me (and still does). So, for quite a long time, I just went along reading sutras and such and meditating. I was very profoundly influenced by the writings of D.T. Suzuki. There were times when some phrase or other would trigger an experience of some sort, an inexpressible little flash of insight. Sometime in the mid-seventies I had a "breakthrough" experience in my meditation. I had been meditating in the woods, in one of my favorite spots, on a pleasant autumn day. After meditating (zazen) for a half hour or so, I was sitting there, eyes open, peacefully immersed in experience, when a leaf drifted to the ground just a foot or so in front of me. I guess my mind was clear enough to just let the experience flow without thinking. After it happened, I felt overwhelmed. I can't describe how I felt or what that experience was like. Suddenly, everything was clear and simple and absolutely free. I jumped up and ran, laughing, down the trail. I have only recently learned that Lao-tzu is supposed to have experienced enlightenment at the falling of a leaf. Now that I've learned that, I'm trying to forget it (not so easy). :-) Then, in the late 70's, I took a night class in yoga at the local school. I had practiced a little yoga on my own, and I thought the asanas and the relaxation would do me some good. The yoga teacher, a man by the name of Alan Cohen, turned out to be very good. He and I became more like good friends than teacher and student - we were fellow travellers who were, for a time, on parallel paths. There was a core of people in the class who met every Sunday night for a pot-luck vegetarian dinner, song, meditation, and discussion. The backgrounds and interests of the people were very widely varied, from traditional yogis, to people interested in Native American religions, to new-agers, to me. Alan somehow held us together as a cohesive group. He never pushed any particular tradition or method. He seemed to be open to everything, and the Sunday night gatherings were thoroughly unpredictable. He taught me alot about "trusting the flow" and the kind of openness that he calls "love". Since then, he has written several books and has become quite well known in some "new-age" circles. Now, he runs a yoga retreat in Hawaii, writes books, records tapes of meditations and music, and he travels around the U.S., and the world, running "love workshops" and weekend yoga retreats. I haven't seen him in years. As for meditation methods, I've used many different ones. From the elaborate tantric visualizations, to mantra-repetition, to zazen. One of my favorite books on meditation is Shunryu Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind". In the Surangama Sutra, there is a chapter on Avalokitesvara's Complete Enlightenment, in which Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva (aka. Kwannon) is asked by Buddha to describe the method whereby he attained enlightenment. He says that he used the vehicle of sound in his meditation, and he goes on to describe the stages he passed through. Here it is, along with my comments, which represent my limited understanding of the Sutra. The text from the Sutra is indented. (I) At the start, by directing the hearing into the stream, this organ became detached from its object. This can be accomplished as follows: Focus attention on a sound. Think of it first as coming from some source external to you; then think of it as something within your own mind (like a dream). In each case, notice what the sound "sounds like" (its pitch and tone, for instance). At first, this gave me trouble because the sound seems to have a spatial location, and I couldn't let go of the idea that it was "over there", outside of me. What got me over that hurdle was to think of the location as being in a kind of "dream space". In other words, I internalized space itself as a part of the experience. Notice that the sound "sounds" the same, regardless of whether you think of it as an external object or something in your own mind or "experience field". Recognizing both categories, external and internal, as extraneous to the experience, abandon both concepts and focus on the sound itself. You regard it as neither internal nor external. Keep attention focused on the experience of the sound. Don't fight with distracting thoughts; don't try to force them to stop. Whatever thoughts come into your mind, just notice them and let them go, without getting attached to them. The sound, along with any thoughts that pass, becomes a self-contained stream of consciousness, which flows without effort. Gradually, your mind becomes quiet and the distracting thoughts subside. This is called the "stream-entered" state. (This may take alot of practice to achieve). (II) By wiping out the concept of both sound and stream-entry, Both disturbance and stillness Clearly became non-existent. In the stream-entered state, you'll find that you regard the sound as an object within the stream of consciousness. You'll also find that you make an object of the stream of consciousness itself, as something you observe, in much the same way that you watch a movie or listen to a recording. You tend to separate yourself from the experience. You regard it as a disturbance that goes on in the still water of your consciousness, like ripples in a still pond. In this step, you abandon the concepts of the sound and the stream as things with an existence of their own. In other words, you dissolve the subject- object dichotomy. The disturbance is not something separate from the medium of consciousness, and consciousness ("stillness") is not something separate from "disturbance". (III) Thus advancing step by step, Both the hearing and its object came to an end; But I did not stop where they ended. The sound is no longer thought of as an object of awareness. The awareness and the sound are the same thing. The state achieved at this point is known as "relative voidness". Avalokitesvara went beyond this. (IV) When the awareness of this state and the state itself were realized as non-existent, The awareness of voidness became all-embracing, After the elimination of subject and object relating to voidness. Then the disappearance of creation and annihilation Resulted in the state of Nirvana becoming manifest. In the relative voidness, there is still an idea of being in a state which is something that is an object of attention and which is distinguishable from other possible states. Although you may imagine that there are other possible states, there are no other states present and manifest, and the distinction is imaginary. In addition, there is still an idea that there is a mind, a subjective element of some kind, which serves as the medium for the state. When you try to observe this subjective mind, you discover that it is nowhere to be found. In fact, it is the presence of the state, and your idea that it is an object, which you use to define the subjective element, as that which observes the object. When this is realized, the subject-object dichotomy is recognized as an extraneous conceptual distinction which is superimposed on the experience. When the subject-object concept relating to the state is abandoned, the "absolute voidness" is manifested. Whatever idea of a "state" is recognized, know that it is a dualistic idea and abandon it. At this stage, the mind does not rest in any conditional, dualistic, or relative idea of anything either existing or not existing (hence the disappearance of the ideas of creation and annihilation). There should be no clinging to any particular state and no striving toward any particular state. D.T. Suzuki called this the "No-Abiding Mind". Watch out! If you think "This state of mind is the No-Abiding Mind" or "This is Nirvana", or some such thing, that's not it - that's clinging to a state. Some of my other favorite texts: the Lankavatara Sutra; the Vajracchedika Sutra ("Diamond Cutter of Doubts"); the Hridaya (Heart) Sutra; Zen Flesh, Zen Bones; almost anything by D.T. Suzuki, but especially his essays on the Prajna-Paramita sutras. Regarding the translations, I generally try to look for ones done by translators who know something about zen. Usually, I find Suzuki's translations to be illuminating, and I trust his insight. There's nothing duller than a translation by a western "linguist" who has no idea what lies beyond the words. -- (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))tom simmonds)))))))))))))))))))) (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( ))))))) "True beauty consists in purity of heart." - Mahatma Gandhi ))))))))