Oakville Zen Meditation
Just when you think you’re enlightened
Sooner or later it’s going to happen...maybe. It might be the very first time you meditate or few years
after a long and dedicated practice.
But someday you are going to have some sort of spiritual, extra natural or weird experiences.
These experiences come in many forms, ranging from deep tranquility to radiant ecstasy.
It their fullest expressions and intensity they are like spiritual earthquake that may transform your life.
More frequently and at more modest levels, they can manifest as:
A total cessation of thought for a very short instant.
An out-of-the-body experience.
Body floating above ground.
Sensation of bliss, clarity and perfect quietness.
Feeling of profound meditation with total union with the entire universe.
Even ecstasy and climax.
If you experience one of these you may or will say to yourself: “This is it, I got it!. I am enlightened!”
If you report them to your teacher, she/he will probably have a good laugh.
Like the endorphins release during intense workout, these experiences are the meditator’s high and they could become addictive because you will intensively seek for new ones as pleasurable reward. and they will become attachment.
These so-called spiritual experiences called “ Nyam” in Tibetan meaning “temporary experience” and every meditator should be aware of them. You feel good when you experience them but they are transient and evaporate quickly.
These experiences have a beginning and an end and you will always drop back on Earth.
In other words, they have no correlation whatsoever with enlightenment.
True and genuine enlightenment has absolutely nothing to do with magical moment, miracle, bliss, euphoria, paradise, beatitude, ecstasy or intense pleasure.
Enlightenment or awakening:
Enlightenment, also called awakening, (the word Buddha means the awakened one) means:
1) Experiencing mental awareness and equanimity (emotional stability) of the present reality
including you, your body, what you do,your thoughts & emotions and your environment.
2) Allowing us to differentiate true and present reality from our 24/7 mind-made fictional worlds.
Mindfulness-based awareness / awakening is focusing on the present reality such as your body, what you do, think and acute perception of your environment thru your 5 senses.
Mindfulness is to pay attention w/o an analytic mind, w/o judgment and w/o decision and action.
Being awakened is to practice active awareness meaning:
To be grounded and not in a dream state as we are all the time.
Awareness of the moment and its present reality as opposed to the fictional or virtual dream coming from our wandering and restless mind. Such mind trap is called “ Day sleep walking”
Awareness also means that, in life, we do not control too much, that all living beings are connected, that past and future do exist but are virtual, that our thoughts exist but are not necessarily true.
When you brush your teeth before enlightenment your hand is brushing and your mind is elsewhere doing something else. Body and mind are dissociated. A slip personality. You are not mindful to what you are doing, acting like a robot. Most of the time during the day, our body and mind are in two different space-time, doing different things.
When you brush your teeth after enlightenment your mind and body are together and mindful to what you are doing. You are not a robot.
Awakening is neither sexy, exciting and is without any specific pleasure or ecstasy.
Awakening will not change your life nor control it with its ups and downs but your perception of its content will change. It may/will generate constant serenity, which is priceless...like a miracle.
