It is interesting that Buddha commends Avalokiteshvara on his comments, even though Buddha had been meditating. This points to a unique aspect of Buddhist meditation: awareness of one's surroundings. The way of a buddha is to combine an understanding of emptiness with compassion for other beings, and awareness of the world around us. So, during meditation, we do not block out the world. Rather, we perceive it directly, with no intervening layers of mental dialogue. At least some of the time anyway. During meditation I am not always free of conceptualization, daydreaming, and mental dialogue, but the instances where I am are more frequent and longer in duration. Sometimes what happens is I will have a state like this, and then immediately begin to think, "Hey, I'm not having any thoughts!" thus interrupting my streak. This is normal, as I understand it from reading various authors. At least one author mentioned that it is important not to judge one's performance after meditating. It is often tempting to say, "That was a good one!" or "I just couldn't get into it today," and other things like that, but these comments are obstructions to progress. Indeed, as I've alluded to a couple of times before, on days when my meditation is distracted or stormy, rather than nursing a sense of annoyance that my meditation has not gone well, I have found myself learning more about myself, because the stormy meditation points to something in my mental landscape which is disturbing me.
Apparently there are other types of meditation, and I understand Hindu meditation is one of them, which emphasize insulation of the self from the outside world. Thus if you spoke to such a meditating person, she wouldn't hear you. I have heard second-hand that this effect has been documented through scientific studies. If a loud noise is made when a Buddhist is meditating, her brain pattern changes, whereas the pattern of a Hindu meditator is unaffected.
Well, anyway, that is the Heart Sutra. Any thoughts or feelings about how this text compares to the Diamond Cutter Sutra?
3 comments:
I know you keep your eyes open when you meditate, while I keep them closed. I find it is easier to let go. But part of it is the state of my surroundings. If my apt. is in chaos it is nearly impossible for me to meditate with open eyes, because Ican see too clearly mess I have been avoiding!
The balance between insulating oneself and being aware of surroundings is an interesting one and one I had not to this point considered.
And it is indeed very difficult not to judge one's practice. I have had the same experience as you, meditating without thoughts, then "hey, I'm doing it. Awesome," and of course the flow is interrupted.
I've read different advice from different authors. Some say keep the eyes open, some say close them. i have relaxed my attitide, and actually close my eyes for parts of my meditation.
Some times things disturb me diring my meditation and I try to set things up so they won't disturb me the next time. For example, in one room we have a loud clock. On the other hand, disturbances are a fact of life, and watching my reaction to a disturbance when I meditate can be enlightening. ;)
When I first started meditating I would get itches on parts of my body that I would fight not to scratch. My whole meditation might be a struggle not to scratch my nose. Now, I rarely get those itches. I suppose this means I'm making some kind of measurable progress!
One final thought: My understanding is that as we progress our meditation becomes less dialoguey (a new word!) and the gaps in this mental dialogue grow longer and more frequent. Practice is the key. All the Zen texts I know of emphasize this. Keep practicing. I started meditating just about a year ago, but there's a gap in the middle where I barely did it at all. I started up again about a month and a half ago, just about when I started this blog. So I am still young at this, still practicing, still making progress.
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