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How to create visions on purpose?
matthewmartin
Amateur BodhisattvaSuburbs of Mt Meru Veteran
So I'm working on rehabilitating the Brahma Net Sutra for secular use. I'm working on #23:
It is a naturalistic, well known fact that you can have visions-- ordinary dreams, hallucinations, false memories and people report having unusual experience while meditating (feeling like floating ,etc) EDIT: (Nationalistically, these visions are things we made up-- not necessarily actually talking to a super natural being.)
Yeah, I know the standard Theravada/Zen recommendation is to ignore this vision stuff. But in the BNS, here is advice to actively seek out such an experience.
Any legal advice on how to make a vision happen?
After my passing, if a disciple should, with a wholesome mind, wish to receive the Bodhisattva precepts, he may make a vow to do so before the images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and practice repentance before these images for seven days. If he then experiences a vision, he has received the precepts. If he does not, he should continue doing so for fourteen days, twenty-one days, or even a whole year, seeking to witness an auspicious sign. After witnessing such a sign, he could, in front of images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, formally receive the precepts. If he has not witnessed such a sign, although he may have accepted the precepts before the Buddha images, he has not actually received the precepts.This implies a few things-- the possibility of self ordination into the Bodhisattva precepts (AFAIK, ignored by modern institutions, they like to control membership), and that the bit about visions.
It is a naturalistic, well known fact that you can have visions-- ordinary dreams, hallucinations, false memories and people report having unusual experience while meditating (feeling like floating ,etc) EDIT: (Nationalistically, these visions are things we made up-- not necessarily actually talking to a super natural being.)
Yeah, I know the standard Theravada/Zen recommendation is to ignore this vision stuff. But in the BNS, here is advice to actively seek out such an experience.
Any legal advice on how to make a vision happen?
1
Comments
Move to Colorado. Consume copious amounts of hashish. Lots of meditation. In a cave. Really high altitude. Naked. Fasting
It's said that Asanga's devotion and samadhi was so great that he recieved a vision of Maitreya, from whom he received and recorded a number of teaching, some of which can be found in the book Distinguishing Phenomena and Pure Being.
And it's not important to have visions.
Dreams are real. They are more real that god, than the after life, than karma--- of those I have no experience with the first two and only often inscrutable evidence for the third.
Buddhism is wide & entails a lot of practices. On the outset there is no particular reason to believe any of them are important or unimportant.
Are people who have visions or dreams contemptible and should they be mocked? Good question, maybe someone *else* should open a thread for that.
(tongue in cheek, 'just say no')
No. 23, goes on to set out a situation where the witnessing of auspicous signs is not necessary:
However, the witnessing of auspicious signs is not necessary if the disciple receives the precepts directly from a Dharma Master who has himself received the precepts. Why is this so? It is because this is a case of transmission from Master to Master and therefore all that is required is a mind of utter sincerity and respect on the part of the disciple.
If a vision is the substitute for Master to Master transmission, then there remains a mind of utter sincerity and respect on the part of the disciple.
(There's also reference to wholesome mind and repentance)
I suppose I was asking, is that consistent with strategies to make it happen?
A young man would go out in the wild wearing nothing but a loincloth and carrying nothing but a knife. So he would stay out in the wilderness, alone, exposed to the elements, eating and drinking very little, and in general enduring a great deal of physical and psychological stress for days or perhaps even weeks. The quest would crecendo to a point where the young man would take his knife and cut off his pinky finger at the last joint. If he was worthy, he would then meet his spirit guide and the quest would be finished.
My professor closed the lecture by cautioning us against simply dismissing this tradition. He said that anyone in the room, subjected to the same physical and psychological stresses a young Arapahoe would go through, for weeks, and then cutting off a part of the body, would most definitely see things. Call them what you will - visions, hallucinations, delerium, whatever, you put yourself through all that, you'll definitely receive something.
Mexican shamans would use Jimson weed, Morning Glory and other naturally occuring plants to induce visions.
There's peyote. Psylocibin mushrooms. Hell, if you're so inclined, LSD.
Native Americans use a sweat lodge. If you want a visionary experience, try one of those if you can get an invite.
Finnish shamans use percussion.
Shamans in Central American would eat the skin of a toad - Bufo alvarius and related species - and receive powerful visions. These toads are found in Florida and the SW USA.
Ever hear of an opium dream? Get your doctor to perscribe cough syrup with codein in it. Drink the whole bottle. To get an idea of what it might be like read Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Or develop a psychosis a la John Nash.
Plenty of ways to have visions.
I thought the movie Orca was funnier than hell and I was totally pannayed when I saw it. Maybe that means something?
It's similar to alcohol where there is a genetic factor. You roll the fucking dice.
You could consider the dream that the Buddha awoke from, as your world of visions..
An illusory construct that promotes the concept of "self verses other" with such consistency that we call such views or visions...normality.
If that is believable to you, then perhaps a vision worth searching for is simply the transcendence of all visions.
Feeling this knowing is the expression that all is actually the vision of one's ground.
Signless appearances called our ordinary life equate to the truth body of the buddha. All around us are buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Tenderness pours outward.
you could apply the methods as prescribed and find out for yourself
((:
I never said it would be easy..... but if you deprive the body and alter the mind long enough, you'll most likely encounter something along the way.
Unless you freak out and go on a Twinkie binge
Monasteries where the master has reported their visions is often filled with students who also experience such things. Monasteries where the master has not reported their visions is filled with students who don't experience them either.
Like the arising and departing of any phenomena, it's inherent Dharmic lesson lies not in whether it is real or imagined, but in your equanimity in facing either.
Many moons ago when I used to hang out with wizards, one of them was interested in doing a conjuration to 'physical appearance'. This is a ritual in which the deity raised is made to have visionary substance to everyone present, not just in a feeling or the 'minds eye'. Many magicians have such strange desires to push the mind into contortions and contract themselves out to the highest bidder rather than Buddha.
[Mr Cushion is yawning]
If you hanker after visions, you might get them. You might think that what the vision say is important or you might just yawn . . .
You're a wizard Harry
Hagrid