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What truth has been revealed to you thru meditation?
Well the title says it all I suppose.
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From my teacher:
Feelings come and go in the space of Awareness. They are our essential sensitivity and responsiveness. Disappointment is a very raw and naked feeling, full of sensitivity and responsiveness if we could just allow ourselves to experience it, rather than trying to run away from it.
There is nothing wrong with disappointment. Go towards it. Really look forward to things with the knowledge that disappointment is right there in the heart of all experience. It is wonderful! It hurts! But does that matter? Disappointment doesn't have any power to harm or destroy us. Only our fear of disappointment harms us.
Like why don't we just sit there? lol
Um, not sure what you mean. Do you mean we tend to rush round etc to avoid the issue of loving ourselves?
I love the way you word things, Jeffrey. Wrote this down today.
And I am nowhere near being a "good" Buddhist
I started on the path 3-4 years ago. The first 'ah-ha!' moment I experienced was an insight into my troubled relationship with my wife. I regarded her as an unkind word that begins with a b and ends with an itch.
After a productive sitting I observed her open her mouth, her face clearly angry and the words that flowed out of her mouth clearly revealing anger. At that moment my unskillful states of mind, the greed and hatred and ignorance were temporarily quieted and I was left to see 'reality as it actually is'. What I saw was pain. Suffering. Upon seeing the suffering I was moved by compassion. Instead of screaming at her and calling her names as I would normally have done, I went to her, told her I did not understand the reason she was angry, but that I loved her and gave her a hug. This was my first incredibly vivid experience of karma (cause and effect) being altered so that the unskillful did not lead to the unskillful.
I had a few more ah-ha! moments like that and then I had a realization that cut me to the bone and left me unable to process it effectively. This realization shook me so badly that I stopped my practice until a couple months ago. I didn't want to see any more reality. I really could have used a good teacher at that point to have helped me through it, but didn't know of anyone.
The realization that I had I can explain in words, but the experience of it is so much deeper than words can convey. I had an insight into the incredible pain caused by gossip. To this day I am a bit puzzled as to why I had this insight. Seems to me I had lots of issues needing work, but gossiping wasn't my thing. This is not to say I never gossiped, just that I had many flaws far greater in my opinion. I experienced the suffering caused by gossip so clearly, so totally that it became impossible for me to gossip due to the pain I would experience. I would rather have poured battery acid into my eyes than experience the pain caused by gossip.
So far this wasn't a problem.
The problem was that the pain caused by gossip was so real that I couldn't stand being around anyone when they were gossiping. My spouse would gossip, my oldest child would gossip, my mother would gossip, my best friend would gossip. Even standing in line at the grocery store I would overhear people gossip. I was constantly in torment by experiencing the pain. It was inescapable. It was everywhere.
I decided the only way to end the pain was to stop my practice and hope for the pain to dull. It did.
Unfortunately the years I spent off the path were not good ones. My hatred grew, I had powerful aversions to realities I could not escape such as the enormous suffering of my child so I drank myself silly and couldn't bring myself to stop drinking. You can probably imagine some of the things this led to.
What I understand now, and really wish I had understood then, is that the path is not an easy one. There will be walls, obstacles in the path that seem insurmountable. One will have to see intense suffering and stare it directly in the eye without flinching in order to know it for what it is.
The 'simple' quality of equanimity possessed in even a slight degree would have seen me through this seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Unfortunately back then not only did I not have any, I hadn't even heard of the word
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
You are right and you are wrong, Brandon.
It is true that we are deluded. Our understanding is limited and partial because our minds work with our limited and partial senses. But you are wrong that our 'body' is unreal because that supposes that mind and body are separate 'things'. Look at 'them' and you can see that they co-arise, result and, to date, culmination of the long journey of humankind along your branch of the evolutionary tree.
When the Buddhist teachers speak to us of the 'omniscience' that results from our practice of the Noble Eightfold Path, it is the understanding of things as they really, without misapprehension.
ahh thank you for that explanation that definitely puts a new perception on my plate. Now why don't you move to texas and be my teacher ahaha i can't find one around here in fort worth
During meditation my feet became numb. all of a sudden i realized that our feet are a lot like our mind. when we sit on them they fall asleep, but when you stand up they awaken. am i on to something?
Of course you are, Brandon, and the next step is to realise that all our 'intuitions' are simply stirring in our sleep. There comes a time when every moment is freighted with meanings, every fading flower is a memorial of impermanence, every friend a reminder of compassion, and so on. All stirrings in our 'sleep', all intuitions that we can 'wake up' as others have done many, many times before us. If we use these moments to support and strengthen our practice of meditative, studious and service action, they are 'consolations'.
BUT: we must, at the same time, develop discernment which allows us to examine our own pleasure or pain to understand if we are on the path or have wandered into a less useful byway.
Consolations are useful encouragements but are not the goal. They are oases in the desert and we have to learn to move on from them before all their sustenance is exhausted. If we stay in the oasis too long, nourishment will run out: it is there to give us something to sustain us as we move out, through the desert, where we may (or may not) encounter another oasis. This takes courage as well as determination. Refuge in the Triple Jewel can, at times, demand "not less than everything", and that is even more uncomfortable than blood and feeling returning to a pair of numb feet.
Some of the 'oases' are very tempting. They appear to offer a final goal, a consummation. They can be, however, like the Isle of the Lotophages for Odysseus' men, silken traps. A discerning mind is your best weapon against Lotus eating.
But what is nothing?
But you've just defined it - that makes it something, and even then the definition is inaccurate!
Another way of looking at it - solve the riddle of the Heart Sutra's words :P
The biggest revelation I had was after a long intensive mediation retreat I did a few months back, and it's something I can't describe even in poetic words (which I suck at anyway :P) but - I had a glimpse of the utter peaceful stillness and liquid silence that would occur once all my attachments, cravings, karmic-ego-thoughts and all that dust were gone.
Man, that stillness. So still. The silence was like that blissful peace you get after entering a very quiet, cool room after walking through an insanely busy shopping mall.
Why am i hurting right now
What did i do to deserve this
Who are the people around me really seeing
Why can't i make a way in life that works like everyone else
Where am i going to go
What is my purpose
Who can i rely on
Why should i rely on them
What does it matter to be spiritual anyway
What is happiness.
This has made me very happy learning the answers to my questions. I now don't really have doubts about myself, the world, or what my purpose is. Jobs relationships etc. Buddhism has realy given me a structure that makes everything fit for me. And whatever is hurting to sink into emptiness and see that there is no hurt.
This and much more are the fruits of my practice and study, for which im extremely grateful
Hope this helps.
The problem becomes finding ways to defend myself without inflicting suffering on others.
Now I want a burrito! (preferably a SUPREME one).
Bless.