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My experiences so far...
I just thought it would be good to share my experience after seriously practicing Buddhism for for the past few years.
I was born a Buddhist. My parents are what you might call "token Buddhists", and never really seriously practiced any form of meditation. I was somewhat the same, until I made friends with some friends who were practicing meditation and discussed Buddhism quite seriously. And I began to learn and more and searched for more answers, till I found my lama.
Needless to say I jumped into the deep end of the pool with Tibetan Buddhism. And I felt at home with it. It felt good. I'm practicing a lot of Tonglen and Lojong at the moment, along with Green Tara as a meditational deity.
Initially when I started to practice I became more and more unfeeling, and nothing minor affected me. I became more calm and I didn't really care what was happening to the people and things around me, because I felt it was all impermanent anyway. I didn't need to care what was going on.
However after receiving the Refuge and Bodhisattva vows from my Lama, I started contemplating and practicing them. And I felt engaged.
Recently, however, I felt a great mix of emotions. I became much more affected by things and people and situations around me. I can feel so much more empathy. Whenever I read of, or witness tragic events, I feel a lot of sadness and hurt. Same with events which anger people. I feel extreme joy and jubilation when I witness joyous events or see people who are in happy situations.
Almost always I have tears welling up in my eyes because I feel so much empathy. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I like the feeling of empathy. It moves me to want to do something.
Yet at the end of the day I am able to move on just as easily from that feeling to the feeling of "this too shall pass". I feel relief If I can better the situation or participate in the happiness, yet I don't berate myself when I am unable to do anything.
That being said, I don't think I am enlightened at all. Far from it, I know I am just at the beginning of my journey. I guess I'm sharing my experiences to have a feel of where I'm at in terms of my practice. I may not know a lot of the academic stuff, and I may not be able to articulate myself intellectually, but I think sharing experiences is one of the best ways for everyone to learn and progress together.
I guess you can call this a very very belated introduction.
I was born a Buddhist. My parents are what you might call "token Buddhists", and never really seriously practiced any form of meditation. I was somewhat the same, until I made friends with some friends who were practicing meditation and discussed Buddhism quite seriously. And I began to learn and more and searched for more answers, till I found my lama.
Needless to say I jumped into the deep end of the pool with Tibetan Buddhism. And I felt at home with it. It felt good. I'm practicing a lot of Tonglen and Lojong at the moment, along with Green Tara as a meditational deity.
Initially when I started to practice I became more and more unfeeling, and nothing minor affected me. I became more calm and I didn't really care what was happening to the people and things around me, because I felt it was all impermanent anyway. I didn't need to care what was going on.
However after receiving the Refuge and Bodhisattva vows from my Lama, I started contemplating and practicing them. And I felt engaged.
Recently, however, I felt a great mix of emotions. I became much more affected by things and people and situations around me. I can feel so much more empathy. Whenever I read of, or witness tragic events, I feel a lot of sadness and hurt. Same with events which anger people. I feel extreme joy and jubilation when I witness joyous events or see people who are in happy situations.
Almost always I have tears welling up in my eyes because I feel so much empathy. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I like the feeling of empathy. It moves me to want to do something.
Yet at the end of the day I am able to move on just as easily from that feeling to the feeling of "this too shall pass". I feel relief If I can better the situation or participate in the happiness, yet I don't berate myself when I am unable to do anything.
That being said, I don't think I am enlightened at all. Far from it, I know I am just at the beginning of my journey. I guess I'm sharing my experiences to have a feel of where I'm at in terms of my practice. I may not know a lot of the academic stuff, and I may not be able to articulate myself intellectually, but I think sharing experiences is one of the best ways for everyone to learn and progress together.
I guess you can call this a very very belated introduction.
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Comments
I have been in this stage and I am still in this stage to some degree.
One thing I realized in my own experience is that I was doing meditation on compassion and loving kidness. This in a way is self hypnosis. I was conditioning my mind. I stop doing it. When I sit on meditation, I sit with no bias and no intentions. Feelings get calm down after a while.
Curios: Did you see your archetype deities in your meditation ?
@dorje I was going to comment, that the beginning state, when you became more and more indifferent to suffering, was some kind of misguided practice. That isn't what the Buddha taught, as I'm sure you realize. Aim for the Middle Way.
Thanks for sharing. Others can learn from this.
Initially I too found myself rather disconnected from people, but as I've practised I've also discovered the disconcerting nature of empathy. For a while, it was painful to listen to the news. Now I am beginning to do what my teacher calls "putting a space between yourself and the situation", learning to be objective and remember the ultimate truth that suffering is illusion, whilst doing my best to help the person in the situation. It's a fine balance.
Medicine Buddha practice has helped me because it makes me feel I can do *something* to help, even if it is simply in wishing them 'healing energy'. I do believe that if we contemplate people and their situations, we can influence them for the better, although I don't know how this works. Maybe it is simply using my imagination to imagine new possibilities, which then positively affects my behaviour towards them. Or maybe there really is some sort of spiritual thing going on. I don't know. All I know is that it seems to work.
What I have been taught though is that we need to cultivate wisdom and compassion together - sometimes one gets a little out of step with the other, but generally I think I'm making progress.
@zen_world I'm not confused by the emotions. I'm just amazed at the fact that through my practice I can empathize so much, and immerse myself into the situation fully so easily, and after my work is finished I'm able to extract myself out of it just as easily. And I realize that I'm more effective that way. Maybe it's a byproduct mindfullness. I don't know. But I'm liking this change I'm experiencing.
@Dakini I don't really think that it was misguided practice. I think it was more "unguided" practice, and I didn't recognize the pitfalls and obstacles when I saw them. I talked to my lama yesterday regarding my experiences, and he told me there was nothing much to worry about because the increase in empathy can help to develop more compassion.
@Ada_B I totally get what you're saying. My lama told me to develop more wisdom so that I can act in a more informed manner. This hit home really hard, because sometimes I want to do something so much but I can't or don't know how, and I end up hitting myself on the head. But after hitting myself for a few minutes I just get out of the situation and get on with life. My aim now is to not be hard on myself at all.
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that people often go through their lives feeling parodies of emotions. You know, dramatic anger/sadness/happiness like you see portrayed on TV. But when you discover true empathy, it's like coming out of Plato's cave. If you're not familiar with this allegory, read the original text in Plato's Republic here: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html
So, to continue the cave allegory: You're out of the cave, seeing sunlight for the first time. And it hurts your eyes. It makes you cry. This might explain why you are shedding tears of empathy. It hurts, because you're not used to it.
Anyway...just my tuppence-worth. Welcome to the board, and to Buddhist practice!