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Supernatural Experiences
AllbuddhaBound
Veteran
I wonder if other's have experienced any supernatural events. The question arose when I was reading another thread "Questions about Buddhism From The Eyes Of A Skeptic".
I have experienced a few fairly pedantic examples. One time, when I was in the airforce, I had the idea of a Volkswagen pop into my head for no particular reason. I then joined some friends at a table in the mess hall and one of the occupants had just bought a volkswagen. (I had not brought it up and I kept it to myself that I had the thought).
On another occasion, I had the idea of a burning truck pop into my head, and shortly thereafter, we came upon a truck that burned to the ground. Again, I never brought it up.
Are there other examples from other participants? I wonder if "insight meditation" has anything to do with making a person more sensitive.
I have experienced a few fairly pedantic examples. One time, when I was in the airforce, I had the idea of a Volkswagen pop into my head for no particular reason. I then joined some friends at a table in the mess hall and one of the occupants had just bought a volkswagen. (I had not brought it up and I kept it to myself that I had the thought).
On another occasion, I had the idea of a burning truck pop into my head, and shortly thereafter, we came upon a truck that burned to the ground. Again, I never brought it up.
Are there other examples from other participants? I wonder if "insight meditation" has anything to do with making a person more sensitive.
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Comments
These are just events, that your mind believes to be supernatural, because the proximity of the thought and event coinciding at that time gives credence to the thoughts that the mind has just excreted.
Otherwise everything is supernatural! In which case supernatural just means happens rarely.
Like the Shard in London. Looks pretty nice from a distance but get anywhere near it and it starts costing you a lot!
Put the gun away, I am not threatening you nor trying to be aggressive here ;-)
(See the book "My Stroke of Insight", by a neurologist, for details on the functions of the right brain.)
I have also witnessed one sort of "miracle". When I was attending HHDL's teachings in India just before he came out to address the audience a flock of birds flew overhead in formation. Right above where His Holiness was at the time they stopped and still in formation circled three times (circumambulation and doing something three times are significant in the Tibetan tradition) then went off in the direction they were previously traveling. A rather minor event, nothing like walking on water or raising the dead, but a far enough departure from ordinary for me and the whole crowd to take notice.
I've seen tons of stuff that doesn't fit with our view of a predictably ordered universe
but if we are just the coalesced inertia of past delusions in denial of a reality that is better called chaos....what is supernatural and what isn't?
What is certain for Buddhists is that clinging to any phenomena, supernatural or not,
is suffering.
I know people intimately who are not suffering psychosis (hallucinations) or delusions, and who tell about their paranormal experiences with completely congruent nonverbal language to boot (yes, sadly, I am that skeptical of loved ones). I've also met ding dongs who hope sensing or manipulating the paranormal or supernatural makes them more special or powerful, and the other ding dongs who agree with them (ie, worship/respect, pay for services). I'm as concrete as they come while being open minded, but I can see through a wannabee and it's pretty sad.
I don't personally know any of the following, but I can relate in my imagination; people with supernatural abilities who wish like hell they DIDN'T have them.
Are these faculties in service to the end of suffering for all sentient beings? That's what matters. It's more important than whether or not they exist in the first place.
As my concentration gets more powerful (during meditation) I've had a couple of hair raisingly unusual experiences. I read Jill Bolte Taylor's book "My Stroke of Insight" and it makes a lot of sense that our first efforts in samatha meditation is to quiet the chattering left hemisphere, thus allowing the 'quieter' or more subtle manifestations of the right hemisphere to be noticeable. So these unusual experiences I'm having are staying alert and aware while falling asleep. They are truly bizarre. Also called 'hypnogogia', they are the natural transition from wakefulness into sleep. They are full out, all senses involved hallucinations that go on and on like movies. I also have some 'control' over them, and I've since learned this is a state of semi-lucid dreaming, or from this one can learn to lucidly dream. Not something I'm terribly interested in, but I'm not aversive. It's just weird that the concentration state spontaneously happens right as I'm falling asleep (not every night, but several lately). If I get sleepy during meditation, I know I am sleepy FIRST because I begin to hallucinate visually and hear people speaking, then the sensation of sleepiness is apparent.
That's about as weird as it gets for me, but I welcome greater weirdness if that's even a respectful thing to call it.
Also lately I get these powerful sensations of energy and vibration sweeping up and down my body. Last night it felt like the top of my head was so full it would pop off. Not painful or scary at all, maybe even a little peaceful? I can bring forth this 'energy' sensation voluntarily, just sitting here; it is very mild in comparison, but still pleasant.
Gassho
I also thought of my friend while driving. He was an old friend. Out of the beauty of that thought I saw golden lights. It was very beautiful.
Also I used to be able to drain energy (I felt it) through trees.
Finally when I lost my job as a pharmacy technician right after a hospitalization a neighborhood lady offered to buy me groceries. I never told her I lost the job. I accepted the offer because I was just going with the flow; generosity cannot exist without a recipient. But she bought me milk and beer and bread and some other things. Probably cost her 40 dollars. Later my other neighbor needed money for her sons birthday (supposedly lol) and I gave her 20 dollars.
I am not at all a believer in people being clairvoyant or having consistently supernatural powers or other paranormal mental powers of any kind. I'm with Hamsaka on this one; I've seen plenty of dingdongs and wackos. However, I had a few intense experiences around dying patients and family members that make me realize there is something that is simultaneously of intense power and ethereal vapor, that certainly cannot be explained and is only glimpsed on vanishingly rare occasions. I have never experienced it personally, but I've been a witness several times, maybe three or so in six years.
Years later, when my father was dying, he had some quasi-lucid moments. I wondered if we would experience any of this "aura" and was prepared to experience whatever may happen. But nothing. He slowly slipped away, a very normal death by ICU standards.
People who doubt the existence of any "psychic" abilities in others should take a workshop aimed at helping participants explore their own abilities. You'd be surprised at the results. We all have this to one degree or another, and these abilities can be honed with practice so that you get better at it. Once you're aware you have them at all.
My answer? It depends. I seek self-improvement and knowledge constantly. I try to learn a new fact everyday. I'm fixed on some things and more fluid on others. For instance, no rhetorical argument would convince me on the Internet to accept one religion or another, or to reject evolution, or be convinced of ghosts.
But as I have expressed elsewhere, I am entirely open and accepting of the possibilities of mindfulness, meditation, and other traditionally Buddhist practices.
With great power comes great responsibility
Spider-Man . . . via Voltaire
Alan Watts.
Everything is magical by the way :-)
How about flying (plane) in the air?
All experiences are natural even when they seemed supernatural.
The Buddha forbade his followers from showing off their psychic abilities as these things did not lead to freedom from dukkha.
I make no claims.
It may well be that those who have attained buddhahood have psychic abilities, but displaying them would make some people superstitious wouldn't it. And we know that superstitions can lead to unfortunate consequences. Take Africa at the moment:http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/will_africa_still_be_immersed_in_deep_superstition_by_the_year_2030
Remember, we can all test the truth of ourselves by skepticism and mindful observation? I don't have a clairvoyant mind, I have never seen a ghost, I can't levitate or witnessed someone levitate, god or buddha has never manifested before me in the form of a burning bush or angel. Therefore, for now I don't categorise anything I have experienced as SUPERNTURAL. I neither want to believe not disbelieve. It's a good place to be.
I think there is more knowledge of the psychic abilities in Buddhism as you say, but there are many secrets that are not spoken of in other than, well trained Buddhist circles. It may seem like an elitist attitude but then again, it may all be for the best.
In a nutshell, the Buddha was approaching a village and one of the monks had unusual abilities (psychic or magic), and another monk asked the Buddha if the monk with special abilities should do a demonstration for the village in order to wow and impress the villagers. The Buddha said no, and the moral of the story included, among other things, that bragging displays of special abilities is missing the point in a big way.
Shaila Catherine, in her book Focused and Fearless states that the greater the achievements in meditative skills and wisdom, the more reluctant the person becomes to go around shouting about them. Mainly because the more they know, the more they realize they don't know and cannot fully grasp. This goes along with the pithy sayings from all wisdom traditions that basically say: "Those who know talk a lot less than those who don't."
Besides, in this day and age, if you go around levitating things or telling people what they are thinking, you are likely to have a bunch of villagers with pitchforks chasing you down the road. People who claim arahancy (sic?) are immediately 'shot down' on sight. There might be a real arahat in the deep forests of Thailand or Burma, but nobody knows him/her or if it's even true.
Gassho
Those few who do choose to indulge such abilities soon lose their practice, abilities and seem mainly left with the taint of a hungry ghost.
While the whole process is self regulating, the traditional warnings about it are both well founded and compassionate.
Show me nothing and I'll accept it for what it is. Empty and... well, you know, full of something that's accepting of both of us and which does not need to be fulfilled, but is.
Since when did Buddhism become 'The Magic Circle'. Oh no Dynamo is a Buddha! No he's a great illusionist, and if you believe what he does is real, you're deluded. Now watch me disappear as I invoke and shield myself with the powerful spell 'ekoms fo ffup a ni modsiw esrever'
No I am not taking this thread seriously; but seriously are any of you really taking it seriously. Is the world really this flat and far-fetched! Well I suppose it might just be! Time to worship Great A'tuin the space turtle! Anyone have a copy of the 'hitchhikers guide to the galaxy,'. It may well be a story of the impending apocalypse.
Are we going to accept "those ridicilous and superstitious and supernatural assumptions", when it is the "magic" in Christianity that western Buddhists often speak of as the reason they left Christianity.
We can't have it both ways.
Anyway, there was more, but you get the picture. I am not sure if it fits the bill of "supernatural", but I have also had several dreams that have played out later - often the next day - in "real life" in distinct and sometimes meaningful ways.
FWIW...
When my father died I visited him at the VA hospital. On the last morning of my visit he talked about the "airmen" (he was in the Air Force for 18 years) coming to take him away, but he said they wouldn't do it until I got back home (he was in Canandaigua, NY, I lived in the Washington, D.C. area. He was adamant about me leaving to get home so that the airmen could take him. I arrived home around 6 p.m. that evening, and 5 minutes after I walked in the door the phone rang and they told me he had just died. The good news -- he was very happy about going with the airmen.
I make no claims.
Not everyone left Christianity because of the "magic". I know I left because Buddhism offers a more genuine and fulfilling life than Christianity. There is no comparison.
I am totally open about what you are calling the supernatural. Not convinced, but it's certainly possible.
But what I don't approve of (not that it matters) is when a person will condemn one religion because of its "magic", and embrace another religion with magic, and ignore that. One should look at every religion with the same set of standards.
That being said - Phenomena such as ghosts, spirits, miracles, cryptozoological beings, paranormal phenomena - these phenomena (if real) are all natural and remain in the realm of the esoteric because science has not yet found an explanation or reason for them, or maybe it is just because we lack the equipment (biologically and mechanically) to scientifically validate them?
With that I am reminded of the example of the rainbow. Rainbows do not actually exist but what causes the appearance of these rainbows is the reaction our human visual spectrum with the environmental conditions that cause them to appear. Can there be phenomena that exist outside of our own perception as well? To assume that there are not any because our limited human senses cannot detect them is just arrogant, in my opinion. We are severely limited in our senses even if we are at the "pinnacle" of evolution on our planet.
Not sure if anything I said made sense, I am not a scientist after all. Just been very observant in my own life about things.