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What is "moving beyond the mind"?
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
in Meditation
I've been wondering about this. A lot of Buddhism is about the mind and its concepts - for example TNH's interbeing can cause a transformation in how you think about the world - but a lot of thinking seems to happen when you give thoughts you attention, that is when new thoughts arise.
But some meditations are about moving beyond the mind. When I move my attention though, I end up moving it to one of the other senses, often touch. But then I've had meditations where my sense of my body seems to vanish, kind of moving through a cool whiteness, and I end up seeing and hearing different things, vague impressions. Is this beyond the mind, or just a dream-like space? It doesn't have the crisp visuals of a dream.
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I think of meditation not as "beyond" the mind, but rather as stillness of the mind. When the clattery reverberance quiets, there comes a clarity of the inner universe of quiet hidden wisps and fleeting enchantments.
It's a question of noticing without lingering, not focusing and paying attention to, or being distracted by....
Maybe...
Perhaps jhanic experience? But what do you mean by "beyond the mind"? I usually think of the mind as the "space" where all these experiences happen, so what would "beyond the mind" entail, practically speaking?
When passing through the gateless gate all thoughts and feelings will abate
When all is said and done-one is all and all is one!
Pay it "No Mind" and it won't "Matter"
Good question.
I feel you are developing your meditation practice.
@Steve_B gave a good answer. You are moving towards non-movement.
In other words the stillness of non-mind movement.
The emptiness of form
You are not trying to reach somewhere but be aware of where you are - still. The stilling of Stillness if I can put it that way.
You are not getting there. There is present. You are just letting 'there be'.
I get stillness of mind, and I get non-movement, but what do you mean by "stillness of non-mind movement"? Could you explain? Isn't stillness a quality of mind, rather than something "beyond" it? ( I still don't understand what "beyond the mind" is supposed to mean ).
And how does stillness relate to emptiness? Stillness and non-movement seem different to the quality of emptiness.
I can definitely see some truth in that, stillness is there in my meditation even if I have to consciously bring it there sometimes by stilling all the vibrations I find.
With emptiness, I was assuming at some point it would come. Stillness means that nothing is moving, you can't sense it anymore, but that doesn't always mean nothing is there.
@SpinyNorman said:
Emptiness, Nirvana and absolute stillness do not move. They are already present. It does not come from somewhere and go somewhere. In a similar way a box or mind fills an empty space but the empty space is still present (just filled). Another way of understanding is in the movement of mind there can be stillness relative to movement. In other words we experience movement but the 'empty' or 'non moving Awake Being' is not moving or altered by the mundane fillings and movement.
To put it in terms of the inside of an ice cream cone. Does more emptiness exist as we move to the point at the bottom of the cone?
Emptiness is form and form is emptiness, as it says on the Mahayana heretics website ...
I get stillness relative to movement, and have previously used the analogy of the eye of the storm, a calm still centre surrounded by movement. I can also see this stillness as a connection to Nirvana or "the unconditioned".
However I'm confused by the way you conflate emptiness, Nirvana and "absolute stillness".
In the Heart Sutra the bodhisattva realises Nirvana as a result of insight into the emptiness of the aggregates. This suggests that emptiness is the movement, and not the stillness.
"The Bodhisattva of Compassion,
When he meditated deeply,
Saw the emptiness of all five skandhas
And sundered the bonds that caused
him suffering."
http://www.fwbo-news.org/resources/heart_sutra.pdf
No matter how fast a vehicle travels, or the mind flaps, Buddha Nature is still sitting Empty.
Stillness and emptiness are non happenings. It is the vehicle of the mind, the mundane mind that says 'this is empty', 'this is fast'.
Emptiness in this sense does not move fast or slow because it is always still there ... Whether you arrive at the far shore slower or faster, Nirvana has always travelled with you at the same pace. Awakening in essence has never moved ...
I still don't understand why you are conflating stillness and emptiness. It seems like you want to make emptiness a "thing" separate from the movement of the aggregates. But emptiness is the movement of the aggregates!
Stillness could be described as a "non-happening", but that doesn't apply to emptiness. Emptiness describes the flux and conditionality of the aggregates, it is more like continual happening.
I really don't understand how you have drawn this interpretation from what the Heart Sutra says, perhaps you could explain?
In my experience, "moving beyond the mind" is means moving out of identification with our impulse to suffer. That impulse to suffer arises out of a mind inclined to be at odds with the realities of dukkha, anicca, and anatta. We see the reality of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self every day, in the most mundane ways. But we don't really let it register, let it touch us enough to break through all our conditioning. This is conditioning that robs us of the capacity to embody the brahamaviharas, for instance, in moments when taking the perspective of compassion (karuna) or selfless joy (mudita) would be the very thing that frees us from the suffering of anger/hostility or envy. This conditioning imprisons us in a narrow behavioral retertoire, rehearsed and rehearsed for decades, that arrests the flowering and development of our relationships with ourselves and with others.
I've never had much luck with eliminative or extreme concentration practices that seek out a state of mind in which there is no longer any chaos or disturbance. In my experience, the chaos always returns, and we would do better to make friends with it and get to know it's nature, than treat it as an enemy or something to be gotten rid of or abandoned. I've sat long retreats where I entered into jhanic bliss... only to return to everyday life and see those same old patterns come up again, without having developed a workable way to deal with any of it. The American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko-Beck had a beautiful way of describing practice: she said it's about asking "how big can I grow in the face of what most upsets me?" It's about becoming "a Bigger Container" for our mental disturbance, so that it doesn't become all that we are anymore. We grow bigger than that.
The Tibetans speak of Small Self and Big Self, and it's a similar idea. Pema Chodron uses the image of a mother bird and her baby: "Another image for maitri (lovingkindness) is that of a mother bird who protects and cares for her young until they are strong enough to fly away. People sometimes ask, ‘Who am I in this image, the mother or the chick?’ The answer is we’re both, both the loving mother and those ugly little bird chicks… We stay with ourselves and others when we’re screaming for food and have no feathers and also when we are more grown up and appealing by worldly standards…Sometimes we feel good and strong. Sometimes we feel inadequate and weak. But like mother-love, maitri is unconditional…. When we start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline we think that somehow we’re going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are."
Ajahn Chah said: "If you are still following your likes and dislikes, you have not even begun to practise Dhamma."
Going beyond the mind is, paradoxically, embracing the mind, in a warm and hearty bear hug.
For what it's worth, IMO: moving beyond the mind is when you realize there is no mind, only thoughts.
Well said @Glow
There is no 'cure' for monkey mind. We make the cage bigger. Eventually the cage is bigger than a sanctuary, the bars too have become a symbolic and irrelevant barrier, monkey so small (through training) he could slip out anytime ...
As you imply; euphoria, hell, brain freeze, thought loops, chaos, Purelands, sutra sutures and other stitch ups, jhanic constriction, zen expansion etc etc
all temporary
and now back to bare dharma
Yes. After the ecstasy, the laundry
There is no separation between stillness and movement ie. they are interdependent. You sense stillness because of movement. You sense silence (absence of sounds) because of sounds.
I think what is being discussed here is more like a stillness "beneath" the movement.
Ajahn Sumedo describes the unconditioned as an ever-present peace of mind:
"We use four normal postures and the ordinary breathing, because we are moving towards that which is most ordinary, the unconditioned. Conditions are extraordinary, but the peace of the mind, the unconditioned, is so ordinary that nobody ever notices it. It is there all the time, but we don’t ever notice it because we’re attached to the mysterious and the fascinating. We get caught up in the things that arise and pass away, the things that stimulate and depress. We get caught up in the way things seem to be — and forget. But now we’re going back to that source in meditation, to the peace, in that position of knowing. Then the world is understood for what it is, and we are no longer deluded by it."
http://www.buddhanet.net/nowknow2.htm
Thoughts are only the tip of the iceberg where the mind is concerned.
Surely you mean the tip of the (vanilla) ice(cream)berg?
Ok, we have a new name for this phenomenon. You've heard of Godwin's Law...
Well this is
Norman's Law.
How long a thread can last before someone mentions ice cream....
You heard it here first.
I don't think the Dairy Lama will be pleased.
The Dairy Lama can go Ti Bet .....
He has been known to place a bet and have a flutter on the gee gees. He studies "form".
@SpinyNorman Please elaborate. I don't know what you mean by that.
I am thinking for example of the third frame of the Satipatthana Sutta, where the mind can have different states and qualities present.
See "No. 3: Observing the mind" here: https://suttacentral.net/en/mn10
Yes and no!
Separation in the sense that there is knowing stillness beneath movement.
http://www.lionsroar.com/like-oil-and-water/
But also interdependence as in sound and its absence, form and its absence, conditioned and unconditioned.
http://www.buddhanet.net/nowknow2.htm
I have at times experienced very similar meditations, and wondered much the same. Sadly these moments seem to get interrupted way too soon by some stray sound in the distance.
This has often led me to wonder what meditation or life for that matter would be like if we were deprived of one or more of our senses such as sight and sound. Would my mind then be this state that I have only touched on? What would then be beyond that?
At one point I was looking into renting time in a deprivation tank just to explore the above thought.
Tee hee, this sensory deprivation was used by the British army in Northern Ireland, as part of its five torture techniques. So naughty ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_techniques
It is also used in dark meditation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_retreat
However ... initially most of us need a distraction free type of meditation. In techniques I use, presently in the dark, the need for quiet, a still or stilled environment is not a requirement.
For those willing to try sound as a focus and calming, try a bubbling brook with 'flowing' for IOS or some of the tranquil sounds on Youtube ...
I may be totally wrong here, but the zen notion of un-minding the mind comes up to me when we speak of moving beyond the mind.
Clearing away conceptual obstructions and seeing into the true nature of things, as Robert Aitken said.
Seeing beyond our own mental projections.
To abide in awareness, not in thought.
There is no mind, only the appearance of mind
Very well put @DhammaDragon
Abiding in awareness, not the thought of abiding/awareness.
Dhyana/chan/zen/mindlessness as opposed to 'Mind Being' approaches are an emptying rather than a fish fillet ...
In other words: It is the space between words, monkey thoughts and the empty box that is the form of intense sweeping away required.
In the initial forms of meditation we focus and accept. Stuff there. Stuff the stuff into dissolving. Find the space ...
Before I ever meditated I was looking for the
'... peace of God, which transcends all understanding ... ' as the Christians say ...
http://biblehub.com/philippians/4-7.htm
Eventually we have to let our mind be quiet. Sit with the emptiness not the arising of the form (god, cod, meditating, mind, hindrances, arisings etc).
https://howtopracticezen.wordpress.com/category/emptiness-2/
That is interesting, because in the process of seeing various things arise. The very phrase "seeing into the true nature of things" implies freeing the process of seeing from the arising of conceptual links to our material world as would normally happen, but instead seeing a true-er, more correct nature of things.
One would say that to see entirely without the mind's projections is to see only the raw data from the eye - to see planes but not walls or floors, to see specks of moving green but not leaves, to see a rolling grey mass, ever-changing, but not to note the water of the sea,
I don't think it's naming things which is the problem, rather it is not looking properly.
Well the mind's projection onto a perceived item includes not just a name but a lot of other information, such as leaves move in certain ways or are different colours underneath and on top... common circumstances under which you would still call a leaf a leaf but which the mind only learns through experience. So by seeing without the minds projections you would lose not only names but a whole lot of context about the world... it would be as a newborn baby would view the world.
What kind of context would be included in 'seeing the true nature of things' is anyone's guess at this point.
But this does call to mind a funny story about Osho, he would eat the exact same lunch every day, and every day he would cry "ah dahl, my favourite!" If you truly were continually seeing things anew, never getting bored with things might be an expected side effect.
The problem isn't the labelling itself, it's the fact that we do it in a habitual and unconscious way and so we don't really look. What I do sometimes is deliberately label things, eg "tree", "car", "man", "wave". Try it and you will see what I mean.
thanks @pegembara
according to my understanding you are correct @SpinyNorman
if we take the Quote "At this moment we can be aware of the conditions of the mind, feelings in the body, what we’re seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling and thinking, and also of the emptiness of the mind."
if at this moment we can be aware of:
1. 'what we’re seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling and thinking' (mindfulness of body)
or
2. 'feelings in the body' (mindfulness of feeling)
or
3. 'the conditions of the mind' (mindfulness of mind)
or
4. ' the emptiness of the mind' (mindfulness of dhamma)
we are practicing these four frames of reference, and we are really trying to look
then
there will be a moment that we will be able to see/know a glimpse of 'the conditioned and the unconditioned'
from this moment onward one is 'supatipanno' because one knows what is 'the conditioned and the unconditioned'
until this moment one doesn't know what is 'the unconditioned' but lots of imaginations of 'the unconditioned'
what we have to do is start practicing mindfulness of body, then other three will follow
I find this type of labelling most useful - seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, thinking, feeling. Every such phenomena arising and passing away moment to moment.
In many ways, friend, the Blessed One has said of dependently co-arisen consciousness, 'Apart from a requisite condition, there is no coming-into-play of consciousness.'"
"If anyone were to say, 'The eye is the self,' that wouldn't be tenable. The arising & falling away of the eye are discerned. And when its arising & falling away are discerned, it would follow that 'My self arises & falls away.' That's why it wouldn't be tenable if anyone were to say, 'The eye is the self.' So the eye is not-self.
I sometimes use that approach, eg "feeling", "seeing", "hearing", thinking". The other approach I use is labelling the sense-object, eg "sensations", "sights", "sounds", "thoughts", etc.
I find that the first approach gives a better feel for the transience of experience, while the second gives a better feel for the bare experience, thinking of the Bahiya Sutta.
In my mind (he he), moving beyond mind speaks of enlightenment. That's the concrete understanding. In a gathering-more-information manner, moving beyond mind might suggest that at some point we "get it", we begin to understand that our mind is small mind (the ego) and when we are using our small minds we cannot experience big mind (the universe, Buddha, God, whatever).
Meditation and mindfulness give us an opening for big mind to be realized and to operate. At that point we see things as they are because things ARE as they are. The minute that enlightenment is not operating, then we revert back to seeing things through our delusions, our programming, our conditioning, etc.
This is more or less a Zen way of looking at it and that's just because that's my discipline, but I hope it makes sense in a universal sense.
I find that re-establishing mindfulness in the body at regular intervals is a good foundation, and it's an effective way of returning fully to present experience. I find that it also has a grounding effect, so it means I am less "in my head".
you have tried and you have found
this is not just 'something someone has said'
what is developing in you
Faith on 'what you have been doing/Mindfulness'
and
Wisdom on 'what you have found'
Faith, Mindfulness, Wisdom
three of the faculties of 'the five faculties' (panca-indriya)
three factors of 'the 37 factors for Enlightenment' (sath-this bodhi-pakshika Damma)
you are 'on the way to Enlightenment'
happy voyage!
^^. Exactly so @uppeka
Until the path becomes embedded and enacted, we are play acting at dharma. We do find dharma to be True. We do find confirmation along the way. And if an aristocrat run away can do it [who said wrong speech? - yep I iz naughty again] anyone can-can.
Dance Dharma.
ability to bring humor to anything is a great talent
but
remind yourself 'form is emptiness and emptiness is form'
I forgot to mention that using our mind to think about moving beyond the mind is at best problematic, for obvious reasons. This has to be experienced and not approached through thought. It's just getting the ego out of the way.
I remember reading or hearing Ajahn Brahm.I am trying to find his quote,forgive me if i misquoted,
A student once asked if the mind was big enough to see the Universe.And he said something about that being the wrong question.
It's not that the Mind is big enough to see the universe it's that the whole universe is inside the mind.
So from this point of view,In my own opinion,i may be wrong,I think all experiences/phenomenon happens within the mind.In other words nothing is beyond Mind.As for movement.Everything in Samsara is moving.Movement=Suffering.
Beyond movement is Cessation,Nibbanna.
Since everything is within Mind.I think ALL meditations are within Mind.Even the deepest and highest stages.You may have given up the five senses in meditation but you will still be dealing with the sixth sense which is the Mind.
A non returner taking Nibbanna as their object of meditation only attains Arahantship after realising that even this is just formation (sankhara) of the mind.So even at this state they are still dealing with Mind.I truly don't know if we ever move beyond Mind.
Peter Harvey, Consciousness Mysticism in the Discourses of the Buddha. In Karel Werner, ed., The Yogi and the Mystic. Curzon Press 1989, pages 87, 90.
Here is another quote i found from Ajahn Brahm,that helps explain something about the the Mind.Which i have to say is very hard to understand.What the Mind is.
**
Being reborn in one of the heavenly realms Venerable Rohitassa came to the Buddha and told him the story of his previous life. That as a hermit, he'd levitated and flew on "for ever and ever and ever", dying on the journey without reaching the end of the cosmos. He was not the first cosmonaut or astronaut, he was the first monkanaut! The Buddha rebuked him, saying that that's not the way to find the end of the universe. Instead, the Buddha emphatically said that the beginning and the end of the universe can only be found by investigating within. This gave the answer to one of the questions that people so often ask of Buddhists: "Who do Buddhists believe created this universe?" A scientist would reword the same question as, "What is the origin of this universe?" The answer is that **the beginning and end of the universe are to be found within your own body and mind. **You are its creator!
http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books3/Ajahn_Brahm_Buddhism_and_Science.htm
LOL
A great link and much useful material. However as usual monks with too much time in their minds get confused by their inner and outer. A few more miracles/defying of known science for skeptics and they might be of more use ... Here is a quote from the same link, from the self created Buddha:
One of the beautiful things about Buddhism that encouraged me to become a Buddhist when I was young, and which keeps me as a Buddhist now, is that questioning is always encouraged. You do not need to believe. In one of the tales from the ancient texts the Buddha gave a teaching to his chief monk, Venerable Sariputta. After giving the teaching, the Buddha asked his chief monk, "Sariputta, do you believe what I just taught?" Sariputta, without any hesitation, said "No I don't believe it, because I haven't experienced it yet". The Buddha said, "Well done! Well done! Well done!" That is the attitude to encourage in all disciples, either of religion or science. Not to believe, but to keep an open mind until they've had the true experience. This attitude goes against dogmatism, it runs counter to fundamentalism, which one doesn't only see in religion, but which one also sees in science.