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beginner meditation needs some insight
I am a beginner to meditation and buddhism my question is while meditating... insight meditation that is, i tend to get aroused and have pictures of sexual acts in my head. What should i do with these?
but in most of my experiences the following is the norm
sometimes when i meditate this happens: i start buy being mindful of my breath... then of my body then i note all other feelings images and so on... then i will go into a state of nothing... i guess you could say but my body always involuntarily jerks me out of the state and i feel as if i am coming back from somewhere... like back to reality almost like coming out of a dream but not the same... should this be happening... time seems to have slowed... but usually 6-10 min have gone by in what seem like a min... it seems as if my mind does not like where it is going or something
but in most of my experiences the following is the norm
sometimes when i meditate this happens: i start buy being mindful of my breath... then of my body then i note all other feelings images and so on... then i will go into a state of nothing... i guess you could say but my body always involuntarily jerks me out of the state and i feel as if i am coming back from somewhere... like back to reality almost like coming out of a dream but not the same... should this be happening... time seems to have slowed... but usually 6-10 min have gone by in what seem like a min... it seems as if my mind does not like where it is going or something
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Comments
For the dull mind you describe the second paragraph, you could try contemplating the fact that you might die at any moment.
For dullness Pema Chodron recomends expanding that total sensation outward to encompass the room, the building, and finally the spaciousness of surrounding your home ,street etc.. For some reason this works, dullness flashes away and the awareness is bright and crisp.
it feels natural but distracting
Hum...the traditional approach would be meditating on the unattractiveness of the body. You see, there are five hindrances:
- Sensual desire (kāmacchanda): Craving for pleasure to the senses.
- Anger or ill-will (byāpāda, vyāpāda): Feelings of malice directed toward others.
- Sloth-torpor or boredom (thīna-middha): Half-hearted action with little or no concentration.
- Restlessness-worry (uddhacca-kukkucca): The inability to calm the mind.
- Doubt (vicikicchā): Lack of conviction or trust.
When these cease you are supposed to get into jhanas, and there are remedies to counter each of these. In your case, you have kama chanda, or sensual desire. The solution for your case in specific would be meditating on the loathsomeness of the human body. The desire is supposed to fade little by little until it doesn't bothers you when you want to think of something else. Weakening the other hindrances also has an effect on the rest (this is my personal experience though :buck:), so you might try attacking the problems in other ways if this first method is too complicated.In this case, however, I think "meditating on the loathsomeness of the human body" should actually be quite fine. This is from the Satipatthana Sutta, where the Buddha elaborates on this particular type of meditation. As you can see, it's not so much assigning a quality of "loathsomeness" to a body as deconstructing it into its constituent parts so that attachment to it lessens:
I actually think zazen and other non-directed forms of meditation can be more dangerous than what is described above because they don't give you a framework to return to if something does come up. The first forms of meditation I would recommend to anyone who has experienced trauma would be more directed practices: in particular, simple anapanasati (mindfulness of the breath) and metta (unconditional goodwill) starting with oneself. In a therapeutic setting, mindfulness of the body is also emphasized quite a bit (usually in the form of a simple body-scan meditation).