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Sleeping issues
Anyone have trouble sleeping due to the mind wanting to enter a state of meditation or absorption? I had to take sleeping pills last night. It's difficult. When I meditate I do it by observance of breath and it happens quickly, so I'm just trying to sleep and not think of anything but I end up in a meditative state regardless.
Now it's getting worse as I'm sinking into a deeper state where it feels like my entire body is suffused with light and I feel that utter bliss all over again while I'm there.
Any advice? I'm going to go lay down again, for the third time...
Now it's getting worse as I'm sinking into a deeper state where it feels like my entire body is suffused with light and I feel that utter bliss all over again while I'm there.
Any advice? I'm going to go lay down again, for the third time...
0
Comments
If you lay down and count your breaths, it is probably a little like counting sheep.: ^ )
If some state happens, looking at that state is a thought, so just go back to watching and counting breaths, and relax into it.
Trying to sleep is a forcing that will wake you up, and make you worry. Don't try anything, just accept everything. If you are tired enough, you will drift off.
Warm Regards,
S9
I'm not as worried about it now. I probably wasn't as tired as I could've been. There were other nights that I was able to fall asleep as soon as I closed my eyes. In any case I'll figure it out. Thanks for replying.
if it seems to be the mind wanting to enter into the absoption state just let it be
just provide a bit of command 'the duration' that you want it to come out
i think you have heard about the 'panca vccitha' (five ways of controlling the absorption state)
(this situation is a sure sign that you have had the meditation practise before)
Maybe I'll just go for it and try to enter the first jhana when I'm awake now.
do you mean awake or AWAKE?
if it is capital AWAKE is there any need to try?
just chek is it awake or AWAKE
by the way, it is not bad if you can find Aj Brahm's 'Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond' read first few chapters again
may be within very short duration you skip first few steps before absoprtion
entering to a jhana (absorption) is a higher level of concentrated mind
after the AWAKEN mind we have to keep up the effort to have a mindfulness and have a concentrated mind until we can have a 'unbroken mindfulness'
This is so hard, though, because the mind is so dull upon awakening, it is easy to be swept along by the conditioning.
Re: S9: If some state happens, looking at that state is a thought, so just go back to watching and counting breaths, and relax into it.
5B: This is so hard, though, because the mind is so dull upon awakening, it is easy to be swept along by the conditioning.
S9: Quite so, but with persistence, certain improved mental habits become established. Good habits can sometimes carry you over the bumps.
You don’t actually need to wipe out what is happening, but you simply allow it to float by you and not to grab onto it. Breath acting like a raft to keep you out of the water (of thought). All of these thoughts are like dreams. Paying little attention to thoughts/states and simply allowing them actually takes away their fuel. Thoughts live on attention, burrowing their life from it.
Often when I wake up at night, I had a wicked migraine. Pain can be very compelling and grabs you by the neck, saying, “Hey I’m here, and I’m important.” I have found that seeing this pain as just one more dream, and not magnifying it with emotional response, allows me to let go of the pain and to drift off to sleep more rapidly than earlier in my history. This is a blessing.
Warm Regards,
S9
So very, very peaceful.
the best time to check 'Have done what has to be done'
and
if the answer is 'No'
then
go for 'Dhamma Vicaya', the second of 'saptha bodhi anga -sapthabojjanga'
These threads seem to have a life of their own.
“Ain’t over until they are over. ; ^ )
So often, even months later, someone will come by and be touch by what was said…hopefully in a good way.
Warm Regards,
S9
You are probably just kidding about Stephen "pulling our leg" about what he experienced while meditating. It was just too tempting for you, to play off his mentioning "legs" to let it go without a wink. ; ^ )
or two ; ^ ) ; ^ )
That being said, I can’t even imagine Stephen "pulling our (collective) leg" about something that is so important to him. He just doesn’t strike me as being that way…one little bit. : ^ )
Friendly regards,
S9
jhana has control; jhana is deep & subtle
often when a person meditates with very strong effort & enthusiam, it gives rise to momentary concentration with momentary rapture
this occurs due to strong supression and strong catharsis
momentary rapture is difficult to control for the novice meditator and difficulty in sleeping generally occurs
right jhana arises from right view
right view establishes the mind in letting go or abandonment rather than in supression
ajahn brahm's book is accurate guide to the preliminaries
And because of that when I die, I will be reborn into a Brahma world...
I don’t think anyone here believes that some high-tension state, which includes many forms of repression, actually accompanies us into any jhana state. Jhana IS an intense release of this very tension or effort. However, the tension of extended and extreme effort towards concentration often precedes such a jhana state.
Yet, it is the release from intense tension, and it’s changing into a state of intense relaxation, which creates the very sensation of both physical release, and mental rapture.
Any feelings of control within a jhana state only returns when you begin the inevitable exit of said state. In fact, it is said that any attempt at control will insure your exit of the jhana.
Respectfully,
S9
I agree that the rapture of jhana is a state is so satisfying that we don’t seek change, which is what thoughts are all about; a constant desire for change into something more satisfying. This desire is born directly out of dissatisfaction.
I don’t believe that anyone would ever describe rapture as being a state of dissatisfaction.
Control is obviously a thought. Control what, if you are purely satisfied right where you are? I have seen it written that as a jhana starts to fade, for one reason or another, that we add pain to injury by trying to hold onto it. Holding on to it only slides us into tension, and insures our exit is assured.
We are however AWARE of this jhana as it is taking place. So something is present to it. It isn’t a black hole. What is this Awareness?
It is certainly not the ego, or our usual thought self.
Warm Regards,
S9
When fully immersed in the jhana, there is no trying. Simply floating (if you will) in pure bliss/calm until something causes it to end. In my case, hearing people waking up and having the singular thought "time to come out".
S: It's a stripped-down self.
S9: Mind and her thoughts are the trying guys. Self is completely effortless. In a jhana the mind is concentrated on a task like hearing, and you slip out of the mind temporarily and sit blissfully beside the river. At this moment, you are witnessing your "Original Face," before mind convinced you that you were the mind, disrupting tranqility. Sitting beside the river is a glimpse of Enlightenment.
S: There is still a self there, but one that is solely concerned with the pure bliss of the experience.
S9: Yes, of course, and momentarily you have dis-identified with the ego story of who you are.
S: What is that self? I'm sure that becomes more apparent as one becomes more awakened/enlightened.
S9: Indeed.
S: When fully immersed in the jhana, there is no trying. Simply floating (if you will) in pure bliss/calm until something causes it to end. In my case, hearing people waking up and having the singular thought "time to come out".
S9: Yes, when the mind wandered from its task or purpose to concentrate, it also grabbed you from sitting beside the water, contentedly, and throw you back into the waters of the mind…noise.
Warm Regards,
S9
__________________
BTW, it's always nice having conversations with someone who doesn't just quote texts. You actually seem to understand for yourself, and that's what really counts.
A very wise friend once told me, "Don't just read things. Try to change whatever you read into your own words, if you ever expect to make them yours."
And:
"Simply brushing over words with your eyes, doesn’t always make you understand what you have read."
Those little pieces of advice were the beginning of my philosophical search to understand more completely.
Later Buddha said to me, "Don’t just take my word for it. Find this as a personal experience, within yourself." This changed mere conceptual understanding of the truth into actually 'living from' a deep truth.
Anyone who believe that they can gain the same deep insights, by simply reading someone else’s words or hearing about their experiences,is sadly mistaken. Not only that, but they would be cheating themselves.
Thank you for your kind words, my new e-friend,
S9
But jhana is not like that.
Real jhana is cultivated from openness of mind.
Jhana is "release" that arises from preceding "release".
Thus, your sexual metaphor is inaccurate.
Not one poster on the internet who declares that have attained jhana has attained jhana.
The Buddha said in the texts:
It is like having full control over remaining silent.
I trust my paradoxical explanation is clear.
One who attains jhana has full mastery of entering, remaining and exiting jhana (and then sleeping at will).
One who enters jhana has cultivated such calmness of mind that the factors of jhana will be discerned as disturbing.
The mind in jhana can discern the disturbing rapture from the Nibbana element.
Jhana is automatic pleasure from the nervous system arising from the liberation of the most subtle neurons. But it is not "satisfying".
To regard jhana as satisfying is wrong view in Buddhism.
The Buddha taught it is impossible for one of right view to regard any conditioned thing as satisfying.
It follows a mind that feels satisfaction in rapture cannot be regarded as a stream-enterer.
Stream entry will generally occur on the level of 'neighbourhood' concentration (jhana is 'attainment' concentration).
It follows those minds that find rapture satisfying have experienced 'momentary' concentration.
In short, if a mind feels satisfied with rapture arising from meditation, that rapture is not from jhana but instead from a lower level of concentration, generally, momentary concentration.
That sounds like a very accurate assessment, DD. I've often come to that conclusion myself.
.
:eek:
I recommend you read Ajahn Brahm's book about jhana.
'Self' disappears in jhana.
In fact, 'self' should have disappeared well before jhana.
The 'self' of a stream-enterer has disappeared when they are in meditation but a stream enterer has not reached jhana yet.
Thus - no stream entry and no jhana it seems.
You appear to be answering questions with questions which is not an answer.
Floating is a good start.
Keep practising letting go.
But your mind is still feeling a sense of 'self' and you mind has not described ekkagattacitta upon the sign (nimitta).
Sorry. But no jhana and no cigar.
Just bragging & boasting & concocting spiritual pride and self-views about imaginary attainments.
Just infatuation or craving.
Worse of all - false speech, false testimony & false declaration.
In short, no sila, no samma samadhi and no panna. No path.
The Buddha, our trustworthy guide & spiritual friend has advised in SN 48.9 that right concentration makes 'release' its sole object (vossaggarammanam karitva).
'Vossagga' means 'tossing back' or 'relinquishment'.
:smilec:
If you cannot understand the texts, your mind is not awakened or is enlightened.
Your conversation here is the wrong way, the unskilful way.
It is boasting about imagined attainments rather than expounding the path.
The path is rooted in abandoning clinging to things as "good", "bad", "attainment", "I", "mine".
Your posts are full of grasping at mere phenomena.
This is why your mind fights the texts.
Because you are not willing to abandon the view "I have attained jhana".
The Buddha advised jhana is rooted in seclusion or aloneness (viveka).
It requires no verification from others and no sharing with others.
S9: Of course not, sex is a physical release.
However I am led to believe in readings about Tantric methods, that they bring you to some very good places for noticing some of the higher states of mind, and even what is beyond the mind, very similar to meditation. There is something about such extreme relaxation that is completely useful in these areas.
S9: I would say rather that ‘openness of the mind’ is a byproduct of such concentrated effort.
S9: No doubt there are deeper and deeper levels of this concentration, and stronger sensations of openness of mind, as jhana is a skill and it grows like any muscle with constant training.
I believe the highest benefit that comes out of jhana is the confidence it builds that your are in fact not the mind or any of her attributes. This is more than simply relaxation either physical or the mental. I believe this both acquaints us with, and rewards us with, insights into the real possibility of ‘Waking Up’ completely and once and for all.
S9: Actually it was not a sexual metaphor. I was likening it to a creative breakthrough that very often comes after great intellectual effort in a certain direction. Many of the great discoveries down through history attribute themselves to such events.
S9: You can only say this with some conviction, because you have already declared that jhana is not an attainment, in your humble opinion.
; ^ )
But whether it is an attainment, or a by-product, is beside the point. Many people have certainly experienced jhana personally. Word games certainly cannot take this away from them.
: ^ (
Have you experienced jhana, yourself, on any or many levels, and also much of what you profess to understand so thoroughly, or are you basing most of this information upon your personal readings?
Warm Regards,
S9
Consider this my last reply to you, because I will not take on the insurmountable task of convincing a wall of anything.
I could tell from your words that you had actually experienced a break-through of some kind. This is probably because, I have ‘been there/done that’ in a similar fashion.
Whether some self-proclaimed expert comes by, and believes that what you had was a not a Real jhana, or that you simply got hoodwinked by your ego self, matters very little in the long run. Because in your heart of hearts, you KNOW what you experienced. : ^ )
Trust in your own experience, and continue to travel on your own intuitional path, as this intention towards your own truth IS your Buddha Nature, or what some have called your “Inner Guru.”
If there is anything more to learn, or deepened, it will certainly become clear in it own due time.
But, if you lose trust in your own, personal, inner direction, that would be a Great loss.
: ^ (
Friendly Regards,
S9
Thanks again for your kind, and wise, words.