Does reality fight back when you want to meditate?
Upvote:1
The anxiety occurs due to an ever-increasing understanding of impermanence, but the mind diversifies such simplistic teachings. Having further understood impermanence and having become upset by that understanding, the mind projects its upset back out towards the world. This comes as a result of holding views about what is perceived in that world. Whatever views one holds about the world, the 'I am' conceit is always the predominant funder.
"But, lord, might there be agitation over what is internally not present?" [Impermanant]
"There might, monk," the Blessed One said. "There is the case where someone has this view: 'This cosmos is the self. After death this I will be constant, permanent, eternal, not subject to change. I will stay just like that for an eternity.' He hears a Tathagata or a Tathagata's disciple teaching the Dhamma for the elimination of all view-positions, determinations, biases, inclinations, & obsessions; for the stilling of all fabrications; for the relinquishing of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding. The thought occurs to him, 'So it might be that I will be annihilated! So it might be that I will perish! So it might be that I will not exist!' He grieves & is tormented, weeps, beats his breast, & grows delirious. It's thus that there is agitation over what is internally not present."
The fighting back that you describe is not the world 'out there', it is your inner views resisting the transient nature of conditionality, but the mind plays tomfoolery with you.
Upvote:2
Right immersion is peaceful:
AN5.27:1.2: When you develop limitless immersion, alert and mindful, five knowledges arise for you personally.
AN5.27:1.3: What five?
AN5.27:1.4: ‘This immersion is blissful now, and results in bliss in the future.’ …
AN5.27:1.5: ‘This immersion is noble and spiritual.’ …
AN5.27:1.6: ‘This immersion is not cultivated by sinners.’ …
AN5.27:1.7: ‘This immersion is peaceful and sublime and tranquil and unified, not held in place by forceful suppression.’ …
AN5.27:1.8: ‘I mindfully enter into and emerge from this immersion.’ …
AN5.27:2.1: Develop limitless immersion, alert and mindful.
This sounds easy, but actually is not, so the Buddha provides instruction:
AN5.28:2.1: “And how do you develop noble right immersion with five factors?
AN5.28:2.2: Firstly, a mendicant, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption. It has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected.
AN5.28:2.3: They drench, steep, fill, and spread their body with rapture and bliss born of seclusion. There’s no part of the body that’s not spread with rapture and bliss born of seclusion.
AN5.28:2.4: It’s like when a deft bathroom attendant or their apprentice pours bath powder into a bronze dish, sprinkling it little by little with water. They knead it until the ball of bath powder is soaked and saturated with moisture, spread through inside and out; yet no moisture oozes out.
AN5.28:2.5: In the same way, a mendicant drenches, steeps, fills, and spreads their body with rapture and bliss born of seclusion.
Let's look at these instructions carefully:
- secluded from sensual pleasures. If we're absorbed in a video game, it will be hard to find time to meditate. So we turn off the video game.
- secluded from unskillful qualities. If we're obsessed with gain such as promotions, more salary, finer clothes, better lodging, etc., then that's not really skillful. So we let the world be without grasping at it. Ethics help here as a natural form of restraint. And seclusion provides a time and space for immersion.
So seclusion is quite important. Notice that the Buddha repeats "seclusion" for emphasis. Seclusion is a key principle.
How shall we go about achieving this elusive seclusion? Well the Buddha recommends this:
MN62:3.2: “Rāhula, you should truly see any kind of form at all—past, future, or present; internal or external; coarse or fine; inferior or superior; far or near: all form—with right understanding: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’”
By not grabbing at the world, we can move gently and peacefully through the world, doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. By not grabbing at the world, we can work and pay our bills and feed our families. And by not grabbing at the world, with patiently awaited good fortune, we may have the time to peacefully meditate with right immersion.
The path is gentle and at the start of the path is Right View. Right Immersion is the eighth step in the path, so let's start with the first step before jumping all the way to the last.
If the world is chasing us, let's turn towards it and meet it directly with the heart. If we are chasing the world, let's turn away from it and find peace for the heart.
NOTE: for more details on Right View, please see MN117:
MN117:6.1: And what is right view?
More post
- 📝 Have I invented this statsitic on Theravada enlightenment?
- 📝 How is walking meditation different than other forms of activity?
- 📝 The Noble Eightfold Path for monks and for lay disciples?
- 📝 Is this a beginning of anatta? Where to go from here?
- 📝 How can merit be transferred?
- 📝 When Zen monks are completing a task, why are they doing it very quickly?
- 📝 How buddhist meditation leads to liberation?
- 📝 Why this hair style on statues of the Buddha?
- 📝 How to survive Buddhism ? Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha
- 📝 Must one move through the various jhanas to realise nibbana?
- 📝 Implementing the Satipatthana Sutta IRL [HELP]
- 📝 Is there an end to the suffering in general?
- 📝 How is Vegetarianism morally superior to eating meat in a Buddhist context?
- 📝 Shamata - attention on upper lip, diaphragm or belly?
- 📝 What is the reason for attributing Lord Buddha's statues to days the of week?
- 📝 How would a Buddhist advise on this subset of problems of motivation?
- 📝 What is right gifting?
- 📝 What happens to one in a locked in syndrome?
- 📝 Do you have to become a Monk to attain enlightment?
- 📝 Mindfulness in Everyday Activity
- 📝 What is forgetting an experience?
- 📝 In modern times what percentage of monks are female?
- 📝 Self like a diamond
- 📝 Are the Sins in dreams, sins?
- 📝 Are the results of positive Kamma good from a Buddhist's perspective or good from a "Samsaric's" perspective?
- 📝 Why does it hard to ask other Buddhists to do analysis, rather than advising me to stop analyzing?
- 📝 Buddha's night before enlightenment
- 📝 Is it bad karma if you say something that turns out to be false?
- 📝 Ultimate reality and tilakkhana
- 📝 Removing sankharas
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Does reality fight back when you want to meditate?
- 📝 Does Buddhism give methods to ask questions when you are proliferating?
- 📝 I want to pray and meditate like a Buddhist, but I do not know how because I am Arab and I have not found sources in Arabic so can you guide me
- 📝 How does one accomplish a reality not governed by the mind when thought is required to function?
- 📝 Is Buddhism "opposed" to striving, or working towards a goal that you really want
- 📝 What could I say to someone when they ask me "why do you meditate?"
- 📝 Who said 'if you are too busy meditate for two hours'?
- 📝 What do you wish you knew when you started down the path of buddhism?
- 📝 Is it okay to leave your suffering family behind when you have an instinct to attain Nirvana?
- 📝 How does one escape suffering when they cannot provide for those they love
- 📝 When is it time to meditate and when is it time to act?
- 📝 How does one practice Buddhism when experience is limited by the 6 senses?
- 📝 What should you do when someone teaches false Dharma?
- 📝 How do you decide when to stick up for yourself and when to let things go?
- 📝 Can you meditate too much as part of a daily routine?
- 📝 When should you put on your robes?
- 📝 Will I know when it's time to meditate longer?
- 📝 How does the buddhist teachings differentiate between reality and perception?
- 📝 Should detachment, and letting go, be an appropriate response when you are owed money?
- 📝 Where does the Dalai Lama say '... be a better whatever you already are'?
- 📝 When an experienced monk meditates how much does their mind wander?
- 📝 Why does the mind always want to 'do something' and how to cultivate 'non-doing'?
- 📝 Why do enlightened beings want to save sentient beings? Does everyone want to be saved?
- 📝 How does our inactions contribute to Karma?... For eg:How can you justify act of your cook killing an animal for your non buddhist guest?
- 📝 When to let things let go and when to fight for them?
- 📝 How and when does one not invest in others in Buddhism?
- 📝 what to do, when you can't meditate?
- 📝 Does the level of awareness of an awakened buddhist also stay the same event when he sleeps?
- 📝 Addicted to a particular pleasure even when you know it has its drawbacks.
- 📝 When the obstacles are abandoned does one experience dharma everywhere?