Awakening to the Obvious

Maybe not strictly Hindu in nature, I enjoyed reading this so thought I'd share it here,
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http://www.serve.com/cmtan/buddhism/Encounters/mncanter.html

For several years, Id been aware of powerful, "electrical" surges in my nervous system during vipassana meditation. I had focused on the breath and mostly ignored these stirrings of the kundalini. But now my meditation sessions became sheer energy work-outs. Even so simple a practice as following the breath now felt like contrived self-effort. Vipassana was obsolete. Instead, I would sit and the kundalini would flame through my head and eyes and spine and toss me around like a mad dancer. I laughed and cried. I growled. I screamed. I made spontaneous intonations, including multi-chorded overtone chanting like the Tibetan Gyupta monks. It was painful and blissfulindescribable. I was suffering, but unable to budge a finger. Afraid, but unable to make a single response. I was being meditated.

I became constantly aware of the tension around my heart, the tension of"me"of holding on to myself. The presence of spirit had become a great current and my misery was my resistance to it. But I was reluctant to sacrifice "my life" completely.

Then one day in October 1993, I had grown so exhausted with the effort of preventing my own death, that I lay down on my bed and said, Okay, I give up. Take me insanity, or take me God, or take me whatever you are, mighty river. Sweep me to my destiny.

Abruptly, I began to lose "face". Panic came on strong. I cramped up in a ball like a fetus. I became an electric buzzing cloud of ego-pain and then everything dissolved and I entered the light and bliss and freedom of ego-death. Beyond the golden light into the clear light of void. No self. No thing. No bounds. The rapture only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to see that all was okay. I had allowed death to occur, and it was not annihilation. It was only the loss of an imaginary limita phony identity.

HO!

The next day, I spontaneously entered nirvikalpa samadhi again, while soaking in the bathtub. The episode lasted several minutes and was completely free of fear from the beginning. The bright pleasure simply increased until the separate "I"-sense was overwhelmed in light. From October on, each time I sat to meditate, I entered the shining void (at times remaining in samadhi for an hour or more). It is like entering deep sleep while remaining wide awake. It is luminous clarity: dreamless wakepure consciousness without content other than its own uncreated bliss.

After a couple months of this, I dreamed one dawn in January 1994, that I was on a stage before an audience. A coffin was displayed on a stand and I was lying in it, facedown and naked. An emcee was on stage, and it was clear that I was to perform a Houdini-like escape act; I was supposed to free myself and emerge from the coffin.

I began to chuckle. What was the big deal? I was already free. The coffin lid was open, and I had no chains or shackles on me in the first place. I simply stood up.

Next, I was holding beautiful blue pearls in my hand, and the emcee told me to string them together as fast as I could. I started slipping the blue pearls onto a string, as a timer with TV-game show music ticked in the background. The emcee shouted, "Hurry, get as many beads on the string as you can!" For a few seconds I rapidly strung pearls, but then I stopped and looked up at the emcee. Why do I need to do this? I thought. This is your game, not mine. I gazed at the audience and all eyes were upon me. I smiled at the people as I stepped off the stage and began handing out the blue pearls, one to each person.

Then I woke up. It was a sunny winter morning in Tallahassee, Florida. Iwent downstairs and sat to meditate . . . and . . .

There was nowhere to go.

I strolled outdoors into the woods around my home. I saw no dilemma at all, within or without. No thing to seek. No experience to shed. No limit. I was not a something that could travel to someplace. I could not go deeper or higher through any means.

I burst out laughing from down in my belly. THIS IS IT. What a punchline! I thought the moment of satori would never end. But by the afternoon, when I went to pick up my sons from elementary school, I realized that satori is only a state, too. It comes and goes. Nothing lasts.

And guess what? I don't care in the least. I am not dismayed when ego appears, or when it disappears. I am no longer at war with ego or void. They are twin aspects of consciousness itself. I don't take sides at all.

Reality is not samadhi, the extinguishing of all forms. Reality is not even satori, the natural mode of egolessness. Reality is no special state at all; no special condition. Reality is the field of all possible states, their origin and unqualified basis, perfectly open and unbounded; pure capacity. Fundamentally, nothing has changed or ever will, and what Ive come to understand was already only so: just this.

From a certain perspective it can seem a big deal: Ive grokked my own essence, and it is reality (or Buddha-nature). Or, as the Persian poet, Omar Khayam, put it: "I am, myself, Heaven and Hell."

But on the other hand, Buddha-nature and a buck will buy me a cup of coffee. No big deal. No special status. Nothing exclusive or exceptional.

These days, I sometimes meditate for pleasure and refreshment, like drinking a delicious tea. And I occasionally enter spontaneous mystic states during meditation. Even so, not any of it is necessary; and none of it is greater than simple happiness. Samadhi or no samadhi, satori or no satori, ego or no egothere is no limit, already.

Nothing is more than wonderful. This moment is wonderful. Nothing is more than wholeness. This moment is complete. THIS is as God as it gets.

Truth (or happiness) is not hidden or secret; not subtle or abstract; not elsewhere, nor different than the stream of life. Birth, change, deathall the same one. There is no other than bright mystery.

It took 22 committed years of spiritual seeking from the moment I first encountered the truth to finally accept the unspeakable grace of our condition.

Friend, hear what I say: The Divine you seek is your own identity, beyond all limit. Therefore, be already happy. Trust in happiness, luminous and clear. Happiness IS the Wholly Spirit, the Light that is real beyond words and beyond worlds.

 

I'd say not strictly Hindu or Buddhist at all...very non-denominational...thanks for posting.

 

I'll just mis-quote the movie here " imagine if this is as good as it gets'!!

Clearly this person is on an 'enlightenment' trip. But as usual with this kind of basic DIY mysticism, it disregards all but a small and wholly subjective area of personal awareness.
It is also, as usual, ultimately nihilistic, since if you assume you have already experienced everything, the full degree of 'wonderfulness' , what is left to live for?

I also hate statements like 'the moment is complete' - what precisely are the parameters of 'the moment'? It's meaningless jargon IMO.

 

I guess you need to experience it, until then it's meaningless.

 

Mmm....I was I suppose in a bit of a 'poison pen' mode when I posted that....


It's hard really to express my thoughts on this - I'll try.
On one hand, we can have an experience of the 'complededness of all things' a moment of perfection, an experience of the flow of universal being ...many possible descriptions.
But still, that doesn't mean everything IS complete, in the sense that creativity within the universe is an ongoing and even spontaneous process. New things can come into being which would then be part of a new and greater totality than that which we percieved before.

 

The truth has to be "non denominatonal", if hindus think they are the ones who are correct, or if vaishnavas think Krishna looks and acts in one way then that is just wrong. Those who are enlightened, or those who have seen God, they are all free of all things that we think as really important. I think there was this story about a kid named Dhruva, who wanted to be the king of the world at age 5-6 or something, he goes to forest to meditate, but when he sees narayana, he is freed from all desire to rule a kingdom or the world.