| | Hi,
Over the last couple of days I've been trying to get into the Samatha jhanas again with some success. To avoid slipping into the A&P, I just stuck to the breathing, avoiding examing sensations....duh! I think I was looking for something a lot less subtle and it took the sledgehammer of the A&P for me to realize anything was happening at all!
As I said it's only been a couple of days, so I can't give very good descriptions yet, but I noticed a lot of shifts. Because it is new I wanted to push on to see what was possible. I am not certain if it is just a deeper experience of 1st jhana, but my instinct says not as the different shifts had different textures. At first I had to stay with it to avoid the A&P, but kept pushing on and soon keeping the state was absolutely efffortless. There was lots of pleasure, but I tended to not look at it too hard to avoid accidental vipassana.
This sounds a bit presumptious, but I think I might even have made it to the formless jhanas. There were a couple of shifts where everything was a lot quieter and it felt like the universe was in front of me (5th and 6th?). I pushed on; even with eyes closed the difference in focus was astonishing, it suddenly seemed like I had my nose up against a wall (7th?). I didn't like it (claustrophobic) and tried to push on, fell back, pushed onto the brick wall again, hung around a while, pushed on again...sublime! I can't really describe it, apart from to say effortless and beautiful, utterly relaxed. I was contented and decided to hang out there. After a while...whoosh, there was a sudden involuntary, almost aggresive deepening or shift into something else. It seemed like it would be very difficult to claw my way back to normality...but I didn't want to anyway. Is this the difference between soft and hard jhana or something else?
Eventually I decided to do some vipassana and started to look at the sensations...wham, straight into a powerful version of the A&P I've been experiencing, where I feel I am compressed down and perceptions happen really clearly. Then my two year old woke up! Over an hour was gone and that is a big deal for me with dry insight.
I've also started having the opposite A&P where, when I am at the bottom of the thing, there is a shift and everything starts rising powerfully. The first time that happened my spine arched and head was thrown backwards, I thought I'd been impaled! Classic corny kundalini symptoms.
One thought is that while I am displaying the sypmtoms of progress in insight and I understand the 3Cs rationally, I don't feel as if I have gained any actual 'insight' if you know what I mean. I also never seem to recognize the first 3 nanas, maybe they happen too quickly, subtly or I am looking for the wrong thing. I guess it will all come with time.
I think I'm going to develop this samatha thing a bit before the push into Dark Night. It would be good to have a pleasant refuge and it seems to push the vipassana further anyway. As well as all that, it seems to be a great tonic; I have been working wierd nightshifts and have a rotten cold, normally I would be double grumpy! To be honest, part of the reason I got into meditation was to experience some altered states and I can hardly believe it's happening so quickly.
So, where do you think I might really be with samatha? Hopefully I will have better details in a few days.
Any thoughts/ tips/ advice would be most appreciated.
Cheers x |