Heavy long-term user of philosophical and intellectual approaches to Buddhism. Twenty-plus years of brief periodic bouts of Goenka-influenced meditation — always done poorly with no consistent technique, no discipline, no concentration, and no results. I don’t know much about maps, don’t follow any particular orthodoxy, and am not wedded to Buddhism. Please, if you can, help me to name and understand what happened, without too much lingo….

Something instantaneously snapped into focus while driving home the other day. I got a quick glimpse in the car, and I was intrigued, but couldn’t concentrate on it while driving. A queer feeling of distance/detachment the rest of the evening, but then I woke up in the middle of the night and I lay in bed for an hour or so, fully absorbed with the experience. 

For an hour, I am not me. I have no body. There is a big expansive, blank, dark space. Where “I” am in all of this is unclear. Am “I” the empty space? It’s uncertain if there’s an “I” anywhere at all. Inside the vast emptiness, a portal like a giant eye opens onto the world of forms. Visual perceptions hit this big eye, but they all seem unreal, like on a movie screen. Audio perceptions are coming in on a different stream from the visual. Body sensations are on a third; thoughts are on a fourth. If I concentrate, I can switch between the four streams, perceiving one at a time—but the visual is the clearest, and even that is hard for me to stay with for very long. 

I am still thinking, and the realization comes that I’ve been reifying these forms for my whole life, objectifying everything including my “self.” All of those cheesy Zen sayings I’ve assumed are metaphors suddenly are true in a very literal way: there is no path and no goal, the truth is right here right now, everything is already perfect just the way it is. It is all so simple, so easy to see. Just a slight shift in perspective was all it took, just like taking a step back to see the container/frame around the world.

Nothing coming in on any of the channels are “me.” Maybe I am the vastness, here for lifetime after lifetime, while bodies and forms and thoughts come and go eternally? After a while, a deep sense of terror: the realization comes that abiding in this perspective, I could lose my identity, my sanity, my family, my job, everything I love and depend on. From this place, the forms coming through don’t matter at all. They are just projections — meaningless, including whether or not the forms are there or are seen. The fear draws me out of the experience, and I eventually fall back to sleep. 

Over the next few days the taste lingers, but it gradually becomes increasingly difficult to snap back into that perspective. Looking back, it seems like a huge perspective shift, but it also seems like a completely mundane thing. Nothing has notably changed (with my lack of concentration, lack of control over thoughts and emotions, etc.), but somehow seeing everything has changed by seeing the vastness. I’m curious to go back and explore the relationship between the emptiness and the forms, and try to figure out where (if anywhere) “I am” in all of it. There is no longer a feeling that there's anything specific I need to attain, but I’d like to hang out in that space and look around as much as possible.

I’m wondering how you Buddhist psychops,

nauts would classify this experience, and what you’d recommend for next steps. Thanks for reading.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read and write. Yes, everything I'm reading about satori seems to fit. I wonder where this leaves me in terms of practice, though. Having not arrived here via any kind of formal method, I don't know where to go to learn how to bring this shift in perspective back again. (It doesn't ultimately matter, but I'd like to explore it further.) Would you suggest I seek out a Zen teacher? 

Separate question: some people seem to be describing Dzogchen in similar trerms. Is that the same type of experience?

Thanks for your insights and advice. 

Verses on the Perfect Mind (Tsin Tsin Ming)
by Seng-ts’an, Third Patriarch of Zen

The Great Way is not difficult,
for those who have no preferences.
Let go of longing and aversion,
and it reveals itself.

Make the smallest distinction, however,
and you are as far from it as heaven is from earth.
If you want to realize the truth,
then hold no opinions for or against anything.

Like and dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning (of the Way) is not understood
the intrinsic peace of mind is disturbed.

As vast as infinite space,
it is perfect and lacks nothing.
Indeed, it is due to your grasping and repelling
That you do not see things as they are.

Do not get entangled in things;
Do not get lost in emptiness.
Be still in the oneness of things
and dualism vanishes by itself.

When you try to stop motion to achieve quietude,
the very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you hold on to opposites
you will never know the One Way.

Those who do not understand the Way
will assert or deny the reality of things.
Deny the reality of things, you miss its deeper reality;
Assert the reality of things, you miss the emptiness of all things.

The more you think about it,
the further you are from the truth.
Cease all thinking,
and there is nothing that will not be revealed to you.

To return to the root is to find the essence,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the Source.
The moment you are enlightened,
you go beyond appearances and emptiness.

Changes that seem to occur in the (empty) world,
appear real only because of ignorance.
Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.

Do not hold to dualistic views,
avoid such habits carefully.
If there is even a trace of right and wrong,
the mind is lost in confusion.

Although all dualities arise from the One,
do not cling even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
everything is without fault.

When things can no longer be faulty, it is as if there are no things.
When the mind can no longer be disturbed, it is as if there is no mind.
When thought-objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes.
When the mind vanishes, objects vanish.

The arising of other gives rise to self;
giving rise to self generates other.
Know these seeming two facets
as one Emptiness.

In this Emptiness, the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole.
When no discrimination is made between this and that,
how can you prefer one to another?

The Great Way is all-embracing,
not easy, not difficult.
Those who rely on limited views are fearful and irresolute;
the faster they hurry, the slower they go.

Clinging, they go too far,
even an attachment to enlightenment is to go astray.
Just let things be in their own way as they are,
and there is neither coming nor going.

Be in harmony with the Way
and you will be free of disturbances.
Tied by your thoughts, you lose the truth,
become heavy, dull, and unwell.

Not well, the mind is troubled.
Then why cling to or reject anything?
If you wish to move in the One Way,
do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.

Indeed, to accept them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.
The wise attaches to no goals,
but the foolish fetter themselves.

There is but one Dharma, not many.
Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
Using mind to stir up the mind
is the original mistake.

Peaceful and troubled derive from thinking;
Enlightenment has no likes or dislikes.
All dualities come from
ignorant inference.

They are like unto dreams or flowers in the air,
the foolish try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong,
abandon all such thoughts at once.

If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
all things are as they are, of One-essence.

To understand the mystery of this One-essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen without differentiation,
you return to the origin and remain what you are.

Consider the movement in stillness and the stationary in motion,
both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist
even Oneness itself cannot exist.

This ultimate state
is not bound by rules and descriptions.
For the Realized mind, at one with the Way,
all doing ceases.

Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and the Truth is confirmed in you.
With a single stroke you are freed from bondage;
nothing clings to you and you hold onto nothing.

All is void, clear, and self-illuminating,
with no need to exert the mind.
Here thinking, feeling, knowledge, and imagination
are of no value.

In this world of “as it really is”
there is neither self nor other.
To swiftly accord with that,
only express nonduality.

In this nonduality nothing is separate,
nothing is excluded.
The enlightened of all times and places
have personally realized this truth.

The Truth is beyond time and space,
one instant is eternity.
Not here, not there-
but everywhere always right before your eyes.

Infinitely large and infinitely small,
no difference, for definitions have vanished
and no boundaries can be discerned.
So too with “existence” and “non-existence.”

Don’t waste time in arguments and discussion,
attempting to grasp the ungraspable.
One thing and everything
move among and intermingle without distinction.

To live in this Realization
is to not worry about perfection or non-perfection.
To put your trust in the Way is to live without separation,
and in this nonduality you are one with the Way

Words! Words!
The Way is beyond language,
Words never could, can not now, and never will describe the Way.

On your advice, I'm reading now about open awareness meditation, and from first glance that sounds like a much better fit with the experience I'm describing than any of the other the meditation techniques I've known. Actually, the "Mind Like Sky" described briefly here https://www.lionsroar.com/a-mind-like-sky/ strikes me as quite similar to what I experienced. (Except, for me, there was something very visual involved in this experience... It somehow felt like those magic eye books that were popular back in the 90s, the ones where if you stared in the right way it popped into 3D.) Is the practice described here in the article more or less what you had in mind? It seems to me like it might be a good starting point. (The instructions seem quite simple, which is a plus. The last stanza of the poem you quoted is pretty much how I'm feeling about meditation teachings right now.) 

Anyway, regardless of technique, I think the key issue for me is going to be balancing establishing some kind of practice with avoiding grasping or expectations. When I was in the middle of the satori experience it was so clear that there was no goal and no path, but as the afterglow has faded after a few days, I can see myself striving to try to repeat the experience. Of course I realize this is counterproductive, but it's like I can't help myself, I really am so curious to see more.

Thank you Stirling for jumping in. I really appreicate the comments and advice I'm receiving. 



Anyway, regardless of technique, I think the key issue for me is going to be balancing establishing some kind of practice with avoiding grasping or expectations. When I was in the middle of the satori experience it was so clear that there was no goal and no path, but as the afterglow has faded after a few days, I can see myself striving to try to repeat the experience. Of course I realize this is counterproductive, but it's like I can't help myself, I really am so curious to see more.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I can't talk to anyone I know about this experience, so I'm grateful to have this forum. 

PS

Thanks Stirling.

Interesting that it  is an interpretation rather than a translation.  It is the best I've come across. 

And it seems that someone who has grasped the heart of the matter to some degree will always create a more "true" translation/interpretation.

If anyone has read down this far and is interested in following further developments in how this is unfolding, I've begin to record them here: https://www.facebook.com/Sudden-Awakening-104446274868203