Mystical Experiences in Zen
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- Опубліковано 28 лип 2020
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i first got into zazen as a staunch atheist, purely for mental health purposes. religion had never been a part of my life. i had no way of preparing myself for the profound spiritual experiences that i would end up having during my sessions. i remember very vividly the moment that prompted me to devote myself to the path of zen. i was sitting, and being bombarded with intrusive, depressive thoughts. this is something i've struggled with my entire life. pretty classic depression stuff; "youre worthless, you'll never be happy, you'll never heal, you'll never be free from this pain." and it was so overwhelming. and i remember just begging, pleading for a way out of this trap, for any kind of answer. "what is the way out of this?" i was asking. and then suddenly, it all just stopped. my mind went blank. and it was like the sensation of relief you get when a terrible, nagging physical pain suddenly dissipates...just pure bliss, physical euphoria, literal tears of joy streaming down my face. it was like i could see myself from above and behind, just sitting on the floor on my cushion. and then a singular, penetrating, clear thought entered my mind: "This is the way."
whats the significance of this? is there any? im not sure. all i know is that i dont plan on stopping my practice anytime soon.
That's great! It's really nice when things like that happen.
One of my teachers says that "mystical experiences" (*nyams* in Tibetan Buddhist lingo, generally falling in the categories of bliss, clarity and non-thought) are like traffic signs. Them popping up shows that you're moving along. But if you stop and hold on to them... you're not.
Good advice!
Thank you
That only makes sense for those that are already on "the path", but it doesn't explain why people like me go through these mystical experiences for seemingly no reason. Clearly something out there wants our attention, otherwise they wouldn't happen in the first place.
@@dr_feelgood1902 Yes. This often happens for seemingly no reason. I can't say for sure, but I would imagine some sort of preparation occurred that you were not aware of at the time. Also, I think even for longtime practitioners of spiritual paths, these things still kind of happen at random. Seemingly, anyhow.
@@HardcoreZen I feel that this is actually sort of covered in the metaphor. The sign "Paris 300 km" is there whether you're traveling to Paris or not. When you are actually travelling, coming by the sign is a good, eh, *sign*. If you aren't, you might still run into it, and heck, it might inspire you to check out what Paris is like. Fundamentally though, meaningful experiences up to and including enlightenment are not *caused by practice*. Zazen, Dharma practice, just makes you enlightenment-prone.
After 35+ years of zen meditation, I think that mystical experiences are a glimpse of the "real" nature or reality (I know that's poorly phrased but, that's how I see it), I've had a few of these over the years, and wow, they are eye openers, yet should not be pursued.
PS: I really enjoy your videos, you have an open mind, and it's kinda rare in the zen circles. ;-)
This is probably the best way I've ever heard this explained.
Thank you!
Absolutely agree
I'm always skeptical of the phrase "*just* a hallucination"
I've seen a pelican catch a fish, and a walrus flop off an iceberg into the ocean, these seem to me to be as ''zen like'' experiences as anyone might hope to have.
I had no expectation of either event.
I am pleased to have been witness to these natural wonders.
I want more confusing and weird stuff please. (I really liked this one! :) )
Also, I didn't think you made a mess of it at all. It looked like it was hard work not to though.
Thank you!
@@HardcoreZen I thought of one thing: I'm not sure about most people growing up thinking that they are the meat machine. When I was a kid we went to church weekly, and until junior high I definitely had a self image of a soul riding around in a meat machine, but that I was basically only the soul, and that the meat machine was temporary. Yahweh and I had a falling out around that time though, and I flipped off the sky, didn't get struck by lightening, and since have thought of myself has actually being the meat machine.
@@benhorner8430 Interesting. I've often wondered how people who grow up with religious training see themselves.
@@HardcoreZen I guess I also thought of my soul as being in charge of, and running my brain. If it didn't, then how would I still be me when I got to heaven (or hell)?
Super interesting explanation, thank you Brad.
Thanks for this. “The only thing that’s clear about it is that I have been wrong” to me is really to the point. Trying to make sense of it makes the confusion start all over again! Good advice from Nishijima roshi also.
I went through a thing for awhile, never 100% went away. Everything kinda became HD. Mystical experiences I guess.
Thanks for this.
Thankful for your regular and brief videos. Chicago zen center has limited in person zazen with respective local guidance for social distancing. I don’t have any comments about your content because it says it itself, but spot on and love your creativity and natural quirks.
That's interesting about Chicago Zen Center. I'd like to know more because I'd like to try something similar here. If you know more please write me at bw@hardcorezen.info
"Ziggy is making distinctions" haha
The classic Koan "What is the sound of one dog barking?"
Moo?
Douglas MacRae-Smith
No that’s: “Does the dog have Buddha nature?”
“what is the sound of one dog clapping?”
In my opinion you've been extremely clear all the time :)
Thank you!
This is a very exciting talk.
That's the first time one of my videos has been called exciting!
@@HardcoreZen I think it was your descrription of the mystical experience.
Yes! "What the Zen!"
At the end, “The only thing that’s clear about it is that I have been wrong.”
Yes, for me sometimes wrong and sometimes incomplete or narrow.
Hope I get there 🙏
Very interesting video. I had 2 apparently mystical experiences practicing Zen, neither of them having anything to do with a different way of "seeing" (in the Don Juan sense) the world, but they were remarkable nonetheless. One happened to me after I'd been sitting with a Zen group and practicing on my own for a couple of months. One Sunday afternoon I was in my car and it was like something suddenly opened in my chest. For the next 3 days, I was in bliss. I mean solid, powerful, madly in love bliss. I've never experienced anything like it before or since (and I've been in the meditation scene a long time). I can only surmise that the Zen sitting had something to do with it happening. Another time I was at ZCLA sitting in a room with many other people and Maezumi Roshi. He was on the other corner of the room from me, but I had the strong feeling that he was sending waves of metta directly at me. I had no devotion to Maezumi, and it really felt like this feeling wasnt my projection, but was actually something he was doing. Again, this kind of thing had never happened to me before or since.
That's interesting. It's hard to let go of experiences like that.
@@HardcoreZen I haven't really felt attached to these experiences, I just thought they were remarkable. On the other hand, if I could figure out a way to tap into that level of intense bliss again, I'd surely do it and probably market it to the world. I don't know if such states are jhana, but they're immensely pleasurable.
@@joeoleary9010 That's the problem!
I once experienced a deep state of silence that was completely satisfactory (nothing more or nothing else could be desired; there was nothing *better* than that state)
Like your hat
Wearing it as well
You have one too??
When I heard you reference that sleestak hat in "who walked my dog" I was curious if was the same one I had and indeed it is. I have a mothman hat I got from the company which I wear much more often because the sleestak hat is a one size fit and it's a little too big which is weird because I have a giant dome
I've been a meditator for three years now. It's helped me in a lot of ways, but I've yet to have anything out of the ordinary or mystical happen. I don't sit with that intention. I sit to just sit. I am in an area where it's hard to find anything Buddhist even a teacher. So, while it doesn't bother me while I am the cushion, I often have thoughts of am I doing it "right". I have no idea. I just sit.
You are doing it right!
👌👍
The emblem of "mystical experience" is often used like a basket, into which you can put many different things. As a terminus technicus, it is not very strictly defined. In the broadest sense, it seems to be associated/associatable with all kinds of "altered states of consciousnes": (strange, clairvoyant) dreams, fantasmas, "makyô", visions, and so forth.
Therefore, people often assume, they are talking exactly of the same "thing" with each other, when they really have slightly/markedly different phenomena (i.e. "what shines up") in mind.
This even applies for single highly sophisticated and experienced "psychonauts", like Carl Gustav Jung, who for nearly his whole life seems to have struggled with the science (in the sense of a "round teaching", to use a sino-mahayanic expression) of the darker and lighter spheres of the "psyche" (including "external" phenomena, like the ones he tried to grasp via the concept of "synchronicity").
Me: Master I had mystical experiences and have gained powers
Master: Okay
Me: umm what to do now
Master: Sit. Zazen.
It is really frightening to me when I face these experiences. U do not know what is happening and then u cannot rely to what your ego says
makyo!
These can happen during meditation, once you get to the "no-mind" place, and it almost feels like you're communicating telepathically with a higher sentient being or something, but that is probably just the ego clinging to internal phenomena and trying to make something special out of something that should just be normal presence and consciousness, if not for all of the distractions that turn us into squirrel like people.
Peter Weir's 1993 movie "Fearless" starring Jeff Bridges is the best depiction of these experiences I've seen in film. Any comments on it?
I haven't seen it.
@@HardcoreZen It's worth seeing.
If your teachers are going to try to pull you back (which makes perfect sense) should you even bring these experiences up to them? Maybe getting told they're not important is as important as having them?
It's part of the "training." I don't like the word "training." But it happens to a lot of Zen students. They have a groovy experience, tell their teachers, then get told to forget the experience.
@@HardcoreZen I think part of it is because wanting that experience to occur during your meditation will prevent it from occuring.
What the Math 😄
I got that reference
What do you make of spontaneous awakening experiences? I had one back in August of 2019. I felt some kind of energy travel up my spine and began to see and feel all sorts of crazy stuff, then it travelled up and into my brain. It was so forceful I felt my brain physically shudder. I've never practiced meditation or anything spiritual before, either, it was completely random.
I can recall seeing an orb of light above me (it sort of looked like a yellow soap bubble) and feeling someone or something touch me on the shoulder, then I 'heard' a voice in my head say something about "oneness". Upon hearing that word the internal chatter that was going on in my mind at the time fell silent, that's how I know I was receiving this message from some deeper, subconscious level of my brain.
If these mystical experiences are meant to be nothing more than simple distractions, why did mine feel so intrusive? It's not like I was looking for "enlightenment," it sought me out. I'm still not sure if it was truly mystical or just some kind of trippy seizure, but every awakening seems to be connected to this idea of oneness, so I dunno.
Weird things happen sometimes. It's best to try to move on after they happen. If you learn something from such experiences, that's great.
That's called kundalini. Had the same experience, thought i was going to die but it turned into great experience.
@@richardalpert8240 Ram Dass! I thought you were dead!
Hence ideas like cause & effect vs spontaneity seem less in opposition. But then there things that you want to be in opposition. It's scary if they're not. The mystical experience is less important than the fear experience, I think, or at least less informative. /rambling
Did you get the inspiration for this intro from Anton Petrov?
Yes.
Nice.
Have you cribbed the intro from Anton's channel
yes
Found out recently that electrons absorb photons(light). Just a theory - figured that is why when meditating in sunshine the light photons absorb into the electrons that make up the central nervous system to create tingling radiance in body feeling. Or maybe it just be synesthesia ?
Your synesthesia would be that tingling sensations cause the imagination to make associations? I don't know if this counts as synesthesia - sounds like normal human behaviour? Of course it might just be that sun drenched electrons can cause tingling, in which case its not synesthesia either.
Well it can tingle anyway so its physics; however, one can absorb absolute zero pivot focus(not imagination) of eyesight by watching inwards which creates tingles too. That can be useful way of removing headaches.
@@markbrad123 I'll have to take your word on all that as I have zero expertise in the physics of tingling. I'm only barely qualified to speak about synesthesia in so much that I have access to a dictionary - And to expand further on that topic : if you would like your case to stand a chance of being added to the case studies, you would have to claim a secondary sensation associated with that tingling. For example a color - the tingling felt blue maybe; or a smell - the tingling smelt of potatoes.
@@macdougdoug Thinking the body isn't a faraday cage so energy interacts. Funny video about a Faraday Cage: ua-cam.com/video/pjw5gbkRTaY/v-deo.html
Is there a chance that these mystical experiences are also conditioned? That would be another reason why they should not be held on to. Or if they are a flashback to a more innocent and naive experiencing of reality, that would also be nothing to hold on to?
Some are conditioned, for sure. Maybe all are to a certain extent. There's also a difference between an experience and what you remember of an experience. The memory may not be reliable. Often it's perfectly reasonable to know for certain you had an experience, but also to be unsure of what exactly that experience was.
So, all that Mystics are nothing more than mind-gamers?
Brad, you have shown much disdain before about psychedelics and even about discussing them, but the description “they serve a purpose because you need a smack in the face sometimes.” Equally applies to psychedelic mystical experiences, as it does to spontaneous experiences.
Can you explain the difference between a "Mystical" experience, and "Makyo?"
Often there is no difference at all.
"Survival of the fittest" is a tidy (and common) phrase, but not quite correct -- better: "survival of the sufficiently fit." (Aphorisms tend to repel qualifications.)
You are good explaining things. However, don’t like much the word “Mystical, Mysticism “ giving a description of an experience brought by the practice. Somehow the experiences narrated by many mystics are not the same as the ones any serious diligent practitioner usually has. Not that I undervalue or put down the experience of any mystic but their experiences differ from the glimpse of reality unfolding with simplicity in a very natural manner manifested in zen.
A hat?????
My hair looked weird and I couldn't fix it.
@@HardcoreZen Haha. All good. Good video today.
@@HardcoreZen A mistical experience ....
Zazen has a depatterning effect, to put it simply, and the experiences are rightly pooh-poohed because they can have a tendency to lead ego inflation. Was that hard to explain? No. Why don't religious authority figures explain such simple things simply? Because then no one would need them and they couldn't sell books and crap.
I sell only books. Not crap.
@@HardcoreZenYour willingness to lie about selling schwag, like your "Make America Zen Again" t-shirts, makes me wonder what you won't lie about. Not that being a lier matters at all in your line of work.
@@sheldonvideos Not even one person has ever bought one of those MAZA shirts. Although every three or four months someone buys one of the Hardcore Zen shirts. I totally forgot about them! SORRY!
Mystical experiences can happen completely at random, like in my case and many others, no meditation required.
@@HardcoreZen I forgive you.
Experiences are irrelevant. Go back to the breath.