Running, swimming, kayaking, can be a very good way of experimenting with rapture. Passed the first point of resistance, that voice asking you to stop, one gets into a rhythm a just goes on. Something happens with the body, both during and after the exercise. I have experimented it as "pine trees growing from my nose" or "heart is the sun, heaven is the end of my head" or just as a body dissolving into nothingness as a dying flame.
These feelings are very intense. They fill one with joy, worries and fears fade out, miss their power, one gains confidence in oneself, energy to carry on daily life.
It is the same with the practice of the breath. At least very similar.
One gains a sense of joy in the practice; a motivation to carry on, resources and patience for when one encounters obstacles on the way.
With practice one can create this sensations with no effort, while sitting in a bus, on a break at work, walking...
But this rapture will pass.
It's not the end of the path. It's a part of the process of creation, using intention.
The wind has been blowing here for two weeks. No way to get out in kayak. The swimming pool is being renovated. No way to swim. The cat destroyed your meditation cushion.
What do you do?
Do not rely on those who say rapture is dangerous neither on those who say it is necessary.
Find out for yourself.
'I am no longer afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality (MN36)
3 comments:
The other day I thought of writing about walking meditation. I think many people doesn't like walking meditation because it doesn't give you the same feeling of rapture as sitting meditation. But both are very interesting.
Realizing that rapture is not the end of the path leaves you with a much more mundane path, something that you nearly can't tell apart from normal life. But, at the same time, is totally different from normal life. Weird :P
Hello. I'm interested in what you say about exercise and the path. I've found that some of my clearest experiences of non-duality (as far as I can tell) have come when I'm running. In this context, it's interesting that many people see exercise as a way of exhausting the self, physically but also I think psychologically. Others talk about losing the self, of being 'in the zone'. We know as Buddhists of course that the self, that illusion, is inexhaustible and so we prefer to let go of the tangled web of confusion, to just watch it dissolve. Is this rapture? I don't know, and frankly do not much care. There is no end to the journey, although there may be an end to 'naming'.
Regards
Practice and realization are not bound to a cushion, a fancy name or a monastery. Yes, there is both the exhausting of the self and the "being in the zone" when practicing while running, climbing a mountain or cutting vegetables.
As to whether that is rapture, I actually don't dare to say what rapture is but rather how I experiment or perceive it.
Defining things are just this naming you talk about. It is locking experiences in the box of concepts and opening the doors of misunderstanding and empty discussion. Take "jhana", for instance, or "samadhi", "buddha-nature", "realization". There is no consensus as to what these are (there may be a mainstream and then those who don't follow it).
But I can put words to what I experience; not in order to define it but just for the sake of communicating it. So when I say rapture, I'm talking about a physical sensation: hairs of the body raising, relaxed muscles, overall wellbeing, a breathing completely free of conflict, pleasure (as when we are kissed in the neck and we feel it all over our body)... which inevitably have and effect on my mind: ease, calm, joy, a positive way of looking at things, self confidence, energy...
It is not definitively the end of the journey, but it is a place that helps keeping motivation and letting go of "naming".
And it is possible by intense concentration on the breath either while sitting, or stading up, or walking (Gaijin) or running. For an open mind, the possibilities are endless.
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