Sitting as the whole world

[SoR]

I'm wondering if others have had the following experience. It's something that I have tried to ignore, but it's happening often enough that it seems worth discussion.

Sometimes, while sitting in Shikantaza, I start having this feeling of my weight sinking towards my center of gravity. It's like all the sensation of my body sitting becomes concentrated in one point. This will last a few seconds before this feeling starts expanding. First, it expands back to my whole body, then the area a few feet from my body.

Soon enough, this feeling expands to whole room, then outside of my house. A car will drive by and I feel the movement of the car going down the street. It feels like I actually AM the car driving down the street. I am the room, the cushion, everything around what I think of as the end of my body is me.

I try to just sit and not attach to this experience. I'm never left with a feeling of it being good or bad.

Anyway, should I continue to approach it this way?

-Sam

#SatToday
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[Jundo]

Hi Sam,

I have had similar experiences of the body expanding. In Shikantaza, we enjoy the ride while such events last, but neither run toward them or away.

So, I feel that you are handling this right. If the experiences stop, just consider them an interesting and educational phenomenon or gift while they lasted. You body certainly does not stop at skin level. My feeling of what is probably occurring is that the spatial and body defining centers of the brain play some interesting games sometimes.

Gassho, Jundo

SatTodayLAH

[SoR]

Thank you for your teaching, Jundo. I'm glad I'm taking the correct approach. It's certainly a weird experience!

-Sam

#SatToday

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[Jundo]

I feel that it is actually a positive lesson from such experiences because, in Buddhist philosophy, the concept of "inside" and "outside" the "self" is not a clear border. Inside and outside are totally dependent on each other and one thing, whole and interflowing, so you really do not stop at the borders of the skin. I am writing a book where I give this example ...

Consider, for a moment, how we usually look at and experience a tree. There seems in our mind to be something outside us which we usually call a “tree,” light reflects off of its surface and into our eyes, the light is translated into an electo-chemical signal that is transmitted into the brain where we experience a lovely image which is a representation of that tree outside. We promptly recognize this and label it as “a tree.” Then, we may react to the tree in some way, perhaps admiring its beauty, or proceeding to sit under it, or maybe even to cut it down. As part of this process, we include a sense that “I” am looking at the “tree outside me,” and that there is separation between us. That is good, because otherwise you could not function in life if you did not know the difference between yourself and the trees.

But is that the only way to look at it? Buddhists, and many neuro-scientists these days, might point out that there is also a kind of feedback loop at work here, in which the cycle of tree, light, eye, brain and response might be judged one whole thing, one single mutually integrated phenomenon. For example, you have your sense of “you” inside you precisely because there are trees to see which you deem outside you. Seeing the tree and experiencing it gives you something to experience, not to mention sit under. In turn, your mind gives definition, and imposes characteristics on much of the world. For example, while the “tree” is likely a certain group of atoms which happens to reflect from it photons of a certain frequency of vibration, it is your brain which then interprets those photons as “green tree,” and even may add additional value judgments based on your own relative position and preferences, such as “tall green tree” (based on some inner comparison to your relative size) or “beautiful green tree” based on your tastes and sense of symmetry. In that way, while the atoms and vibrating photons may exist apart from you, in a very real sense the experience of a world of “beautiful tall green trees” only exists because there is you, and other human beings, to experience and mentally define things so. I doubt that a lady bug, for example, experiences those atoms in quite the same way and, if her brain is capable of thinking anything at all, it is probably not much more than as a surface to crawl on. Thus, there is the old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound.” Well, the answer is that some event may make vibrations in the air, but without some sentient ear to hear it and interpret the same as a subjective experience, there can be no “sound.”

In this way, there is a wonderful loop by which we human beings do very much create “beautiful green trees” out of our own thoughts (although something is likely out there), and in turn, the world “out there” lets you draw a line of inner experiences which you define as your “me in here.” You create the world in part, and that world lets you create your sense of “you” in part.

However, you do not need to draw the border of separation quite where it is, at the edge of your skin or the top of your head. You can also come to define yourself, in a very real sense, as the whole feedback loop itself.

As I summed it up elsewhere ...

As I sometimes point out, it means that "mind" is not simply something between your ears (in the sense that, in Buddhist terms, when "you" see a "tree outside" with your eyes and register an image of "tree" with your brain, Buddhists might consider the whole loop ... outside tree/eyes/inside experience of tree ... as "mind", not just the part inside the head. Add to that the sun in the sky, the wind, every atom that lets there be "trees" and "eyes" and "yous" in the first place ... and those are also thrown into "mind" too as all necessary prior parts of the whole process of being and seeing trees. )

All of that, the kitchen sink, the whole universe and whatever is beyond that led to you being here ... is you ... is "Buddha" and "Buddha Mind"

Also ...

The human brain creates a hard sense of self/other in the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobe in connection with many other regions of the brain such as the visual cortex (in my limited understanding). In other words, data pours in through the senses, and the brain creates its own inner model of reality in which your "me" ends about at the border of the skin. Roughly, what is beyond the border is not yourself, what is within the border is your "me". The human mind also likes to separate and categorize, e.g., that a "chair" is not a "table" or a "tablecloth" (although it can also redraw borders to see the whole thing as a single "whole" of "dining set" for example.)

In Zazen, those hard borders between "self" and the outside "other" that is not myself may seem to soften, perhaps fully drop away, so that all becomes experienced as an interflowing whole. It can happen all at once, in a big booming Kensho or subtly and softly like borders becoming gently translucent or crystal clear. Likewise for all the separate things of the world, which now can be perceived as an interflowing whole.

It seems that, whatever game your brain is playing right now, is letting you transcend those hard borders a bit. So, it is a good experience, but don't be attached to it.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLah

[SoR]

Thank you for your teaching Jundo. Is this a preview of what is meant by "dropping off body and mind"? When it's happened so far, it's always near the end of my 30 minutes of sitting (I'm guessing maybe the last five to eight minutes). If this experience were to happen sooner in my sitting or if I were at a retreat and it was happening frequently, I could see it potentially becoming a scary thing. I don't want to project onto the experience or taint it with an assumption, but it just makes me think of stories I've heard of people returning from 10-day Vipassana retreats feeling freaked out by some of the experiences.

-Sam

#SatToday

[Jundo]

Thank you for your teaching Jundo. Is this a preview of what is meant by "dropping off body and mind"? When it's happened so far, it's always near the end of my 30 minutes of sitting (I'm guessing maybe the last five to eight minutes). If this experience were to happen sooner in my sitting or if I were at a retreat and it was happening frequently, I could see it potentially becoming a scary thing. I don't to project onto the experience or taint it with an assumption, it just makes me think of stories I've heard of people returning from 10-day Vipassana retreats feeling freaked out by some of the experiences.

-Sam

#SatToday

The hard borders of self and other can soften or fully fall away in a variety of degrees and flavors. It should not be scary, but should be quite fulfilling. One experiences that the whole world flows in and as you (and everything else).

Yours sounds a little different from that, and I think what you are experiencing is maybe just your brain playing around a little with its borders, a kind of mental "fun house" effect. In any case, don't get freaked out. Shikantaza does not encourage "freak out" experiences, and our way should be very gentle.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH