Month: June 2012

With regard to your recollection of past conversations about everyone having Buddha nature: “…then we get into these weird conversations where one participant asserts that there isn’t any change in the mind that one might wish for.”

My contention would be that the mind moves right before we fall asleep, if we are able to hold to consciousness long enough to observe it. That’s a big “if”; I personally played with hypnosis a lot in high school, I starved myself as a vegan for awhile which I believe affects consciousness of the in-between state, and I slept sitting up for six months and worked the grave shift for years. Even so when I noticed that staying with the shifts in my consciousness led to waking up or falling asleep, I was surprised. So easy and something everybody has experienced.

I have written about this, and three other people have now succeeded in using something in my description to catch sight of their consciousness shifting around before sleep, and to likewise experience a connection between staying with the sense of location and falling asleep (one of the three was able to catch sight in the daytime as well, not sure about the others).

The technical description would be that consciousness takes place because of contact between a sense organ and a sense object, and that the continuity of consciousness is an illusion; that’s the classical teaching of Gautama the Buddha. Gautama also taught that there is an impact associated with the occurrence of consciousness, and there is feeling. Here is his summation of staying with this kind of experience as it occurs:

(Anyone)… knowing and seeing eye as it really is, knowing and seeing material shapes- visual consciousness- impact on the eye as it really is, and knowing, seeing as it really is the experience, whether pleasant, painful, or neither painful nor pleasant, that arises conditioned by impact on the eye, is not attached to the eye nor to material shapes nor to visual consciousness nor to impact on the eye; and that experience, whether pleasant, painful, or neither painful nor pleasant, that arises conditioned by impact on the eye- neither to that is (such a one) attached. …(Such a one’s) physical anxieties decrease, and mental anxieties decrease, and bodily torments… and mental torments… and bodily fevers decrease, and mental fevers decrease. (Such a one) experiences happiness of body and happiness of mind. (repeated for ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind).

Whatever is the view of what really is, that for (such a one) is right view; whatever is aspiration for what really is, that for (such a one) is right aspiration; whatever is endeavour for what really is, that is for (such a one) right endeavour; whatever is mindfulness of what really is, that is for (such a one) right mindfulness; whatever is concentration on what really is, that is for (such a one) right concentration. And (such a one’s) past acts of body, acts of speech, and mode of livelihood have been well purified.

(Majjhima-Nikaya III 287-288, Pali Text Society volume 3 pg 337-338, ©Pali Text Society)

I’m only saying that this is a description of something that most people experience as they are drifting off to sleep, except that it’s more like shifting than drifting because there really is no continuity. The mind is now here, now there.

Oddly enough, this freedom of mind with the associated impact and feeling is sufficient to sit, and the knowledge I need from one moment to the next seems to be intimately associated with the free occurrence of consciousness. Attachment concludes a hypnogogic state, the place of mind of attachment induces a hynogogic state.

The bottom falls out of the bucket, god help us.

When I’m falling asleep, I generally have a few moments where my mind seems to be shifting around in my body, right before I drop off. This is probably more apparent when I’ve had enough sleep so that I’m lying there in bed wondering if I’m going to get to sleep, what a luxury that is!

Because I know that I have to let go of any direction of mind in order to fall asleep, I tend to turn my attention to where my thoughts just took place, to where my awareness is in my body. That’s when maybe I’ll experience my consciousness taking place somewhere other than between my ears. This is not usually a continuous thing, but a now here, now there, in my side, in my leg, in my back thing. And then I’m out like a light.

I occasionally come to the same experience in the daytime, which is why I think it’s about waking up as well as falling asleep. There’s a sensation of my balance being dependent on where my consciousness is taking place, in an upright posture.

I read about hypnic jerk phenomena the other day, that’s where the muscles in the arms or legs contract just as a person is dropping off to sleep, and they wake up. The article I read said about 70% of the people experience this regularly, and they hypothesized that the mind feels the loss of motor ability but doesn’t recognize that it’s connected with sleep, and so tries to regain motor ability with a signal to the muscles. I guess what I’m talking about is connected with that same shut-off of motor ability, and the trick is to perceive consciousness taking place without motor ability.

The meditation of coming back to location that you describe Mark is actually so darn simple that one could easily discount it, but it works, and I like it as one technique I can use when I wake up in the middle of the night, thanks.

(astralc, on The Tao Bums discussion forum)

The practice is indeed darn simple once a person witnesses the location of consciousness shifting, as just before sleep.

I think the same practice is at the heart of seated meditation. Here’s Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen:

…learn to take the backward step that
turns the light and shines it inward.

(“Fukan zazengi”, by Dogen)

Meditation is often associated with something a person does, but I think anyone who tries seated meditation will find that the ability to feel in the posture relies on things that happen as consciousness occurs, so that the spontaneous place of occurrence of consciousness in waking up and falling asleep is actually sufficient to sit.