My Novice Master (known in the Soc as Mag. Nov.) was a wise old bird. He checked first that I was eating and sleeping properly. Then he explained how strongly we resist our own efforts to reach the silent place where "all is done". I was genuinely terrified by the experience but he was so calm and supportive that I carried on, into the Fourth Week. The 'echoing' lasted about four days and the meditations became a real struggle but, with his encouragement, I persevered. He gave me "ex ops" (outdoor work) in the vegetable garden and, because the 'echoes' were disturbing my sleep too, gave me the early morning Mass to prepare and serve: that was important. It was a very old priest and myself, alone in a small chapel, taking the celebration slowly and meditatively.
Since then, I have experienced the same thing a few times and it has always been a pretty scary time but, having gone through it and come out the other side before, I know now that it is only a stage on the journey into silence. It is hard to describe exactly what happens but it has also helped me when working with clients who "hear voices". Although I knew, all the time, that there were no actual voices separate from me in that echoing void, it 'sounded' as if there were.
Have you ever experienced a high fever? When I was small and running a temperature, I thought I heard shouting and arguing when there was none. This was similar to that.
In his teaching on Awareness by Breathing meditation, the Buddha spoke about breathing in and out "releasing the mind". The mind resists such a release, I think. It seems like death to it. One of the strongest distractions it can throw at us is distraction through fear and fear is so often greater when the object is hidden, lurking, just out of sight.
I would add that I haven't experienced this for quite a few years now. Other distractions, yes, but the distraction by fear seems to be a tactic that my mind has given up as a bad job.
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Metta and Bright Blessings,
Ian, all,
Perhaps that is true, and I think that there are many possibilities that could account for a literal interpretation of the continually expansion and contraction of the world as described in the Agganna Sutta. Who can really say that it is not possible, or even what the exact nature of our universe is like? Palzang is correct that what we know through science is limited. Since the discourse begins as a story about the beginning of life on this world, it is not unreasonable to posit that the Buddha was merely using the story itself to illustrate his point to his audience; however, that does not mean that the story was simply concocted with no factual basis.
I think what is more intriguing to me is whether stories like these evolved to counter the prevelent wrong views of the time, or whether they contain actual first-hand knowledge of the way in which our physical universe works. I suppose that I have leaned more towards agnosticism when it comes to this particular subject — choosing instead to focus on how these teachings relate to the workings of the mind, and in particular, the arising of suffering and the cessation of suffering — nevertheless, I feel that it is important to have a clear picture of the context in which the Buddha was teachings in order to avoid misconceptions about those teachings.
While I agree with Professor Gombrich that the basic principles of Buddhism are not affected by intellectual enquiry into the history of Buddhist texts and the development of the religion, such an enquiry can have a tremendous impact on how certain teachings are to be understood, and more specifically, the context in which these teachings are provided. Prof. Gombrich is of the view that we can discover the objective meaning of these ancient texts as opposed to the relativistic view that the meaning of a text has no inherent meaning apart from that ascribed to it by each reader or generation of readers. I think that this idea is worth exploring.
Jason
On the Buddhism Cosmological view of the universe