Monday, March 25, 2013

Hmm

I've had a ton of thoughts/ideas that I've wanted to write here, but alas, at the moment they've all slipped away.  I remember some of them being quite profound (relatively), but I guess without writing them down, sometimes even deep and powerful thoughts can pass without leaving an imprint.

Of course, a lot of those thoughts came when I was in bed, falling asleep.  And I know I'm not the first person to notice that some of life's most interesting thoughts come at the time when it is most challenging to get up and write them down.

That being said, just now I was thinking about the idea of "enlightenment."  A lot of Buddhist stories/lore talk about how certain koans, paradoxical statements, or simple events caused famous Buddhists to "become enlightened."  I'm not sure to what extent this corresponds to the idea of "satori."  Thinking about these moments though, led me to remember a time when I was on a subway in a very terrible city.  The subway was crowded and frustrating, and so I had taken to trying to meditate while standing in the crowded space.  After weeks of these attempts, a moment struck where I seemed to break through a ton of mental barriers all at once.  The subway doors opened and I stepped out into a very beautiful and amazing world.  I couldn't stop myself from laughing and smiling at everything, even though only hours earlier I had felt that the city was awful and my life quite challenging.  It truly felt like I had connected with some deeper part of myself that was normally dormant.  The feeling lasted for several hours, but the experience made a huge impression on me about the nature of reality.

Just now, revisiting that memory, it almost felt like that state of mind/being was just around the corner yet again.  This makes me wonder if that perspective is always waiting for us somewhere, waiting for us to change our thoughts in just the right way so that the universe opens up.

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