Cutting
through Samsara
and
entering Nirvana, Part 2:
Cessation/Nirodha
Cutting through Samsara and entering Nirvana, Part 2 - speech and guided practice.
Check
also:
Feedback from Cutting
through Samsara and entering Nirvana, Part 1:
S:
”After watching your latest video about the chanting, and doing it,
something shifted and there was a clear seeing completely through
thought, to the empty nature that is it, which has remained open.”
J:
”After 2 hours after the shouting session, my mind and perception
kept flickering off and on. It was similar to lights being turned off
and on, off and on, again and again, in a quick rhythm. These
cessations lasted for a few seconds at a time. It kept happening
again and again. Afterwards I felt very tired”.
You
describe going "unconscious without going unconscious",
awareness shifting and going through something that is new to you.
This is called cessation or nirodha. It is like turning off the
lights and electricity of the house but not becoming unconscious.
These moments are like big leaps, in spiritual sense. This is so
because cessation resets the mind momentarily. It's like if you have
a big, noisy and messy engine going on and on, making noise, creating
fumes, like the dualistic mind does. But when you take electricity
plug out for a moment... The engine stops for a moment. This is a
glimpse to the natural mind, natural awake awareness. There is
nothing and no one there. Literally. This is the permanent mind state
of a fully enlightened one, mind of a buddha. That's the mind of
no-self. No self in any shape or form. In other words, That's
emptiness.
When
cessations start happening they might feel dramatic at first. When
the lights come back on and the usual mind state resumes, you might
feel, ”What was that!? Am I going insane?” Mind reacts like this,
with fear and confusion, because it tries to figure out what
happened. But it can't because cessation is non-conceptual and
conceptual understanding only goes so far. So for some period of time
cessation feels like a dramatic drop into the unknown and coming out
of it also feels as dramatic, like a jump or something like that.
There is this big threshold. If cessations are long, say minutes or
hours, which are very rare, one is not able to be active and do
things during cessation. Usually cessations are just a few seconds
long, at a beginner stage. Later they can be for minuts and hours.
People who wake up, have a short cessation and it has enough power to
take the charge out of the subject-self.
In
hindu dharma, this dramatic leap is called kevala nirvikalpa samadhi.
It's a beginning stage of cessation. But with time and practice the
drop into and jump back from cessation wears off. With practice, it
becomes natural, it transforms. In hindu yoga this mature stage of
cessation is called sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi. Sahaja means natural.
This means that one's conditioned dualistic mind becomes permeated by
no-self realisation. Here the dramaticity of it, is gone and one can
do things in cessation. Eventually, cessation is not interrupted, it
becomes natural. It grows on you and at some point you don't even
notice it happening. Mahasiddhas and buddhas are in the state of
natural cessation all the time, bodhisattvas aren't yet.
At first when you sit down and start meditating without doing anything, Ati-meditation, you might be self-aware, aware of sitting somehow, aware of the breath, aware of being there. But at some point a shift happens, a cessation takes place and knowing also disappears. In cessation there is no knowing at all. Nirodha is a stateless state of no body, no mind, no God, no buddha, no wisdom, no compassion. It is non-conceptual and without self-awareness. It is a complete stop, a full stop, complete disappearance. Cessation is a peak of meditative experience. And there is a good reason why all meditative traditions and texts have mentioned cessation as something very important. Cessation is sort of like a reset button of a meter, like there used to be in old video or tape players. Everything returns back to zero in cessation and therefore it has a significant impact on the mind and our psychological being.
In
case you are wondering what sometimes happens in your meditation and
especially Ati-meditation with open eyes, this is it. There is surely
a relation between cessation and progress in bhumis as well.
Have a nice day,
- Kim Katami, 11.5.2016
