WARNING this article is for advanced meditators. Please read The Dangers of Meditation before you read this article. The meditation practice in this article can cause mental illness and can be harmful to those who are suffering from mental illness or other psychological difficulties. If you are a beginner it would be better to meditate according to the technique explained in Serenity Meditation.
The purpose of some forms of meditation is to help the practitioner learn to see that much of his mental experience is an illusion. When the mind is in a pleasant quiet state during meditation and you notice a thought arise and produce an emotion, you may also notice that after the thought passes the emotion passes and you return to the pleasant quiet state. If you observe this enough times and are paying attention, you begin to see that thoughts and emotions and other kinds of feelings, sensations, and perceptions are just illusions produced by the mind. (You see they are elusive, uninvited, and sometimes unpleasant.) The point is not to control (stop, let go of) these emotions and feelings, the point is to see they are illusions (which naturally leads to letting go).
The result of observing this is not nihilism, the result is compassion and good will which arise naturally as your own attachments and selfishness diminish. It doesn't mean you no longer enjoy pleasant feelings, it means you are not attached to pleasant feelings.
While you are meditating, you may consider certain thoughts and feelings and inwardly remind yourself they are illusions produced by the mind. As you think of a feeling, notice the feeling arise and pass as the thought arises and passes. This observation is necessary to deeply understand from your own experience the illusory nature of these feelings. You must observe that these feelings are illusions because they arise and pass away and have no permanent existence. During daily life, when you feel emotions you can also remind yourself they are illusions produced by the mind.
While noticing the feelings that are produced by thoughts, also notice how the thoughts arise. They arise seemingly by themselves, unasked for, uninvited. Where do they come from? Why do we feel like they are ours when they appear without our seeking them, and without our feeling like we are intentionally constructing them?
Notice that the pleasant quiet state produced by meditation acts like a background, like a movie screen that is constant, while different thoughts and feelings appear and disappear like a movie, which is not real, which is just pictures of things not real things themselves.
Some strong emotions might not pass away quickly. In that case, work with lesser emotions. Also meditating more can help to weaken strong emotions by putting you in a pleasant quiet state of mind. Also, some emotions are produced by biochemical factors rather than thoughts. For example sometimes anxiety or depression is not caused by thoughts but by biochemistry. In these cases, the feelings will not pass when a thought passes because they are not produced by a thought. In this situation, one should just be aware that the feeling of dislike for depression or anxiety is an illusion produced by the mind.
Try not to become attached to doing this perfectly, or to always maintaining a pleasant quiet state in meditation, or to always completely letting go of feelings. These attachments themselves are feelings you should notice just like any other feeling.
Here are some feelings (and also sensations, which are treated as feelings) you may want to consider:
- The feeling, "I like this thing," is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "I don't like this thing," is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "I want this thing," is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "I don't want this thing," is an illusion produced by the mind.
- A feeling, if it unpleasant or painful, is an illusion produced by the mind.
- A feeling, if it pleasant, is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of anguish is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of happiness is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of anger is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of hate is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of envy is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of jealousy is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of winning is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of losing is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being a winner is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being a loser is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being inferior in status is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being superior in status is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being better at something or in some way is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being worse at something or in some way is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of pride is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of guilt is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The quality of color, which cannot be explained to someone who is color blind, is an illusion produced by the mind.
- Sound, which cannot be explained to someone who is deaf is an illusion produced by the mind.
- Seeing, which cannot be explained to someone who is blind is an illusion produced by the mind.
- Hearing, which cannot be explained to someone who is deaf is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of warmth or heat is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of coolness or cold is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The sensation of taste is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The sensation of smell is an illusion produced by the mind.
- Sensations perceived through the senses are illusions produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being smart is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being stupid is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being right is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of being wrong is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "my body is me" is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "my body is mine" is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "my thoughts are me" is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "my thoughts are mine" is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "my emotions are me" is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling, "my emotions are mine" is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of self is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of not wanting to have unpleasant feelings is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of wanting to be perfect is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of wanting to maintain perfect equanimity is an illusion produce by the mind.
- The feeling of wanting to get enlightenment is an illusion produced by the mind.
- The feeling of wanting to be enlightened is an illusion produced by the mind.
The word "feeling" is used repeatedly for a distinct purpose. It is to help you keep in mind that you should be considering feelings. For example, anger can be thought of as a feeling, but it can also be thought of as a behavior. The feeling of anger is the aspect one should notice in this practice.
As you practice this way, you may begin to see that all feelings are produced by the mind and thus illusions. For example, the feelings of warmth and coolness do not exist as part of the physical universe. Those feelings only exist in the mind of a conscious being. Those feelings are produced by the mind, they are illusions like a movie on a screen. This is true of everything you can perceive. Colors, sounds, textures, everything. Even the feeling of self is also an illusion.
Perceptions such as vision are illusions. With vision, the images produced are generated by the mind (the brain). What we see is not an objective representation of the physical world around us. It is only a representation produced by reflected, emitted or transmitted light. The limits of our eyes to detect certain wavelengths of light, to focus light, to perceive small amounts of light, and to function under excessive light, all constrain what we perceive. What we see is no more real than a photograph. Analogous situations exist for all the senses. All of the reality we perceive inside and outside us is an illusion produced by the mind.
As I wrote above, the result of observing this is not nihilism, the result is compassion and good will which arise naturally as your own attachments and selfishness (attachment to self) diminish. It doesn't mean you no longer enjoy pleasant feelings, it means you are not attached to pleasant feelings. Also, learning to notice and be aware of your feelings and to consciously name them can help you improve your understanding of our own psychology and can help you let go of previously suppressed emotions.
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