Only in a State of Meditative Concentration (Samādhi) Can One Realize the Dharma (2024-02-24)

Ven. Shi Ruyuan: Over these two years, my practice has mainly been contemplating the four foundations of mindfulness, practicing the contemplation of impurity and the white-bone contemplation. In the past half year, due to the movement of the qi channels, my body has continuously shown various reactions. My teacher taught me some methods to deal with them, such as tapping the head, and also taught me to apply moxibustion to the head and to wash my hair with ginger water. Wearing a moxibustion cap makes me feel much better, but I still feel as if wind is drilling into the crown of my head, and there is a small egg-sized patch that feels swollen and uncomfortable, slightly feverish, yet my body feels tranquil and at ease, and my eyes have also improved a lot.

The house I lived in when I was married collapsed. At first I felt quite sad and thought it a pity, but then I turned it over in my mind: a house is no different from the human body—both will decay and perish—so I let go of my attachment. When I went to the hospital to visit my elderly father-in-law, I saw that all the inpatients were elderly people, each of them relying on tubes to keep breathing. Since lately, whenever I see any material body, questioning doubt arises in me, I immediately contemplated the impurity of the material body, keeping the contemplation going. Suddenly I froze: my mind automatically presented these old people as skeletons one by one—some lying, some reclining. Afterward, my mind presented the crushed white bones of my father at his cremation, like dust, and then they vanished.

Thinking it over carefully, family members are merely connections of this one lifetime, yet they become obstacles to our practice. After realizing this, my familial affection thinned on the spot, and my mind could settle down to practice diligently. Contemplating with care, the essence of things like family members and houses is also empty and unreal; once I understood this, I could let go, no longer clinging or grieving. The more I witness with my own eyes the impermanence of the changes in all people and affairs, the firmer my mind becomes and the stronger my faith grows; contemplating the Dharma's meaning with an empty mind becomes easier, and no delusive thoughts arise.

Around the time of the New Year, there were some things at home I was asked to help with, but I would forget as soon as I heard them, and I kept mishearing and doing things wrong; my mind's reactions grew slower and slower, and I kept bungling things. Not only that, it felt as if wind had entered the top of my head; when my scalp touched water or met the wind, my head ached as if it would split. My eyes and nose ran constantly; my eyes were dry and strained when looking at things, and my ears buzzed—I thought my ear faculty had gone bad. But strangely, although I could no longer hear other sounds clearly, I could hear what seemed to be the sound of the Buddha's name both inside and outside of body and mind. Before, only when my mind was pure could I hear the Buddha's name in my mind; recently, however, the more anxious I got and the more I could not recall things, the more dazed my mind became, and it felt as if a force were pushing the sound of the Buddha's name to arise in my mind, clearer and louder, continuous and unbroken.

Assessment: These phenomena appearing in the body during practice indicate that through cultivating the four foundations of mindfulness, meditative concentration has become very deep, abiding in the samādhi of recollection of the Buddha (buddhānusmṛti) and a mild samādhi of the white-bone contemplation. The sound of the Buddha's name arises in the mind automatically and spontaneously—it would be hard to keep it from appearing. This is the manas abiding in the samādhi state of recollection of the Buddha, not under the control of the mind consciousness. At the same time, there is also very deep contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdom; samādhi and wisdom are equally cultivated. At this point, self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi) can be eliminated quite easily, or one may not even know when it was eliminated.

The reflections on the house and family members belong to the mind consciousness's understanding and analysis, not realization; the mind-consciousness component outweighs the manas, so it is not direct perception/valid direct cognition. The white-bone contemplation that appeared in the hospital, however, had a larger manas component, though also a mind-consciousness component; the samādhi state was relatively shallow and the power of concentration not yet sufficient, so upon seeing the elderly, questioning doubt still needed to arise on the spot, rather than the white bones appearing immediately. If meditative concentration deepens further and the samādhi state deepens, the white bones will appear automatically, and self-view will be very easily eliminated. Therefore, the elimination of self-view and seeing one's true mind both occur within very deep meditative concentration, within the samādhi state, where wisdom manifests automatically, without deliberate thinking or contemplative practice, not under the control of the mind consciousness—that is the direct-perception state of realizing dharma, whereas states dominated by the mind consciousness are erroneous cognition/non-valid cognition or inference.

The phenomena at the head indicate that the qi channels are about to open through the entire head; once opened, the body will have no obstructions. I just do not know whether this is the Conception Vessel (Ren Mai) and Governing Vessel (Du Mai) opening through, or whether the central channel (avadhūtī) is also about to open; without data I cannot judge. But this is not far from the elimination of self-view; after self-view is eliminated, meditative concentration will deepen further, and more auspicious signs will appear.