Inside Yoga 245 (15/10/18)
Most of us will have experienced one or two eureka moments, and many hope this will happen during our meditation practice, because the Buddha had his, so why not me?!
Finding the answer, and meaning, to life and the rest is not that simple, or perhaps it is, but the purpose of this article is not to show how we can have our own eureka moment but to explain what we do with it when happens during our meditation practice.
This article is a follow up from last week’s blog – “Struggling with your thoughts?” https://www.yogabristol.co.uk/2018/10/08/struggling-thoughts-youre-not-alone/ – because last week I addressed the problem of unwanted thoughts while meditating, which can feel like large rocks we cannot budge, but what about insights which rise up during our practice of meditation (including during asanas exercise practice)? What do we do when suddenly we are struck with our own eureka moment?
We might have had a thought which has finally cleared up something in our daily life whether this related to work or family, or perhaps we have had a thought that has opened up our mind to how life is (our existential realisation?). Perhaps we have realised our reactive patterns and how harmful these are and realised that there is a better way when we seek a life based on appropriate response, equanimity and compassion. We all make mistakes and sometimes meditation can calm us enough to see how we can improve the way live and interact with those around us.
Yet, whatever these thoughts are the meditation techniques teach us to drop these thoughts, in the same way we are instructed to drop those unwanted thoughts (as mentioned last blog), because the aim of the practice is silence and freedom from thoughts… thereby allowing us to sit in the peaceful harmony of silence.
But, my eureka moment is important, you cry! It is, and if it is important and profound you will not forget, however, what is important at the time of the realisation is that we give ourselves space and time to experience the moment which results from the eureka moment. In other words, we have had our thought which answers everything, we then acknowledge its importance, and return to the silence of our mind and our breathing so that we can feel with clear consciousness what it is to feel this newfound sense of freedom… it might only last seconds, it might last longer, but if we can feel and inhabit what this experience is really like we stand a better chance of maintaining its positive benefits and learning what it means, because if we dwell on the thought which is labelling the experience (the eureka moment) we will lose it – thoughts come and go.
By staying with the experience which is enlightening whatever it might be, in silence – without thinking – gives us the time needed to feel what the resulting calmness, clarity and bliss feels like, and as a result of this deep meditation we able to plant the experience deep within us, where it will stay. Meditation is a mind training exercise which gives us the ability to retain and return to these positive experiences. Thinking how good or wonderful our eureka moment was will take us further away from what could be very positive for us.
And now, a short interlude about Archimedes: he was a mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece, who reportedly proclaimed “Eureka! Eureka!”” after he had stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. He apparently jumped out the bath and ran out into the street shouting eureka! (He didn’t get arrested for indecent exposure). This story also reveals something else about meditation: Archimedes had his insight after a long period of inquiry and hard work trying to find the answer. That day, he had perhaps given up and decided to unwind in the bath, and at this point, when his stressed and tired body and mind relaxed he found the answer. The parallel with meditation practice is this: we work hard in meditation training the mind to be still and there will be moments when thoughts are bubbling over, but as everything quietens down there will be space for the important thought – our eureka moment – to rise. Answers come as a result of inquiry/work/practice, it might feel like one short moment when it happens and everyone will remember the eureka moment from that point forward, but it was what preceded it that is important. The Buddha’s night of enlightenment came after six years of hard practice and severe austerities in the pursuit of answers – they did not happen one night when he decided to sit under a tree without ever giving it a thought before.
Furthermore, we cannot force results, so we focus on non-results, going nowhere and not looking, that is, just practice on the breathing and body awareness. Don’t go looking but keep looking!
There is a meditation saying which can explain this process: “If I think I am meditating, I am not meditating”! Simply put, if I am sitting in meditation and I get the thought “I am having a wonderful meditation” then at this point I am no longer meditating, but instead I am thinking, because this thought is a label that I am placing on a past experience – “the wonderful meditation”. There is a fine line between experience and thought, and meditation teaches us to understand the two.
To say drop your thoughts whatever they might be, might sound harsh and I appreciate this because I remember the battle I had with this meditation instruction, because my eureka moments seemed so important to me! But eventually I got the message and understood why the instruction to drop our thoughts while meditating whatever they are; be they horrible, wonderful, boring, or exciting thoughts, they all need to be dropped while in meditation.
Have a sit and explore yourself. As the Buddha advised all he taught, do not just believe what he says, he told everyone to explore themselves and see if what he taught is true for themselves. The answer lies in our own experience.
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