Right Meditation, Cont.

In many forms of Hindu and Buddhist yoga, the various chakras ("wheels" or psychic centers along the spine) are seen as lotus flowers which have Sanskrit or Tibetan alphabet letters inscribed on their petals. Also, in their centers, they contain a written mantra of the Om genus which when appreciated visually constitutes yet another meditative technique, trataka.

For example, starting at the Hindu root chakra and moving upwards, we have Lam, Vam, Ram, Yam, Ham, and last, Om, all written in Sanskrit.

Hiroshi Motoyama reports a curious incident concerning his mother, "a simple woman with no knowledge of Sanskrit." This lady would often comment after meditating that she had seen a symbol, which she described as an inverted sailboat, appear on her chest during meditation. Motoyama was later astonished to discover that in Sanskrit the word Yam on the heart chakra does indeed look like an upside down sailboat.

I can't account for the fascination and the evidently spontaneous appearance of certain shapes in our minds, but if asked to guess why they do manifest themselves and engage us so, I'd say that somewhere along our evolutionary line certain patterns entered our primitive brains to serve as sexual or navigational signals or markers. (Polaris and the Dipper seem to be particularly ingrained.) Sanskrit syllables and Chinese characters may approximate these patterns.

Regardless of why they do, the fact is that the meditative state can be induced by staring at certain shapes and that these shapes can appear spontaneously during meditation. For this reason, the chakras also have a characteristic color and basic geometric shape: cube, crescent, ring, sphere, bowl, pyramid and star. There are also associated umbrella shapes, flame shapes, flowers, swastikas, crosses, and so on.

In the exercise known as 'trataka', after staring at the form, (preferably without blinking) the eyes are closed and the attention is focused on the afterimage. This image will want to move around the field of vision; the trick is to hold it steady.

A candle flame is the best visual stimulus to use when training in this technique. The flame, kept at eye level, should be l8 or 24 inches in front of the eyes. While staring, notice the different little faces or figures you can see in the flame.

Once a degree of mastery has been attained, full color reproductions of the chakras - one at a time - can be used instead of a candle flame. Needless to say it is necessary to possess complete knowledge of the chakras since the exercise will include concentration upon such details as the letters on the petals, the significance of the shapes, animal symbols, and the gifts proffered by the chakra gods or buddhas, etc.

The Yin and Yang figure of Daoism is particularly effective as an object for meditation. Begin by getting into alpha and then, with eyes closed, mentally construct the circle with its black and white comma-like divisions. Rotate the image nine times to the left and nine times to the right.

Most religions include fasting in their regimens. People believe that by making the sacrifice of starvation they will be rewarded with visions or other spiritual experiences. And they usually are. After a few days of fasting, the human body produces its own lysergic acid. Spiritually immature people who fast get no more benefit from this than they'd get from dropping LSD. The energy and determination required to deprive oneself of food would be better expended in other spiritual pursuits.

Fasting, never a gentle exercise, can be health impairing. The hallucinations associated with fasting may even be a contributing factor in anorexia nervosa. Needless to say, no one should fast without first consulting a physician.

Many Daoist, Hindu, and Buddhist techniques require the meditator to sit with his eyes crossed for half an hour or so. This definitely is not easy.

The best way to master this technique is to practice at night just before going to sleep. For most people, this exercise can only be comfortably practiced in darkness. In well-lit surroundings so many objects crowd and confuse the visual field that eye-crossing tends to cause dizziness and nervous irritation.

At your bedside, keep a small bowl filled with table salt or fine gravel and a supply of joss or incense sticks. With the lights out, light a stick and hold the glowing tip about six inches in front of your face. If your eyes are relaxed you will see two glowing points. Force your eyes to merge the two points into one. Your eyes will cross as you do this. Then, maintaining this single focal point, bring the stick closer and closer to your nose. Be careful not to burn your nose. Hold the point in cross-eyed focus for as long as you can. Measure the length of time that you succeed by counting. Each night you should be able to extend the count. When your eyes tire and you can no longer focus on a single point, stand the stick in the bowl and let it burn down. Between the fragrant incense and the relaxing effects of this exercise you'll likely fall asleep quickly.

The frontal gaze can be mastered the same way. Keep the glowing point high above the eyes, see two points, and then force your eyes to merge the two points into one. Then bring the point steadily closer to the forehead. Be careful not to let ash drop into your eyes.

Any exercise that requires the meditator to push a ball of light through the various nadis, channels or chakras requires more than a strong imagination. The body's muscles are actually contracted in order to force the ball to move. Since these muscles are frequently neglected, strengthening them through daily practice, independent of any yoga aim, can be extremely beneficial. Each lock should be performed as a pair of exercises; first, with the lungs completely empty; and second, with the lungs filled to capacity. Each lock should be held for the count of nine. These exercises should be performed either sitting up (preferably in lotus) or in a kneeling position with the body horizontally stretched forward, supported by the hands.

Root Lock. Begin by contracting the muscles of the rectum. Squeeze the anal muscles as though trying to prevent a bowel movement. Next, let the contraction roll forward until the entire genital area is constricted - as though you were trying to prevent urination, too.

Diaphragm Lock. Begin by contracting the abdominal muscles as though forcing them back against the spine. Next, roll the contraction upwards, as though lifting the muscles up into the rib cage. In order to accomplish this, all of the muscles of the lower thorax (the entire area of the diaphragm above the waist) must also contract.

Neck Lock. Keeping the head erect, slowly force the chin straight back then drop it and let it rest in the v-shaped notch at the top of the breastbone.

These locks may also be practiced in succession, as a three part, 27-count exercise. This requires that you either hold your breath for the count of 27 or that you keep your lungs empty for the same count.

Also, locks are frequently used with a technique called 'bamboo breathing'. Take a deep breath and tighten the lock. Then, in short, grunting and rocking spurts, retighten the lock as you release the breath in spurts.

"Active" Imagination or Meditations on Archetypal figures. Note: Symbols of the unconscious do not always appear in their easily recognizable anthropomorphic forms: recall that the Mother may appear as a golden bowl, cow, or tiger; the Self as a mandala or a glistening white stone; the Enemy Shadow, normally a satanic figure, may turn up as a threatening monster or lethal weapon, and so on.

In this technique, the meditator, in a deeply relaxed state, indulges in a kind of active/passive daydream. It is active in that initially an intense effort is made to concentrate on the sight and the "feel" of the setting.

The meditator begins by visualizing himself in a pleasant place. If he imagines that he is on the beach, he feels the breeze, the warm sun, the sand between his toes; he sees the blue sky and the sparkle of sunlight on the water; he hears ocean's waves breaking on the shore and the sea birds mewing; he smells the brine, and so on.

Next, he begins to explore the setting. He becomes a beachcomber, picking up objects that have washed ashore, studying them and noticing their weight, texture, color, form, smell, etc. (He does not attempt to classify them scientifically.)

At this point, the meditator starts to become a passive participant in the events. He ceases being the director of the production. A sense of wonderment envelops him and the setting becomes real. He IS there at the beach. Events unfold; people, animals and buildings or landscape features such as caves or cliffs appear. He observes and reacts spontaneously.

He may enter a grotto or hide from a snarling tiger. He may discover the woman of his dreams or the women of his nightmares. The encounters can be erotic or frightening; but whether pleasant or unpleasant, the drama must be allowed to take on a life of its own.

He responds emotionally to the events, reacting physically with gestures, laughter, tears, sexual excitement, and so on.

He may linger in this drama for hours, interrupting the reverie only to attend to real-world duties. At his convenience, he returns to it.

So far, so good. The characters and setting of the drama and the spontaneously plotted events can be marvelously healing - assuming that afterwards he is able consciously to integrate their meaning. Old guilts, desires, rejections, or sorrows can be satisfactorily resolved. Dead relatives or friends whose love and counsel he once depended on can return to comfort and guide him. He can ask forgiveness or give explanations or say and do things which he previously was never able to say or do.

The situation is not so good if the characters, setting, and events alarm him beyond his ability to cope with them. For example, a particular character in the drama may vivify so intensely that the meditator finds that he can actually see or hear the character outside the meditation. Now the meditator has gotten himself into potentially serious trouble. Whenever an archetype invades consciousness and the ego loses its discriminative integrity, professional or clerical help is indicated. Actually, a marvelous opportunity has presented itself: the unruly archetype may be the key to opening an emotional block of some kind. It is clear only that a problem has been encountered and that a resolution of the problem will likely serve to advance the meditator's spiritual and emotional maturity.

With varying degrees of difficulty, adepts can enter and exit these dramas, but beginners usually have no such control. For this reason, Chan masters insist that novices not allow themselves to linger in any vision or psychic encounter experienced during meditation. Japanese Zen masters are especially vehement in their opposition to these phenomena (makyo/maya) and will not tolerate such intrusions even into their own meditations. Tibetan masters, however, are truly masterful in their ability to control such situations.

In her intriguing "Magic and Mystery in Tibet", Alexandra David- Neel, the famous French adventuress and Tibetan lama, who was an undisputed adept at meditation, relates her own harrowing experience with this technique. Tibetans advocate mastery of this form and put it to many uses. Aside from conjuring up gods, goddesses, companions and lovers, they also conjure up monstrous demons and believe, for example, that they can actually send the objectified demons forth to harass their enemies. David-Neel, desiring to experiment with the technique, choose to create a companion, "a monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type." For a few months she concentrated on creating this fellow and soon was able to give him objective reality: whenever she wanted, she could actually bring him to life and see him living with her in her apartment. Then, one day, she left her apartment to go on a long journey on horseback and the monk came along. Soon, she relates, "...it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travellers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder."

Soon David-Neel noticed that her jolly phantom began to change. He grew thin and "his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control." She goes on to insist that a herdsman who entered her tent actually saw the phantom sitting there and responded to it as if it were a living person. Then, her "unwanted companion" began to get on her nerves and "turned into a 'day-nightmare.'" It took her six months to free herself of him. David-Neel concluded, "There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created." She further notes that Tibetans disagree in their explanations of such phenomena. While some adepts believe that a hallucination has been given substantive, material form, others believe that the apparition is merely due to a suggestive, hypnotic influence.

Again, these characters do not necessarily have to be deliberately created. They can appear spontaneously in an archetypal dream or during the course of meditation. Anyone who finds himself at the mercy of one of these 'creatures of the mind' should go immediately to a Jungian analyst or a Chan master.

Meditation and prayer are the two methods, one passive the other active, that we use to contact the interior Self, the Buddha within.

With one exception, the desired effects of prayer must never be thought to extend beyond the bodily limits of the person who is praying. The exception lies in the ability that one person's prayer may have to induce in another suggestible person certain physical or psychological responses. This kind of 'second-person' prayer is the 'laying on of hands' or faith-healing type of hypnotic therapy. For prayer to succeed as a therapeutic agent there must be belief on the part of the prayee and at least a convincing show of fervent desire on the part of the prayor. It must carefully be noted that just as nobody can hypnotize a baby, nobody can use prayer to cure an infant or an uncomprehending child of anything.

Also, prayer does not operate at a distance. Unless we are talking to our Aunt Minnie on the telephone or she is otherwise aware of our efforts and profoundly appreciative of them, we cannot help her by praying away her sorrows or any of her maladies.

Again, when praying for ourselves, we may not seek changes exterior to ourselves. Our body limits the range of our prayer's effectiveness.

What can't we pray for? We cannot pray for money because the Buddha Self is not a financier. We cannot pray for rain because the Buddha Self is not a rain god. We can't pray for our enemies to be struck down because the Buddha Self doesn't concern Itself with good and evil and is never vengeful on any account. And besides, our enemies have their own Buddha Selves - a situation which constitutes a divinely untenable conflict of interest should they simultaneously be praying that we be similarly smitten.

What type of prayer is permissible? Suppose a Buddhist were to find himself in a desert without water. He knows that there is no Great Cosmic Buddha who can, if He so desires, produce a lake or a six-pack upon request; but what, then, does he pray for?

He prays for that which is at least possible - for a lessening of the effects of dehydration and an increase in his ability to withstand the ordeal. He prays for a lowering of his body's requirement for water, a slower pulse rate, a calmer state of mind, and so on. He also prays for an increase in acuity of both thought and vision, for becoming aware of a source of water he may have overlooked, for a solution to the problem of finding or creating shade, for constructive measures such as a means of collecting urine, dew, and so on. If it becomes obvious to him that he cannot preserve his life, he prays for wisdom, patience and grace. He prays not to be abandoned in his hour of death, but to be blissfully absorbed in his Lord as his term of life expires.

Consider a case: Two men are stuck in the desert without water. Help cannot reach them for several days. Man A prays for rain. He chants and does a little rain dance. He lets The Good Lord know how deserving he is of some small liquid consideration. He scans the horizon for clouds. He anxiously waits, alternating between hope and despair.

Man B is like each of us, a sensible Buddhist. He asks The Good Lord for constructive help in surviving the ordeal. If he, unlike the rest of us, has attended faithfully to his practice, he may be able to pray himself into a state of nearly suspended animation, minimizing his water requirements.

Now, if the rescue party finds only one man alive, which man will that be? It will be the man who didn't dance.

Prayer's subtle potential can best be demonstrated by the pendulum experiment.

Take a piece of thread about a foot long and tie a small weight to one end of it, creating a pendulum. (Any small weight will do... such as the nut from a nut and bolt, a metal washer, or a fishing line weight.) Hold the other end of the thread between your thumb and index finger and, with the palm of your hand facing downwards, rest your elbow on a table and let the pendulum dangle above the table. Without making any movement in your hand, imagine that a map is under the pendulum and begin to think "north and south." Simply hold your hand steady as you concentrate on the north and south directions. With no conscious help from you, the pendulum will begin to swing back and forth. The more you think 'north and south' the more forcefully the pendulum will swing in those directions. Then change directions. Think "east and west." The pendulum will wobble eccentrically for a moment and then, with no conscious help from you, will begin to swing from side to side, east and west.

Suppose that you are given the task of consciously getting the pendulum to swing in a perfect north and south direction. If you allow your ego to take charge of the project, you will probably use your elbow as a hinge and move your hand back and forth to get the pendulum swinging. And, in very short order, you will have a wildly swinging pendulum. You might, of course, try to slow it down, but your efforts will likely increase the swing's eccentricity.

Performing the task in the prayerful way, i.e., asking for help by way of simply thinking 'north and south', allows your interior Self to direct the action. Very subtle muscular movements will then occur in your fingers. You won't be able to detect them but the movements will be there. And the result will not be just a north and south swing: the result will be a perfect north and south swing. No wild swinging at all.

Prayer comes to our aid so miraculously that the religious life is absolutely bleak without it. We should never hesitate to pray. And we should always try to pray ahead. For example, suppose we are waiting for a letter. Let's say a letter of acceptance or rejection. Jane has applied to Harvard and she's waiting to hear if she's made it. Every day she approaches the mailbox with trepidation. What will she do if she's rejected? Oh, the horror of it all! The disgrace! Mabel has also applied to Harvard. Mabel prays, "Lord, if I am accepted, help me to bear this joyful news thoughtfully without causing anyone who was rejected to feel worse; and if I am rejected, help me to have the grace to rejoice with those who were accepted and also to look forward with enthusiasm to attending any other school that accepts me. Lord, I know that Harvard is not educational life or death. With Your help I know that I can get an excellent education no matter where I study. Maybe for a whole lot less money... In a better climate than Massachusetts has... Where I can keep my car with me..." (If Harvard has any sense it will grab Mabel fast.)

Prayer enables us to bear our sorrows and our joys with equanimity. It sustains us in our times of need, and, as in the pendulum's swing, it gives us abilities to solve our problems, abilities that we didn't even imagine we possessed. When approached with sincerity and humility, our Buddha Self is surprisingly merciful and resourceful.

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