What happens after going deep into meditation?

Home - Quora Link

So I’m reading a book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, link here. The book is phenomenal at explaining meditation and what you’re trying to get out of it. I’ll articulate just one of the practices he talks about.

Once you get to a certain level in meditating, you start having some pretty intense and amazing experiences. The mind immediately seizes on these feelings and identifies with the state. It can be difficult to move past these feelings if you don’t know to note everything. Noting is key for shutting down the intensity of positive experiences and moving past it to deeper and more complex tranquil states.

So how is it done? It’s very simple. You keep a running log in your head of what is also going through your head. So if you’re feeling joy, note it in your head. As you note things, you are training your mind both to recognize the states and surrender your identification as them. So if your mind is flooded with deep feelings of gratitude, you just note in your head that you are experiencing deep feelings of gratitude. Sometimes the state persists after noting, sometimes it goes away. If it persists, just keep noting that it’s existing.

Asking your mind to come up with quick descriptions for the things it’s experiencing primes the pump for deeper and more complex experiences.

After a few years the need to obsessively note everything eases because you just stop identifying with weird mental states. But it’s still useful when you’re having a suddenly intense experience, especially when you’re in situations where you need to focus on what you’re doing, like if you’re at a meeting at work.

With that brief (ha!) description out of the way, let me describe a deep meditative state that I have regularly.

When I walk to work, I listen to music. I’ve been cultivating my music collection for decades, it usually surprises even music snobs with its diversity. I have pop music right along side deep indie cuts that no one’s ever heard of. I’ve been listening to many of these tracks for decades.

Walking and listening is enough to plunge me into the depths of reverence. First, I note all of the sounds I’m hearing in the music. Doing this makes every new listen feel like the first time I’m hearing it. Second I note all of the feelings I’m having listening to the music. Sometimes my mind goes off on tangents related to whatever I’m working through at that moment. I note those and let them run through.

Whatever I’m dealing with at work just completely disappears while I’m doing my walking meditation. Many times I’ll hack on my understanding of the universe while I’m doing this and so come up with new concepts for how souls work or whatever. Whatever it is, I note it and keep going.

Yesterday something cool happened. I was listening to The Knife’s Heartbeats, if you watch the video you’ll see some kids skateboarding. Well, while I was listening to it, a kid on a skateboard carved around me in the exact fashion you see the kids doing it in the video. I noted my amazement, the little celebration I just had with God, and also noted the fact that this sort of thing happens often enough that I don’t even consider it that special anymore. I noted the fact that I never had to be taught what noting was, I worked it out myself. And little self-referential noticings all the way up the chain, straight to the absolute and back down again.

As you note things, think about how many times per second you’re noting them. Your brain is multi-dimensional and can operate on lots of levels at once. Hundreds of times? Thousands? How many individual bits of experience can you note at a time? Surf between noting one thing at a time and noting thousands.

Can’t get any deeper than that.