Staying in the forest Buddhist monastery is not only pleasant due to beautiful surroundings, but also because I get to listen to the lectures of genuine monks as well as read interesting books on Buddhism.
This helps me to understand the Buddhist doctrine, and based on my experience, what I read and heard so far is correct. I’m coming to the conclusion that Nirvana (enlightenment) through this path might indeed be achievable.
In this article I will share you some very important information about how to get to experience higher realms through one meditation technique.
I got this understanding thanks to a very insightful book called Vimuttidhamma by Piyadhassi Bhikkhu. The same technique is taught in the forest Buddhist monastery where I’m staying at at the moment, yet the book made the technique much clearer.
Without this knowledge, a meditator can stay stuck in the same meditation stage forever, without knowing how to move on or even not being aware that there are higher realms to be achieved. Thus, I found this information invaluable.
The way that a meditator can pass through different stages to finally experience realms that are closer to enlightenment is this. You should not react to anything that happens to you during meditation.
Thus, if you observe your breath, and then a vision appears to your mind’s eye, you simply watch how you feel or even observe the vision, but you don’t get involved. If a thought comes, you watch it, but you don’t get identified with it. If some frightening experience happens, you observe your fear without getting identified with it.
This attitude of non-involvement will swiftly get you through those lower stages full of traps (where you get plenty of images, visions and other experiences) and will lead you to ever subtler states of experience until you get to the four final realms leading to liberation.
The first higher realm is the realm of boundless space. I’ve experienced this realm before the kundalini awakening. You finally feel that you are without any limitations – the awareness extends forever. But that’s just the first higher realm. If a meditator is not familiar that there are three more realms to go, he may think he reached enlightenment.
The second highest realm is the realm of boundless consciousness. This realm is described in Vimuttidhamma in this way:
Within the infinite and unbounded space, the consciousness also extends itself.
Next, is the realm of nothingness, when all the phenomena ceases.
Yet even this isn’t the final realm. Again, a meditator without the knowledge that there is yet one more realm might stop at this point thinking he reached the highest state.
Finally, there follows the realm of “neither perception nor non-perception”. According to Buddhist texts, this is the final realm the meditator is capable of penetrating.
Thus, without this knowledge a meditator may be stuck on a low-level realm experiencing various mental and physical phenomena, thinking herself to be an accomplished meditator. Yet, there are more realms that the mind is capable of piercing through and those stages must be gone through in order to free yourself fully.
I’ve personally found this information invaluable. I’ve been going up and down the realms, stopping at the boundless space as I didn’t know how to pierce through it. In fact, not even thinking that I should!
With this knowledge, now I’m prepared to stay non-attached to various meditation experiences so that I move beyond them and experience the final realms leading to liberation.
I hope that this information was as useful to you as it was to me. If you’ve been stuck in one meditation stage, the advice of becoming totally non-involved must swiftly get you out of it so that you go up the stages leading to the complete freedom of your being.