Waking Up
A Brief Encounter with Heightened Awareness
The term "samadhi" is used rather loosely these days as a kind of catch-all for higher spiritual states generally. In meditative circles, however, it has a somewhat more specific meaning—namely, as a type of meditative state that could best be described as hyper-aware, hyper-focused consciousness (as contrasted with more open, “insight”-style meditative states, which involve a more panoramic awareness and awakening).
In fact, the old texts claim there are actually different levels of samadhi, ranging from comparatively mundane up to more transcendent and formless. Indeed, top-of-the-line sports players sometimes describe moments during hyper-focused action, like a receiver in a football game seeing the ball coming at them in slow motion, that are essentially low-level samadhi states.
What follows is an excerpt from my book The Sky Stretched Out Before Me, describing an experience I had during a “sesshin” (lengthier meditation sitting) while at Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York during the mid-1980s. I’ve followed it with a Youtube link to a fictional film portrayal of a “breakthrough” experience that strikes me as effectively conveying a key aspect of samadhic “awakening.”
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From the beginning, I was encouraged by the overseeing monk to start with a simple meditation technique in order to learn their particular system from the ground up. There were several different techniques I could choose from, but for most beginners it was generally recommended to start by simply focusing one’s attention on the breath, or silently counting one’s exhalations, as a useful point of departure. So that’s where I got my start.
My meditation unfolded in fits and starts. There were days when I felt focused, but other days when my mind seemed completely out of control. Despite the fact that we were told not to fall into the trap of judging our meditation as either “good” or “bad,” and that we should take each sitting on its own terms, that’s hard when you’re experiencing such extreme highs and lows. I found it encouraging to learn that even some of the advanced students there sometimes had trouble sitting in meditation for extended periods. But there can be real breakthroughs sometimes, when everything seems to fall into place. One of those, a small one, occurred for me during my second week there.
It was the last hour of an all-day meditation period, and I had begun to feel like I was stuck in a rut. The sun had just set and the sounds outside had grown quiet, as the sensation of my breath rushing in and out became subtly more pronounced. My mind was restless, and the sensations in my legs had become painful again so I decided, almost out of desperation, to pour every last drop of energy into the meditation technique itself, largely to escape from the discomfort. The pain in my legs worsened by the minute. Throughout the day I’d been counting my breaths silently, while staring down on the floor, as I was instructed to do. But now I began throwing my whole being into the technique, zeroing in like a laser beam on my breath, the counting, and the floor, all at once, in hope of breaking through the pain.
Then, after a few minutes, something surprising happened: I simply became present. I left behind the past, as well as expectations about the future, and I was simply there in the moment. No desire or grasping, just pure contentment with what was.
And with that, the previously ordinary floor became extra-ordinary, luminous and vibrant, as an indescribable sense of peace flooded through me. The tremendous discomfort I’d been feeling up to that point immediately vanished as if it was turned off like a switch—and my entire being exploded into a radiant field of light.
The sensation was so palpable that I felt sure anyone looking in my direction would have seen visible waves of light emanating from my body. It was pleasurable beyond words, and even the thought of sex paled by comparison, amazingly. More importantly, though, there was a peacefulness about it unlike anything I’d experienced before. Shelly Trimmer used to talk about the “peace that goeth before all understanding” that comes with deeper states of meditation—and I was getting a very tiny taste of that now. I sat in that condition for another 10 minutes or so, marveling at what was going on, until the bell rang to signal an end to the period, as I walked out of the hall feeling overwhelmed with joy.
During my next private interview with (the monastery’s principal teacher) Daido, I described what happened and he verified that it was a rudimentary level of samadhi, or effortless one-pointed absorption. But it certainly wasn’t enlightenment, just a useful stage in my practice. He was also careful to add that I shouldn’t become attached to the experience, let alone try to recreate it. As I continued deepening my meditation, he said, that sense of joy would probably become even stronger, but joy wasn’t so much the goal as simply a by-product.
The intoxicating high I felt in the wake of that experience lingered for days. The next morning, while standing outside in the snow chopping wood along with some of the others, I looked up towards the blue sky at one point and noticed the sunlight on my face, and felt a sense of deep happiness. After a few days, that feeling faded and by the next week it was just a faint afterglow, but lingered in a more subtle way.
I’ve given a lot of thought to that experience since then, trying to make sense of what happened, and I came up with an analogy: a phenomenon referred to as “critical mass.” That’s a term astrophysicists use to describe what happens when a chain reaction takes place amongst a collection of atoms, and energy is released from out of a previously dense mass of matter. Under the pull of gravity, for example, a massive dust cloud floating in space will coalesce into ever larger clumps, and over time become so tightly compressed that a chain reaction takes place, called “fusion”—and the energy trapped in that matter transmutes into light. Quite literally, a star is born.
In a way, samadhi must be like that. In that state, awareness becomes so tightly focused that the inherent light-energy concealed within it breaks open—and the meditator goes super-nova, as it were. For so much of our lives, our consciousness is frittered away on trivia rather than on the direct experience of the moment; but in samadhi, that evasive maneuvering stops and we suddenly look at what is right here, right now—and in that looking, everything becomes alive and bright, and real.
I’ve come to think that’s a good part of the reason why some people engage in daredevil activities like skydiving or mountain climbing, because they offer a way to evoke a similar kind of awakening. By dancing close to the edge, one is forced to become completely focused in the present—and the result is a natural high. Part of that is pure adrenaline, no doubt, but part of that also has to do with a state of heightened awareness. But it naturally begs the question: does one really have to risk life and limb to attain that? Or can it be attained in far simpler way, such as when one is pouring a cup of tea? Or watching one’s breath? Or taking out the garbage?
A year later I came across a passage by Marcel Proust that summed up what I felt that day: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” I knew if I could find it in a wooden floor, like I did that day, I could find it anywhere, presuming I was open and focused enough.
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Postscript: While I don’t feel any literary or cinematic description can truly do justice to a meditative experience like samadhi, I do feel this short episode from the Wachowski's Animatrix film anthology, a follow-up of sorts to The Matrix, comes as close to illustrating its dynamics as anything I’ve come across in filmic terms. To be sure, the overall “Matrixy” context and tone of this clip leans in a darker direction, but I’d suggest ignoring that; I’m simply pointing to how the animation illustrates that sense of zeroing in on the NOW, the present moment—and on that level it’s effective. I hope you find it interesting.
Ray Grasse is a writer, astrologer, and photographer living in the American Midwest. He is author of ten books, most recently In the Company of Gods, When the Stars Align, and So, What Am I Doing Here, Anyway? His websites are www.raygrasse.com and www.raygrassephotography.com.