Samadhi

A story of a persons lifelong pursuit of happiness.

I remember looking at a picture when I was a baby.  It was a snow-capped mountain in Colorado, and I remember thinking it was majestic and beautiful.  A few years later I recall looking at it and thinking it would be nice to see and climb it, and then a few years after that, that it would be nice to look at it like I did when I was a baby.  That was the fist time I thought of the idea of seeing something in a new way by changing my perception of it.

When I was a little older still, I saw the movie The Last Horizon, and I dreamed of living in a distant valley, safe from the outside world.

Just before I went to college I read a number of books on Buddhism.  I knew at the time that I was introverted and looked at life from a psychological point of view, but I was convinced that the Buddhist perspective was valid regardless of this subjectivity.  I believed in reincarnation, that we are evolving spiritually, and that there was an ultimate experience of realization called Samadhi.

I experimented with meditation many times while studying in college but did not have any real experience that was noteworthy...until just after graduating when I became jobless and broke.  I was sitting penniless and despondent in my apartment with the rent overdue, wondering if life was worth it; when it occurred to me that I might dump this feeling and move on.  I noticed that my worry was like a painful vortex stirring in my solar plexus.  I thought: what would it be like to just let go of this sensation and be free.  This thought was like a suggestion that triggered a release and suddenly instead of pain I had a great feeling of peace and psychological freedom.  The sensation of freedom lingered for about a day, then reality set in--I had to get a job.

Over the next few years I attempted to repeat the experience, trying to let go.  But I was trying way too hard.  Occasionally, when I was disturbed, I found I could sometimes just let go and have a repeat of the profound peace.  But most of the time I was straining to relive the Samadhi experience I thought I should be having.  Meanwhile, I was reading about "levels of being"--deeper and deeper states of consciousness one could supposedly attain.

At one point I noticed something: If you expected to experience a state you read about, you eventually did  in some way.  I also notice that the mind never stayed in one state and that notions that one could live from certain glorified states were nonsense. 

Pretty soon I began questioning other things I had read about meditation.  I determined that enlightened states were too passive to perform as well as when one is amped up with nervous energy--football players and concert pianists don't meditate before performing, they psych themselves up.  Creativity has a lot to do with effort and editing rather than letting go, though letting go can sometimes play an important role in it.  And meditating doesn't necessarily make one a better, nicer person.

Now, years later, I spontaneously meditate when the mood hits me, for about twenty minutes.  I look at it as a break from normal consciousness, and I feel freer by not being idealistic about it than I ever did in the past.