Rapture

I feel rapture in my meditation in a way I've never been aware of it before. It's like my life force and energy are surging forward. In some ways it's uncomfortable, and a distraction. It makes me want to get up and blog about it, instead of sitting with it in meditation, and allowing it to settle a little bit more into serenity. Folding it into a focused effort is part of the journey. 

I don't know my breath. I imagine I can feel oxygen going into my body but is that a story I'm telling myself about a faint feeling. I'm trying to put my finger on it, but honestly all I really know is that I feel my chest expanding. I can imagine my diaphram going down to open things up, but do I really feel that? I don't think I'm being overly doubtful, but perhaps it's these subtle edges that focusing on the breath is all about. What is actually going on? I think of Stephen Batchelor's break with the Tibetans and going to Korea and just sitting in meditation and asking, what is this? I think of Mun just saying Buddha over and over again in his language. 

I wonder if information is my new addiction. I don't hide it that I've struggled with addiction, and one hallmark of that just transfering the addiction to something more acceptable, like workaholic, or shopaholic. Informationaholic is where I'm at. I cruize Twitter for the latest, trying to figure out if and why Maxime Chanot left NYCFC. Reddit's karma is nothing in this world, and yet I was so excited to blast past 30K to 31k with a popular comment. Do I express myself too much on Twitter, Reddit and Blogger? Sometimes I think of something and have to rush to express it before I forget it. It's all so ephemeral. The navel gazing of a mindfulness practitioner. It's a good thing the Mahayana ideals were introduced to counteract, and articulate more altruistic internal forces.

The best headway I've made is on Facebook, which reconnected me with my high school class. In some ways I think of the 4 years of high school in weird ways, that include the musical Grease, to the Ramones Rock and Roll High School. It was a phantasmagoric party enhanced by The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Heathers, Pretty In Pink, Valley Girl, Porky's. Movies are intoxicating, and I've left those behind as much as I've left Facebook behind. 

In high school, I bought into the self development program they were selling, and there was automatic friendships through shared suffering and efforts. I'm still thinking about Thoreau and Conrad, 1984 and Animal Farm. I got my first taste of Asian ideas in my Junior year Russia/China class, when they talked about Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The next year I took an ancient history class, and learned about ancient Greek philosophers, in very small high school ways. I was yearning for ideas, philosophy seemed to hold a power to organize experience I'd hitherto been deprived of in my education. I read on my own too. 

I've yet to put a limit on my apps on my phone, to cap the amount of energy I dissipate. What do I want to channel my energy towards? What do I want to deliberately do? Being on the path towards enlightenment is an endless journey, and the support of sangha, mindfulness, study, devotion and ethics is great, but what do monks do all day besides meditate and pay attention? The struggle for existence: Eating is such a big project, and complicated when you strive for veganism. 

I recently read 1% of Americans are vegan and 4% are vegetarian. I thought there were more vegetarians. It's so hard to be a purist for me any more, I've lost my desire to be a cutting edge vegan, the art of the possible means I fall short of my ideals, and I'm not going to lambast myself, I want to be encouraging. You can do it, even if I fall short. Some people say that if you fall short of spiritual ideals, what's the point? 

The point is that reaching for something is better than just not seeing the lotus in the muck. There is beauty, and spiritual beauty is very important. Supposedly Kukai was a proponent of that, but I've yet to crack the tome of his teachings next to my bed. To be an expert is so much harder than a reality star. I was interested to see that in the documentary Harmontown (2014), he sought to evolve and not just celebrate his shortcomings, making it more documentary than reality TV. 

Which is to say I don't really know how to channel my energy towards the good. Inspired heroes like the Buddha, Thoreau, Mary Oliver give me hints, but I'm embedded in my own life of various exposures, and responsibilities. What is my vision, where do I want to go? How do I want to use this energy? I guess you live the questions. But the joy of meditation is quite a joy, and all the hyperbole about it is I guess warranted when you finally start touching it. The glimpses and tastes of the fruits of practice are quite sweet. Rapture is a geyser you want to harness, and that reminds you that you own your own energy and it's your responsibility to channel it.