The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works
Another book is called the Cloud of Unknowing, by an anonymous fourteenth-century English author, which gives a very beautiful poetic description of the meditative process. Finally, there are the writings of Meister Eckhart, a thirteenth-century Dominican. Eckhart’s writings went unnoticed for many centuries, but he is now appreciated as among the
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there are actually four subskills to concentration: learning how to restrict attention to small sensory events, learning how to evenly cover large sensory events, learning how to sustain concentration on one thing for an extended period of time, and learning how to taste a momentary state of concentration with whatever randomly calls your
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An Experience of Enlightenment.
Shinzen Young • The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works
At first, meditation requires a lot of effort. You have to think about what you’re doing, and you can only get in a meditative state while sitting still, perhaps with your eyes closed. But at some point, the skill becomes second nature. You can attend to the business of life and still be in a meditative state just like you can listen to the radio
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So meditation gives us the ability to be less bothered when we experience physical or emotional pain and more fulfilled when we experience physical or emotional pleasure.
Shinzen Young • The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works
But there is a third kind of spirituality, which is the one that I find most interesting. The technical term for it is mysticism.
Shinzen Young • The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works
Clarity gives us the ability to detect sensory events that are subtle, or not very intense. This combined with equanimity allows us to have a high degree of fulfillment on demand during the day.
Shinzen Young • The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works
The third and final step in Raja yoga’s concentration continuum is samadhi, which refers to unitive experience. Again, there is a possible confusion in terminology here, because in Buddhism samadhi often refers to any level of concentration, from the lightest to the deepest. In the state of samadhi as understood in Raja yoga, we not only have
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I’ve taken to heart the words of the Roman playwright Terence: homo sum humani a me nihil alienum puto. I am human, so nothing human should be alien to me.