Last night Jamie and I purchased a pair of zafus after my little blog yesterday on meditation from the Bodhi Tree Bookstore.

I told Jamie what was taught to me about sitting zazen at the Santa Barbara Buddhist Priory by Roshi Jisho Perry. Then we sat for about 30 minutes.

Afterwards we talked about the experience. I tried to explain to her how my previous experience had gotten me to stop my meditation. The personal enlightenment, or Kensho, I experienced was an obstacle to my meditation because it left me feeling inexpressively joyous and fulfilled, as if I had gotten it. Before this had happened to me, I had known about Kensho and the possible effects of experiencing one, which is to feel complete and loose sight of meditation while the Kensho is experienced. Unlike Satori, which is a long lasting experience of enlightenment, a Kensho is short lived. After the feeling faded, which took about a week, I never returned to my meditation.

I couldn’t explain to her how something that feels so good can cause one to stop doing what brought on that good feeling. This got us to start talking about what our expectations are from meditation.

She told me that she’s not after any sort of enlightenment in her practice in meditation, she just want to train her “Type-A mind to slow down when it needs a break.” She told me that she wouldn’t expect such an experience to affect her since enlightenment isn’t her expectation.

Well, there are many types of meditation, most of which I know nothing about.

However, I believe that sitting in zazen, regardless of your initial expectations or religious background, the eventual result is Satori. (Okay, so only after long, long, almost lifetime long, period of devoted practice!). Along the way Kenshos will happen and it’s good to know about them and what to expect so you can do as I didn’t. Which is, let the Kensho reinforce your meditation practice and not distract you from it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 at 1:18 pm and is filed under meditation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.