seventh world of chan buddhism - Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun

cocaine and opium users would all be saints. Drug users invariably become self-absorbed,
not selfless.
Psychologists, in recent years, have been experimenting with brainwaves and the
control of them using biofeedback techniques, hypnosis and such. Though the research is
wonderful, it is science, not religion.
The same difference that exists between ordinary wine drinkers and religious
communicants exists between people who practice meditation as a means to realize divine
union and people who work merely for some kind of mind control or for an academic
purpose. Textbooks, technical manuals and machinery do nothing for a person's spiritual
development. Knowledge and power, when not acquired with reverence and humility,
enhance the ego - an obviously undesirable result for those who are on the spiritual path.
Experimental psychologists, however, have gained knowledge which does help us not
only to understand what is happening inside our head when we sit down to meditate but also
to resolve some of the controversy concerning Chan meditation styles.
Categorizing the brain's electrical activity by brainwave frequency, they determined
that active, thought-engaged brain states such as might be experienced while reading,
conversing or directing the attention outwardly towards people, things, or problems are beta
waves (13 or more cycles per second). A brain at restful peace whose attentions are directed
internally upon itself in watching or witnessing its own thoughts or in contemplation of its
interior spiritual contents registers slower alpha waves (8 to 12 cycles per second). A brain in
an even more profound state of rest, a state in which mandalas and strange, little pictures
(hypnogogic or hypnopompic images) blink into it with peculiar clarity, registers theta waves
(4 to 7 cycles per second). In theta, archetypes may be directly encountered in their symbolic
forms. A sleeping brain registers delta waves (0 to 4 cycles per second). Meditation occurs
only in the alpha and theta ranges.
Schools of Chan which favor tantric or yogic methods of engaging the various
archetypes as chakra kings, buddhas and taras (their female counterparts) obviously require a
mastery of theta frequencies.
In the lower alpha and upper theta ranges we encounter those samadhi states in which
the world is seen in pristine loveliness and the body and mind seem to drop away in pure
consciousness, and purity, itself, is serenely contemplated. Breathing slows down to near
stopping and life seems to be suspended. Sometimes we seem able objectively to see
ourselves sitting in the room in which we are meditating and sometimes we find ourselves
surrounded by an impenetrable, divinely golden haze. Rapture or bliss, akin to a protracted
sexual orgasm, may be experienced. This rapture will survive the meditative state as an
afterglow that suffuses subsequent states of consciousness with tenderness, compassion,
humility and a paradoxical sense of being both liberated from and connected to the rest of
humanity. This state is called kenosis (kensho). If all this sounds crazy, it is because words
CHAPTER 19 RIGHT MEDITATION
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
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