Today's Column

Don’t Be Snotty ‘Bout Samadhi

It’s a funny thing – what with all the scrambling – but Samadhi isn’t anything special. It’s simply the natural state of awareness when no attitude is present, when all the stuff that’s “you” gets out of the way. What makes it seem so extraordinary is the incredible relief we get when it simply happens, all by itself. There are no methods for getting to this “state of mind.” As we say in Vermont, “Ya’ can’t get there from here!” The Hsin Hsin Ming says “…simply cherish no opinions.” In other words, just shut up. Just stop. You don’t know anything about it. You can’t know anything about it. You can’t get there. Your ordinary struggle is the result of “getting there.” Samadhi is here, with no fuss, once you understand it.

One of the things we get lost in is the concept of boredom. We think something like, “God! I’m bored! I can’t get interested in anything!” when the truth is that, at that moment, we are absolutely enthralled with boredom! Fascinated! Awestruck with boredom! Can’t shake our focus on it! Get with the program, folks. There isn’t any way not to be fascinated with something. Awareness is what is at the core of all this, and awareness is fascination. When Samadhi occurs it is awareness wide open, not focused on anything, and that is what the rishis mean by satchitananda.

Which, as usual, brings us back to what we mean by “I.” What do we mean? The best minds in the world are currently turning themselves inside out trying to understand consciousness. The problem, strangely enough, is that you have to define what you’re talking about before you can come to any kind of a theoretical understanding, and no one seems to be able to define just what we’re talking about. What do we mean when we say, “I’m conscious of such-and-such? Obviously, such-and-such is registering with me, somehow, but what is this me? I “know” I’m here, but what am I?

David Chalmers is close to the head of the class in this line of research, and his working suggestion is that consciousness is a fundamental energy, like gravity, electromagnetic waves and the nuclear forces, a concept that suggests a new paradigm, but doesn’t really give us any information. Advaita, however, makes a tantalizing contribution. According to advaita there is nothing but consciousness, or, more usually, awareness, and from there it’s obvious that any kind of registering of any kind of movement or change is awareness. We struggle to create artificial intelligence when we already have: a windmill is artificial intelligence. Change is the currency of awareness, the medium that is the message.

As for me, I struggle along with all the other SAP*s, here. But ever since I met Byron Katie I “struggle” from a completely different perspective, aware that there’s really no problem. It just isn’t true, and I know it. Maybe that’s what an “I” is. What I do know, more and more, is that what getting from there to here is about is climbing up out of “me.”

*Semi Autonomous Probe of the Eternal One