I am not even sure what to call this. Is is not a sensation. It is not a feeling; neither in the sense of textile sense; nor in the sense of a complex emotion. It is something I occasionally experienced when I first started chanting; and that has returned recently. By recent, I mean during the last decade. In the past, it would happen maybe ten to fifteen minutes into chanting Daimoku; in front of the Nichiren Shoshu Mandala Gohonzon. I was told this was the 'garden hose' effect;' my bad karma was arising, so I could expiate it. Since expiate is not a common word, I did not know not what it meant back then. I thought it was maybe something like a spiritual fart. Anyway, the creepy, dizzy, deja-vu sensation has come back, since I have been learning to do absorption meditations.
As an aside, I personally have a medical condition that causes two of the three kinds of dizziness; vertigo and disequilibrium. The third kind is syncope or fainting. I have never really experienced spontaneous fainting; but know how to induce it and am familiar. The dizziness is not syncope. Its not vertigo either; which is a spinning sensation. That leaves disequilibrium; which does sort of fit. Disequilibrium is a loss of balance; of equilibrioreception. The floor might look lower or higher than it is. A room might seem to rock. Most people have something experienced this to some degree. Some common situations include:
- Boarding and exiting an escalator, especially the reverse ones, or a moving walkway.
- On a elevator, just as it starts and stops. For me, this is more pronounced going up, and especially just before it stops at a floor.
- While you are sitting in a parked vehicle, with attention focused on the interior, another and another car that has been parked, especially one in an adjacent slot, starts to move. and you catch it in your peripheral field of vision. The car in which your sitting 'feels' like it is moving, even though it remains stationary. I avoid this by keeping my attention on objects outside the vehicle.
The elevator disequilibrium kind of fits what I sometimes experience during attempts at concentration meditation, as well as highly focused chanting. The experience is usually preceded by an odd feeling of having been exactly here before, like I am doing the exact same something I have done before, except that would be impossible. Then there is a creepy, gloomy, horrid feeling a dread. Next comes the disequilibrium, followed by a peculiar buzzing sensation that races randomly through my body. Sometimes my stomach will churn a bit; like serious 'butterflies.' There might be an odd odor; like burning wires or rubber. Yes, I have obviously discussed this with my Doctors; since I thought it might be related to my vestibular disease. It probably is not. If I attempt to either focus or relax my way through vertigo, it gets worse. The only solution for that is to cease movement as much as possible, and reduce sensory input.
The creepy, dizzy, deja-vu sensation is different. I have been advised by one person to just to let it ago and sort of figuratively dive into the gathering gloom. He says the solution to every problem is just on the other side. I am not there yet. My solution has been to just observe it. A few times, I have to stop the meditation. Most of the time, if I just observe the gloom, it goes away and something good, something interesting follows. 'Back in the day,' it was followed by the 3-D glowing Mandala Gohonzon phenomena, something that a number of Nichiren Buddhists have reported experiencing. That, in turn, was followed by a bliss that faded into a calm state of poise.
I shall go more into the possible resolution in a future post. The resolution might be kind of like the queasy sinking feeling in my gut when an 'up' elevator stops at a floor, and settles into place, before the door slides open. Good things seem to be on the other side of the door; it is , perhaps, matter of not getting lost in the mental fog.
I shall go more into the possible resolution in a future post. The resolution might be kind of like the queasy sinking feeling in my gut when an 'up' elevator stops at a floor, and settles into place, before the door slides open. Good things seem to be on the other side of the door; it is , perhaps, matter of not getting lost in the mental fog.
I posted about this experience at as group last summer. Someone sent me a private e-mail to a box that I often neglect to check. I think I read it a few months later. Just the other day, I was going through that box, and came across the letter. Right after that, I started having this again, when I 'sit.' I thought it might be a good segue back into a discussion of Access Concentration.
These disturbing experiences seem to occur during a transition from Preliminary to Access Concentration, I wonder if these are similar in any way to what Zen calls the Mara Realm 魔境 {makyo)? Or the 7th of the three obstacles and 4 devils 三障四魔 {sansho shima}; the hindrance of the devil king? Possibly the Fourth Veil / Hindrance; Restlessness and anxiety (uddhacca-kukkucca 掉悔 {chokai}?
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