Hey,
This is Ish and today I'm going to talk to you about makyo,
Which are disturbing or distracting phenomenon that occur during your meditation practice.
So this typically occurs when you're deep in a state of concentration in your meditation.
And this is also,
Concentration is also called dharana and this is the sixth limb of yoga.
And I've also done a separate talk on that so you can go check that out.
But these phenomenon arise when you're super concentrated on your practice.
And some examples I've noticed would be when I'm sitting in meditation and I notice the tiles start to move on the floor or my vision will be immersed in a certain color,
So I'll be just sitting there and my field of vision will suddenly turn white or it'll turn light blue for example.
I've also noticed when I'm sitting in a meditation hall in a zendo,
A person sitting next to me would be experiencing that but he would be sitting straight and then all of a sudden his head would move back and forth.
And when I asked him later,
I'm like,
Hey,
What's up with that?
He just said he didn't even notice it.
It was just something that just happened.
Other people have noticed that they report hearing different sounds in their meditation,
So they'll just be sitting and they'll be hearing different noises even though the room is very quiet.
And one thing that people seem to experience often is just a sense of sleepiness.
And I've noticed this a lot myself.
And this is not sleepiness due to bad posture like you slouching over or not even sleeping enough but rather you've slept enough and you've taken care of your body and you're sitting upright but all of a sudden you feel really sleepy in your meditation.
And that's just the makyo or the distracting phenomenon in place.
So keep in mind these are just the byproduct of a concentration-based practice and a maturing practice.
So this is just something that happens when you're developing your meditation practice and you're finally experiencing a concentration stage which is more advanced in there.
And this shouldn't be mistaken for an enlightenment experience.
I know sometimes when you're seeing lights and seeing these cool things happen,
You associate that with a type of an enlightenment experience but rather the Zen texts and the different texts just say that these are just something to ignore and keep going.
And why do these phenomenon occur in your practice?
Well,
It's speculated that the arising of these phenomenons are due to our unconscious that are now coming up to the surface.
So this relates to Carl Jung and different psychology theories on how our subconscious is buried deep within us and our conscious mind is more active but we are unable to experience a subconscious pretty often.
We do in certain states such as meditation or right before sleeping or right when you wake up in the morning,
That's when your subconscious is more receptive.
But nevertheless,
These subconscious phenomenon just comes up to the surface when you're really deep into that state of meditation.
And you'll also notice that in certain yoga poses,
Especially ones that when you're targeting the hips,
All of a sudden these stored emotions in the subconscious will just come up all of a sudden out of nowhere.
I've noticed sometimes yoga students will just start crying or they'll have a lot of like emotional outbursts just out of nowhere.
They were totally fine a few minutes ago but deep in that state of the yoga pose when they target the hips or other areas where it houses a lot of emotions,
It'll just come up all of a sudden.
So the same thing kind of applies when you're deep in that state of meditation,
Concentration,
These feelings or random outbursts or visualizations will just occur out of the blue.
So just keep in mind that you just don't want to be attached to these sensations.
Some of them might actually feel really nice,
You feel like you're floating or you see different lights.
Some of them not so much,
Kind of unpleasant.
But good or bad,
We shouldn't be attached to this.
Rather,
We should keep continuing with our practice and just move on forward.
So there's a saying that goes,
If you meet the Buddha,
Kill him.
And we can apply this kind of saying,
I know it sounds kind of scary but it just means like you should be cutting away the concepts of what you think the enlightenment or Buddha should be.
And you can apply it to this kind of phenomenon so when you notice that you have all these different phenomenons that occur,
You should have the courage to kill the phenomenon by ignoring it.
So you should bring forth that energy of just noticing that it's there but kind of just ignoring it and pushing it away.
And that's kind of the path to dealing with these phenomenon.
It's nice to have sometimes but just don't be too attached to it and keep pressing forward in your meditation.
Hope this helps.
Thank you.
