This past few days, I experienced a more active wandering state than usual during my dawn meditation resulting an intensive internal self reprimand. Having detected this brain activity, I brought the thought to reciting the script of Heart Sutra. But the wandering mind soon became fed up with it and tried to move to somewhere else. I repeatedly summoned it back. The one hour duration was felt much longer than it was but I always persistently complete the sitting after the one hour session is finished. Today, the mind was behaving mostly the same except that I gave it more liberty to involve in the thinking process of contemplating the content meaning.
Unexpectedly I felt the one hour sitting was shorter than it should be. It is understandable that when we are totally engaged in something, a certain part of our brain responsible for monitoring the timeline must have become less active, and so when we have got out of the focused point, the timeline manager resumes its working standard, and our feeling of the elapse of time returns to normal. This is my personal hypothesis of how our brain works. My goal is to achieve higher level of voluntary concentration.
Let's suppose there are 8 levels (8 is my lucky number) in the meditation skill assessment. The level that Bodhisattva demonstrated as per the description mentioned in Heart Sutra is 8, while my level is 2 according to my definition, "whoever is able to remain in silence and sitting posture for a duration of one hour minimum is classified level 2." Level 1 is not difficult to attain. As long as you can remain in silence and sitting for a few seconds and more but less than one hour, you are counted in there.
It is not important about what level you have achieved but the actual ability you have acquired. In the Heart Sutra, Bodhisattva claimed "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." and also revealed the consequence of attaining the state where he experienced the ceasing of the four functions of thought processor - receiving, processing, acting and archiving of the external stimulus, is bypassing the whole bunch of suffering because of the stubborn attachment to the four functions which our brain is so designed.
The objective Buddha is trying to make us understand is to achieve the level 8 which will enable us to realize the emptiness nature of form. I agree with the saying that only the drinker himself knows how warm or cold is the water he has just drank. Heart Sutra has stated it very clearly what benefits we will get when we have attained the technique as to still the functioning of our brain at will, but it is never easy and there are a great number of practitioners including myself believe perseverance in regular practice will have its fruition one day.
Hopefully one day I can tame the wandering mind to a degree that enables me to experience the state depicted in Heart Sutra.
-the end-
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