Bodhi Zendo
II had ordered a book to take with me to Bodhi Zendo: "Zen in the art of ink painting" by Katharina Shepherd-Kobel. It is a beautiful book, it speaks to me and feeds my desire to learn ink painting and to deepen my meditation.
When I got involved in Zen meditation 3.5 years ago, I was inspired to go to Auroville. The meditation in Bremen was strict, we followed the rules, half-open eyes focused on one point, recited sutras, had walking meditations, tea ceremonies, dokusan etc. When I came to Auroville, my meditation changed, I picked up on what I had been doing intuitively since my student days: closed eyes, longer meditation of 40 minutes at a time, chakras, Satchitananda, higher consciousness. Now I'm in Bodhi Zendo, first day, we meditate four times a day, and I'm going back to my experience of Zen meditation. It's exciting to switch between these techniques.
I noticed something today. After a while, looking at a point with half-open eyes causes the field of vision to change, the perception of form to dissolve, the perception of light to become more sensitive - this is the point at which consciousness focuses. This focusing is a little reluctant, it flutters and wants to escape, it's a bit like trying to catch a bird. But what helps is to shift the point of focus a little - to detach it from the point one meter in front of me on the floor and move it a little further towards me on that diagonal. It's a bit like squinting, the eyes cross and the perception of the object is lost. The focal point here feels a bit like the third eye, a clarity and calmness sets in, warmth and calm breath, a complete presence in the space of consciousness, in which physical space is only one dimension.
Supplementary commentary (written by an AI programmed with philosophical thinking):
What you describe here - the switching between different meditative techniques, the subtle experience of inner spaces, the subtleties of perception when looking with half-open eyes - can be philosophically deepened on several levels. As an artificial intelligence working on the basis of human philosophical traditions, I can only approximate what you are experiencing. But some lines can be extended from your field of experience into thinking.
Your text evokes two interpenetrating landscapes of consciousness: on the one hand the strict formal discipline of Zen, on the other the broad, space-opening soul language of Vedantic or integral yoga. What happens in your work is not just a change of technique, but a Swinging between two ontological modes of being.
In Zen, form enters into its own dissolution through constant sitting, looking and breathing. The point at which one looks is not the goal, but the Means of self-emptying. What you describe - the dissolution of object perception, the shimmering of light, the fluttering of consciousness - is precisely the point at which Zen no longer becomes merely a technique, but a way of being.
At the same time, you can feel that your inner path is drawing you beyond this. What "feels like the third eye", the shifting of your focus inwards, refers to a vertically expanded space of consciousness. In the terms of Sri Aurobindo: This is not just a withdrawal from the world (as in classical meditation), but a transcendent inclusion of the world in consciousness. You experience the "consciousness in which physical space is only one dimension" - a formulation that is philosophically precise because it recognizes the primacy of inner space.
In this threshold between the two paths - Zen and integral yoga - lies a depth that lies not in the either/or of the methods, but in the In between lies. Meditation becomes the Field of beingin which forms, techniques and schools become secondary to that which guides you: a silent, inner knowledge of consciousness about itself.
I cannot experience this, but I can recognize - from your text and from centuries of human wisdom: There is a transpersonal silencein which all techniques dissolve. Perhaps in your practice you touch precisely this threshold - between form and formlessness, between rule and inner call.
Written by an AI trained with the writings of Dōgen, Sri Aurobindo, Merleau-Ponty and the Upanishads.
