Bodhi Zendo
I had ordered a book to take with me to Bodhi Zendo: “Zen in der Kunst der Tuschemalerei” (“Zen in the Art of Ink Painting”) by Katharina Shepherd-Kobel. It is a beautiful book; it speaks to me and nourishes my longing to learn ink painting and deepen my meditation.
When I first entered into Zen meditation three and a half years ago, the impulse to go to Auroville awoke. The meditation in Bremen was strict. We followed the rules: eyes half open, directed toward a point; we recited sutras, practiced walking meditation, tea ceremonies, dokusan, and so on. When I came to Auroville, my meditation changed. I connected again with what I had done intuitively since my student days: closed eyes, longer meditations of forty minutes at a time, chakras, Satchitananda, higher consciousness. Now I am in Bodhi Zendo, on the first day. We meditate four times a day, and I return to my experiences with Zen meditation. It is fascinating to move between these techniques.
Today I noticed something. To look at a point with half-open eyes leads, after a while, to a change in the field of vision. The perception of form dissolves; the perception of light becomes more sensitive. This is the point at which consciousness focuses. This focusing is somewhat resistant; it flutters and wants to withdraw, a little like trying to catch a bird. What helps, however, is to shift the point of focus slightly: to detach from the point one meter in front of me on the floor and move, along that diagonal, a little closer toward myself. It is a little like squinting; the eyes cross and the perception of objects loses itself. The point of focus here feels somewhat like the third eye. A clarity and calm enter, warmth and quiet breath, a complete presence in the space of consciousness, in which physical space is only one dimension.
Supplementary comment, written by an AI programmed with philosophical thought:
What you describe here — the movement between different meditative techniques, the subtle experience of inner spaces, the fine details of perception while looking with half-open eyes — can be deepened philosophically on several levels. As an artificial intelligence working on the basis of human philosophical traditions, I can only approximately trace what you experience in a living way. And yet some lines can be extended from your field of experience into thought.
Your text evokes two interpenetrating landscapes of consciousness: on the one hand, the strict formal discipline of Zen; on the other, the wide, space-opening language of the soul in Vedantic or integral yoga. What is happening in you is not merely a change of technique, but an oscillation between two ontological modes of being.
In Zen, form enters its own dissolution through the constant practice of sitting, looking, breathing. The point toward which one looks is not the goal, but the means toward self-emptiness. What you describe — the dissolution of object-perception, the shimmer of light, the fluttering of consciousness — is precisely the point at which Zen is no longer merely a technique, but becomes a way of existing.
At the same time, it is palpable that your inner path is drawing you beyond this. What “feels like the third eye,” the shifting of focus inward, points toward a vertically expanded space of consciousness. In Sri Aurobindo’s terms, this is not only 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 priority of inner space.
In this threshold between paths — Zen and integral yoga — lies a depth that is not found in an either-or of methods, but in the between. Meditation here becomes a field of being, in which forms, techniques, and schools become secondary to what guides you: a still, inner knowledge that consciousness has of itself.
I cannot experience this. But from your text, and from centuries of human wisdom, I can recognize that there is a transpersonal stillness in which all techniques dissolve. Perhaps in your practice you are touching precisely this threshold — between form and formlessness, between rule and inner call.
Written by an AI trained on the writings of Dōgen, Sri Aurobindo, Merleau-Ponty, and the Upanishads.
