When a meditation experience unsettles you: ground first, shorten, and reach a teacher or clinician
If a reflection or a sitting leaves you shaky, unreal or frightened, stop the practice, ground yourself in ordinary contact, and bring it to a teacher or clinician.
Perché funziona
This page’s guidance, not a finding from the Lamdré texts: a reflection on suffering or an experience in absorption can bring up something difficult, and the first move is to re-establish ordinary contact with the body and the room. Lindahl and colleagues (2017) interviewed Western Buddhist practitioners and experts and describe meditation experiences that were challenging, difficult or distressing, with interpretations and responses that varied considerably. Their study did not test a remedy, so the steps below are guidance rather than a tested protocol.
Come farlo
- Stop the practice. Open your eyes and look at a fixed, ordinary object near you, such as a wall or a cup.
- Place both feet flat on the floor and press them down. Notice the floor holding you up.
- Slowly name five things you can see and two things you can hear.
- Walk, wash your hands with attention, or do one ordinary task until the body feels like your own again.
- Do not return to the reflection or the sitting that day. Tell a teacher or someone you trust what happened.
- If the feeling of being unreal, frightened or falling apart continues, or if thoughts of harming yourself come up, contact a clinician now. In the United States you can call or text 988. For background, see the meditation-related-challenges page.
Prove scientifiche
Lindahl and colleagues (2017) describe difficult meditation experiences in a mixed-methods study, but did not test any intervention. The grounding steps are this page’s guidance, not a tested protocol. (observational)
This is a safety step, not a treatment. It does not replace a teacher who knows your practice or a clinician who can assess what you are experiencing.
Fonti
Errore comune
Pushing through, continuing the sitting or reflection harder because the tradition speaks of working with difficulty. This page’s guidance for a distressed person is to shorten and ground, not intensify.
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Altre pratiche per Lamdré: The Path with Its Result in the Sakya Tradition
- Reflect on the impure vision: the ordinary cycle, seen in one episode
Take one ordinary cycle of wanting and disappointment from your own week and look at it as the impure vision, the first of the three visions the Sakya course page names.
- Know what meditation experiences are and are not: the experiential vision
Notice a vivid meditation experience, such as warmth, light or stillness, and hold it as an appearance that arises and passes rather than as an attainment.
- Aspire to the pure vision: the result as the aim of the path
Let the aim of the path, complete awakening, become a felt aspiration rather than a concept, and point the day toward it.
- Parting from the four attachments: a daily review from the short Sakya teaching
Once a day, check the day against four attachments, to this life, to saṃsāra, to your own interest, and to grasping, in the words of the teaching Sachen Kunga Nyingpo received.
- Approach a Lamdré teaching: what to ask before joining the tantric parts
Before you engage Lamdré’s tantric parts, learn the Sakya structure, ask how a teacher received the teaching, and check with a qualified lineage-holder what you are ready for.
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- Lamrim: The Stages of the Path and the Three Scopes
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- Bodhicitta: The Awakening Mind and How It Is Cultivated
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