The Waking

  Introduction I intended to move on from the previous blog to this one relatively quickly, but it took me longer to get around to this than I anticipated so you might want to have a quick look at that one before going further. It is at https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2026/04/should-i-explore-jhana-meditation.html I ended th at previous blog with, “ In the next blog I will explore the variety of people’s subjective experience of jhana states, to give practitioners an idea of where they can take you.” The eight jhana states are usually given as: The material jhanas: 1. Rapture or Delight 2. Happiness 3. Contentment 4. Equanimity   The immaterial jhanas: 5. Limitless (or infinite) space 6. Limitless (or infinite) consciousness 7. Nothingness (or no-thingness) 8. Nether perception nor non-perception I will focus here on the immaterial jhanas. They feel deeper than the material jhanas and differ more from familiar, day-to-day states. My guess is th...

  ‘Monastery Window.’ A photograph by Thomas Merton from an exhibition devoted to his work at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, in 2014 What is it? Philosophers, theologians, mystics, spiritual teachers and others have explored the ‘ground of all being’ or ‘divine ground,’ while describing an ultimate, foundational reality that underlies all existence, sometimes experientially and sometimes conceptually. These ideas can go under other names too, like ‘the One,’ ‘Being-itself,’ or ‘Godhead.’ Why go there? Why would a normal, sane person want to experience the ground of all being? Well, assuming that I am a normal, sane person, this is what got me into it: 1. To uncover deep peace and stillness. You know that endless inner chatter that your mind is so good at? That isn’t in the ground. You’ll experience inner stillness as you never have before! 2. It is deeply real. For most people, day-to-day life feels real enough, but it’s possible to go deeper without the aid of ps...

    I titled the last blog ‘Are enlightened people always kind and ethical?’ I cited examples of people widely considered to be enlightened who apparently behaved unkindly and/or unethically towards other people.  In addition, given that most of us are not ‘widely considered to be enlightened’, I proposed that it is probably a good idea for those of us on a spiritual path to consider developing our understanding of the nature of kindness and ethical behaviour, and to work on developing them.  I ended that blog by saying that, in this blog, I would write about ways of developing greater kindness. I may well still do that in a future blog, but in the meantime, I felt inspired to put the case that those who have genuinely awakened or realised enlightenment cannot be anything but kind and compassionate towards others, and will always have their best interests at heart. So, my plan here is to mention a concept used by a famous psychologist, and that a Japanese philosopher...

  I touched on this topic once before in a blog (https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2025/02/how-to-know-when-it-is-time-to-move-on.html ) while considering when it is time to move on from a spiritual teacher. In that blog I mentioned the ethical behaviour (or the lack of it) of spiritual teachers as a reason for moving on. To consider this further, not all those who are widely considered awakened or enlightened behave kindly and/or ethically. Many do, but it is clear that ethical behaviour, kindness and enlightenment don’t always go together. If you want to look for yourself into the lives of people who have been considered by many to be awake or enlightened, but about whom there is also evidence of unkind or unethical behaviour then candidates include:      • Indian mystic Osho (also known as Rajneesh) was sometimes seen as harsh, unkind and dismissive of followers. His luxurious lifestyle, including a fleet of Rolls-Royce cars, was also seen by critics as ethically...

  Introduction In this blog I try to integrate a few of the themes that I’ve described in previous blogs about spiritual awakening – themes such as the wide range of experiences that people report in the context of awakening, the many and varied paths to awakening, and then combine those with my fascination with recent research and observations about the possibility of an afterlife, as contained in such sources as the essays submitted to the competition organised by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) to research the survival of human consciousness after bodily death. For those who have not seen these essays, they take a broad, non-sectarian approach to the afterlife and they suggest, not just continuity of consciousness, but also continuity of something resembling our current personalities and also the idea that how we conduct our lives now has implications for our experience of the afterlife. I’ve broadly divided this into sections on:    ...

    In previous blogs I have written an introduction to the jhana meditations and why the Buddha considered them important, and also a brief note on a change in my subjective experience of them (see ‘Sources’ below for links). The change didn’t last by the way... In this blog I share some ideas on how jhana meditations could be deepened and extended for those who have some experience of them, including the experiences of reaching access concentration and of entering one or more of the jhanic states. For practitioners who feel comfortable about accessing the four material and four immaterial jhanas, deepening your practice might involve:     • Refining your mastery of holding, exploring and then moving between states     • Extending the application of these states, and     • Integrating them into broader spiritual goals, such as insight in Buddhist traditions or deeper awareness of God in Christian traditions. Here are some suggestio...