Unusual practice, unusual experience

So once a month, as conditions allow, I don my SCUBA gear and drop in at a river mouth that has a rectangular ditch in the rocky bottom at a depth of 8.5m. The ditch is about 2.5m long, 2m wide, and 1.5m deep, a flat bottom filled with shells. I can sit inside that ditch without being too affected by tidal currents. I wear a drysuit despite the temperate to warm waters to avoid thermal discomfort upon long periods of inactivity, and establish negative buoyancy to avoid floating when taking a deep breath in.

I try to replicate the zazen I practice at home as closely as possible, that is, I sit as cross-legged as is possible in my gear, leaning on my tank a bit for stability, eyes half closed. A bit of adjustment here and there can't be avoided, but I manage decent periods of uninterrupted slow breathing, the hiss of inhalations and steady bubble sound coming out of my regulator making it effortless to focus on. The purpose is to just sit and, in a way, learn from what is 'similar' in myself, despite the otherwise quite alien environment when compared to sitting in front of a white wall on a zafu in my office. I do a lot of purely recreational solo diving, so at some point I get bored and that is how this unusual practice came about.

The last time, I came across a rather eerie experience that came over me in a matter of just one or two seconds, only lasting a few seconds thereafter. My sense of the world around me, including the little patch of shells in my field of view, and everything that was beyond it (the somewhat familiar underwater landscape of the river mouth, the surface, the vast pacific ocean just about 150m away, and everything along the shore) at once felt 'objective', for lack of a better term (edit: without actually looking at anything but the patch in front of me, my sense of my surroundings started to include the above). There was a deep sense of physicality (edit: immovable geometry) to this world, and I still cannot put my finger on whether a feeling of hostility (in the sense that it was out of my control, and I had to deal with whatever I encountered in it), or a sense of freedom (in so far as I perceived the ultimate lack of restriction to my actions within that realm, appearing more like the 3D environment in a game than the familiar world) were dominant, it was an upsetting mix of both. It was not pleasant, to be clear, but extremely stirring and clear. It was a type of clarity as if 'the air was sucked out of the room', only that the 'room' was obviously full of water, and nothing to the way it looked actually changed. Yes, I have a hard time putting words around it. As I started to open my eyes fully and looked around, I felt a touch of fear about the sheer scale of reality around me, but my perception returned to normal immediately, and as soon as I went on my way drifting towards the exit point (I had plenty of gas left but felt like getting out), everything was normal once again. As I went about doffing and rinsing my gear in the warm sunshine, I felt contemplative without any real object of contemplation, not welcoming the couple of strolling people asking me about dive conditions and what not, I did not feel like interacting socially. I haven't been able to replicate this strange perception in the couple months since but I still know exactly what it felt like. I drove home in silence.

Now forget about all the water stuff, that's really beside the point but excluding it would feel like I am not describing the circumstances adequately. I would like to see if the practitioners on here, many of which I understand have spent many more days or months in zazen than myself, recognise some of what I say and whether there is any advice to be had. I would really like to get there again (edit: although I am trying not to make it a goal during practice), maybe under more benign circumstances at home, and hold on to it without as much fear or alienation in the moment. Is that what it feels like when preoccupation with the flow of daily activity and concepts clothing the immediate physical surrounds stop at once, for the shortest of periods?

Submitted May 04, 2020 at 08:17AM by Coinionaire https://ift.tt/2SuBQjq