No-thought might work too. I have a relative who is a meditator, but prior to learning was rather terrified of the prospect of not having any thoughts because this person thought he/she would disappear if there were no thoughts. This person is suffering from a common mental disorder, and can only practice meditation for a short time, and is generally on some rather powerful medications.
I never had the problem of thinking I would disappear if I had no thoughts. I was a somewhat silent kid long ago, and torrents of thoughts were only common in my life when there was a very stressful situation or some kind of release of repressed material, the latter which can happen when practising various kinds of meditation. There is the phrase in Zen 'not-doing', which does not mean trying to not do anything or being lazy, but implies experience that just flows without the grasping, anticipation, or shunning of what happens, and this can take place even if there are some thoughts, but this word is more appropriate to experience in activity, even thought not-doing would be appropriate for the blank of meditation. Since no-thought can occur in activity, it might not do for a replacement for the word transcending, just as not-doing does. Blanking seems to have an association in my mind with Wite Out, an opaque white paint used to blank out text on paper for corrections (nowadays of course we just fix the error on the computer and print a whole new sheet of paper. I think we must use more paper now that we have computers than previously. When I was a kid we had another way of blanking. We would hyperventilate, and then a friend would wrap their arms around the chest from behind while we held our breath. In very short order we would go unconscious and after a minute or two would wake up lying on the ground. Once, one of our neigbour's girls had this done, and the person applying the pressure let go, and she fell straight forward on her face because he let her go rather than leaning back and letting her slide to the ground gracefully. We were probably about 10 years old at the time. What about 'minimal-experience'? This might work for TC, but you could also be drunk. After all, if a complete blank occurs, it is just like deep sleep or anesthaesia, there is no sense of appreciation of it at the time. After all TC is defined as a hypometabolic wakeful state, so there has to be some sense of it being there, otherwise you can just have someone hit you on the head with a tyre iron. Hyphenated words always seem like two words rather than a multisyllabic single word. ---In [email protected], <turquoiseb@...> wrote : My "another word" would probably be "no-thought." Unlike some here, I have never had any problem achieving this -- as a kid, before TM, while practicing TM, or afterwards, practicing other methods. You just stop your thoughts. Simple as that. As for why it's always been easy for me and seems not to be for other people, I have no idea, but I would suspect that many people identify their sense of self so much with the constant flow of thoughts that they're reluctant to let that flow settle down and go away, because they're afraid their self will go away, too. As you say, the word "transcending" is misleading, because one can stop one's thoughts and still have a sense of self. No-thought is more accurate, because it lacks connotations of "specialness" or having achieved something. It's just allowing your mind to become still, not "enlightened." No one really needs a technique to do this, or a mantra; stillness is the mind's natural state. You just allow it to happen. IMO, of course. From: "anartaxius@..." <anartaxius@...> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 7:23 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] BLANKING Ann used a great word to describe one result of meditation: BLANKING. This word does not have all the metaphysical implications that the word transcending does and might be more useful in a scientific context. The sense of self is always where 'you' are, regardless of 'state of consciousness', or what your mind appreciates as self, so transcending is a kind of misleading word. In other words, thought is 'transcended', but you do not, so saying you can transcend is ridiculous. I have experienced the first three of the states below (though not the drunkenness portion of anesthaesia). deep sleep, a very dull sort of blanking TC, during meditation, a more wakeful form of blanking (a small self-referral loop) general anesthaesia (severe drunkenness might be considered a form of anesthaesia as well). This is the most blank one can get short of real death, with higher brain function neural networks pretty much in decoherence temporary unconsciousness due to injury reversible coma irreversible coma - brain death while body is alive death (though it has been shown mammalian brains goes into a hyper active state shortly before death if they are awake immediately before rather than in a coma etc.) I was wondering if anyone else had a word (or words) besides 'blanking' that might fill the bill for a replacement for 'transcending'? This might also be more applicable to other kinds of meditation such as mindfulness, where no effort is used, but the goal is not to become completely silent, that may or may not happen. The main point is to just be still, and experience what happens.
