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Source: www.satrakshita.com
There are many different kinds of meditation, Transcendental Meditation, Vipassana, Zen, Tantric Meditation, etc.... Gautama the Buddha mentions 84000 different meditative paths to enlightenment.
What escapes the attention of these scientists is, that Christianity didn't tolerate another religion and had much more power in the middle ages than it has today. To avoid having to suffer the same fate as the Gnostics, the Alchemists used a symbolic language to hide the real purpose of what they were after from the uninitiated. It looks like they are doing a few chemical experiments, but in actual fact they describe the fundamental transformation of the human mind. They see lead, which oxidizes and becomes dull and black in time, as symbolizing a self-centered, egoistic human being, turned away from the light, who is born, grows ugly and old, suffers and eventually dies. The base characteristics of lead represent the transitoriness and mortality of man. The invulnerable, precious and permanently shining gold refers to a human being whose mind has been set free, and who is detached and enlightened; it points to the possibility of man to become immortal. To the Alchemists the Philosopher's Stone meant meditation.
Meditation as a Path to More Light
Osho called the earth 'The Lotus Paradise'. He borrowed this allegory from Zenbuddhism. The lotus is a plant that takes root down below, beneath the surface of water, in the dark, in the mud, and starts growing upwards. As soon as it raises above the surface, a lotusflower unfolds under the intense rays of the Sun.
Meditation is a 180 Degree Turn
In an allegory of Plato, a few men are kept prisoners in a cave; they are in chains which force them to face a wall. Behind them is the entrance to the cave and light coming from it. Between the entrance and the prisoners, puppeteers hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. What the prisoners see are shadows cast by objects they do not see. Such prisoners mistake appearance for reality. Knowing nothing of the real causes of the shadows, they think the shadows they see on the wall are what constitues reality. blind men investigating elephant Their predicament is similar to that of a group of blind men appearing in a seven hundred year old fable of Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi; each sought to examine an elephant in a dark room, and took hold of a different part – an ear, the tail, a leg. Each mistook his particular part for the whole – and became convinced that an elephant was a fan, a rope, a pillar, and so on.Back to Plato's allegory: all it takes for the prisoners to know what's real is to break the chains and turn around a 180 degrees, walk to the entrance, leave the cave and be free. Jesus calls this 180 degree turn 'metanoia', which is wrongly translated as 'repentance', but which really means 'change of mind (vision)'. Osho connects it with the withering away of all desires, which take us out into the world only to be frustrated, until our attention turns back to ourselves and finds the witnessing awareness within. Osho calls this 180 degree turn The Only Revolution; it enables us to suddenly see who we really are.
http://www.satrakshita.com/meditation_from_darkness_to_light.htm
Meditation as a Path to More Light
Osho called the earth 'The Lotus Paradise'. He borrowed this allegory from Zenbuddhism. The lotus is a plant that takes root down below, beneath the surface of water, in the dark, in the mud, and starts growing upwards. As soon as it raises above the surface, a lotusflower unfolds under the intense rays of the Sun.
Meditation is a 180 Degree Turn
In an allegory of Plato, a few men are kept prisoners in a cave; they are in chains which force them to face a wall. Behind them is the entrance to the cave and light coming from it. Between the entrance and the prisoners, puppeteers hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. What the prisoners see are shadows cast by objects they do not see. Such prisoners mistake appearance for reality. Knowing nothing of the real causes of the shadows, they think the shadows they see on the wall are what constitues reality. blind men investigating elephant Their predicament is similar to that of a group of blind men appearing in a seven hundred year old fable of Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi; each sought to examine an elephant in a dark room, and took hold of a different part – an ear, the tail, a leg. Each mistook his particular part for the whole – and became convinced that an elephant was a fan, a rope, a pillar, and so on.Back to Plato's allegory: all it takes for the prisoners to know what's real is to break the chains and turn around a 180 degrees, walk to the entrance, leave the cave and be free. Jesus calls this 180 degree turn 'metanoia', which is wrongly translated as 'repentance', but which really means 'change of mind (vision)'. Osho connects it with the withering away of all desires, which take us out into the world only to be frustrated, until our attention turns back to ourselves and finds the witnessing awareness within. Osho calls this 180 degree turn The Only Revolution; it enables us to suddenly see who we really are.
http://www.satrakshita.com
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