Originally Posted by Martin
You say that "Recent neurological research on mediators indicates that some or all of what is experienced during Zazen may be merely just various centres of the brain activating or quieting down". You go on to say, I think, that the experience is "real" anyway. Which I can see. But if this experience is simply what happens when certain functions of my brain quieten down, then all that is happening is that I am feeling "all of one piece" with my own sense perceptions. Which is scarcely surprising. What could I, or my conciousness, be but the sum of my own sense perceptions and thoughts? And if the thoughts quieten down, then, logically, I must then be the sum of my own sense perceptions. Which I would expect to experience as being "all of one piece" with my sense perceptions. And yes, that experience is "real", but does it have anything wider to say about "reality". I'm not at one with, or of one piece with, the universe, I'm at one with, or of one piece with, my own sense perceptions. And then, isn't the feeling that I get of "no self" and "no other" or "oneness" itself a delusion? "I" am" feeling" "at one with the universe" (though to put it in words doesn't capture the actual feeling, as there's no "I" to do the feeling) but isn't the "reality" that I am merely at one with my own sense perceptions, cut off from the universe and for ever imprisoned within my own sense perceptions? At this point I usually ask myself what the broader "reality", within which the statement that "I am merely at one with my own sense perceptions" applies, is, and my brain just shuts down altogether. Help, please.