Greetings,

This month we are moving into the third link - rapture. Rapture in common English is described in part as a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion. This doesn't quite capture what rapture is in Dhamma. Rapture in meditation practice can be momentary or sustaining. I associate momentary rapture with householder practice and sustaining rapture with deep meditation. I'm going to explore momentary rapture in the first part of this blog because it is where the bulk of our dukkha is showing up and the closest to what we can experience in our everyday lives. It's not to say that as householders we don't have access to sustained rapture. Extended meditation will bring rapture whether it's part of your home practice or on retreat. I'll explore the possibility of sustained rapture or Piti in meditation at the end of the blog.

To begin with, awakening cannot happen without joy and rapture. No amount of striving or force of will, will bring about the awakening of mind. That’s why it's important to cultivate joy and rapture. I like to think of momentary rapture as rapt attention. Instead of it being a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion, I consider it a state of being carried away by overwhelming interest. So if we consider where we're at in these 12 links, you are in a moment of dukkha. You've turned towards it with an uplifted heart and a sense of possibility. Now you need to sustain your interest in it. This is where we get curious about the experience itself. I have found that asking a series of rhetorical questions can bring interest in the moment. For instance, where or what is dukkha in this moment? Am I holding onto something? Am I taking something too personal? Am I assuming reliability in something that is inherently unreliable. Am I trying to get my way? Is there greed or hatred present? Is there a hindrance present? I could ask questions all day long and the more questions I ask the more I stay curious with whatever I am experiencing. These are special questions. They are not designed to be answered. I'm not trying to figure out what's going on nor am I looking for a solution. In fact, I am intentionally looking away from solutions and am merely trying to keep myself interested in what I'm experiencing. 

Rapture is not a foreign experience to us. We often experience rapture while watching a movie, reading a book, doing something we enjoy, eating food we love, etc. Rapture is a pleasant feeling so we mostly associate rapture with pleasant experiences. But the rapture is not coming from the fact that the experience is pleasurable, it's coming from the fact that we’re interested. It’s why we stay glued to our anger, incessant complaining or judging, and unhealthy emotions. No matter how unpleasant it may be, we will remain trapped in it so long as we remain interested in it or passionate about it. On the other hand, the momentary rapture of practice is about wholesome interest. It is the recognition of the wholesomeness of investigation. Investigating a moment of dukkha, whether it’s pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, helps us understand the Dhamma (3 Characteristics, 4 Noble Truths, Hindrances, etc). This type of rapt attention is skillful and onward leading. To experience this type of rapture requires the patience of faith, the uplift of joy, and the cultivation of curiosity. It's like the picture below. It doesn't really scream joy and ecstasy, but I bet you, like me, found yourself staring at it to see what it is. And all the goings on about it. I picked this picture because I felt this would be the best way to describe the rapt interest of momentary rapture. 

In your meditation practice, the proximate cause of samadhi (concentration) is joy. It is not striving nor force of will. It is enjoying what you are doing. When that joy is sustained, rapture arises as Piti. Piti, translated in English as rapture, is a bodily feeling of intense joy or energy. It is a high-energy, uplifting mental state often experienced in meditation. It can include physical sensations like tingling waves or energetic excitement. It is part of the energy necessary to keep our focus steady and build concentration. Piti is not just energy during meditation. It is a particular type of energy. When we meditate, we use an object such as breath, sound, or sense contact to anchor us to the present moment. Basically to keep our attention steady and present. These objects are usually neutral. In the beginning we're ambushed by the mind's grumbling about what it doesn't like and obsessing over pleasure. We just return or begin again and again to this neutral object in the present moment. The kinder, softer and gentler you are with this process, the more responsive and relaxing the mind gets. I can't believe how long it took me to get that. I spent years fighting with my mind and trying to force it to steady its attention on the neutral object and to this day I believe it's why it took me so long to steady my attention. The more you fight with the mind the happier it is and the unhappier you are. This is because you are going against the natural arising of samadhi.

Samadhi arises naturally out of the uplift of joy. When you have a sense of joy, you turn off the automatic alert system. The mind can stop trying to look for the pleasant and fixes to the unpleasant. It can actually relax and once it relaxes, it gets interested even in neutral, nondescript, and non-stimulating objects. That interest begins to grow and as that interest grows, the mind gets excited. That mental excitement is symbiotically felt in the body as feelings of intense joy. Just like with momentary rapture, to experience this sustained rapture requires the uplift of enjoying practice, the gentleness of patience, and the cultivation of interest or curiosity. It's not something that any of us can make happen, it's something that arises out of our genuine love of practice. If you're using practice to fix yourself, to achieve to some mental state or to manifest something, it won't have a lasting effect. It may work once or twice. But it won't be lasting without a genuine joy for practice itself. Give it a try this month. See how it feels to get interested in what it feels like when you're enjoying something and what it feels like when you're not enjoying something. Try to keep an even interest in either situation.

With a deep bow,
Tuere