The Stages of Meditation...

"The eighth- century Buddhist adept Vimalamitra described three stages of mastery in meditation and how thinking appears in each. The first is like meeting a person you already know; you simply recognize each thought as it arises in consciousness, without confusion.

The second is like a snake tied in a knot; each thought, whatever its content, simply unravels on its own.

In the third, thoughts become like thieves entering an empty house; even the possibility of being distracted has disappeared.

Long before reaching this kind of stability in meditation, however, one can discover that the sense of self— the sense that there is a thinker behind one’s thoughts, an experiencer amid the flow of experience— is an illusion.

The feeling that we call “I” is itself the product of thought. Having an ego is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you are thinking."



From Sam Harris' book: Waking Up