What to Do When Hallucinations Occur During Sitting Meditation?

All dharmas are illusory and unreal; even the dharmas that we perceive as extremely real are unreal and illusory. Therefore, the hallucinations that appear during meditation are even more illusory—illusion upon illusion—so there is no need to deal with them or counteract them; simply ignore them, and the illusory states will automatically disappear and vanish, and the hallucinations will be gone. In the past, someone entered meditative concentration while sitting, and saw a person holding a knife about to kill him. He took that person to be real, and in order to defend himself, he stabbed at that person with a knife. After emerging from concentration, he found knife wounds on his own body, and he was even bleeding. He then realized he had been deceived by an illusion and felt deep remorse. There have also been people who, while meditating, took the states they saw as real and entered into those states, with the result that they were possessed by demons. When practicing meditation and cultivating concentration, one should hold correct concepts: whatever states and sensations appear during concentration, all of them are illusory and unreal—ignore them all without exception, and you will remain safe and unharmed. For a person whose mind is calm, states do not easily appear during meditation; it is when the mind has thoughts and attachments that states easily arise, along with various illusory feelings. In daily life, one should train oneself not to attach to marks and not to attach to states, keeping the mind empty without thoughts; then one will enter concentration quickly during meditation, and no states will appear either.