Ru Chun's Physical and Mental State After Seeing the Path (I)

On January 25, 2026, while doing housework, I engaged in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the impurity of the physical body, and realized that the physical body is just a large-scale sewage treatment system, recycling and processing the various excretions produced by food, drink, and sexual desire. When people in the world fight and scramble against one another, in the final analysis they are really just fighting over excrement. When worldly people occupy wealth and resources, it is in order to cherish and pamper the physical body and serve the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), yet the inside of the five-aggregate body is filled with excrement—is that not the same as cherishing the impure and fighting over the impure? When I thought of this, I could not help letting out a long sigh, lamenting how truly suffering sentient beings are. Then I thought of the compassion and wisdom of the tathāgatagarbha: in order to satisfy the cravings of the manas, it creates the physical body for the manas to enjoy, and it is also responsible for cleaning up and processing all kinds of impurities, toiling without complaint and never saying a word. When we take refuge in Him, it is precisely to learn this virtue of His. That night I continued the contemplative practice in a dream, and then felt the mouth and the area around it become empty.

Since returning, the disciple's meditative concentration has remained quite good; body and mind are relatively at ease and stable, with few afflictions, and progress in contemplative practice is fairly evident. Often my whole being is in a state of absorbed immersion, with the dharma being contemplated hanging in the mind; the eyes see forms but do not discern specific material sense-objects, and the ears hear sounds but do not discern specific sound objects. Often there is a feeling of being forcibly pulled back from another dimension. Sometimes when listening to someone speak, I feel a wave of their afflictive aura pressing over me, my heart shaken into panic and oppression, and I no longer want to reply. Even when I do reply, it is often completely beside the point, or just a perfunctory "mm" or "oh."

Recently there have not been many changes; it is just that I feel I am not only engaged in contemplative practice during the day, but often also in dreams, and then I exhale in the dream. Sometimes I feel the phenomenon of the body (sometimes just a part of it) becoming empty; nothing else. My emotions are quite stable, without any particular joy or fluctuation. I feel that my whole being is mild, light, peaceful, and calm, with no great reaction or turbulence toward people or affairs. Yesterday, when I recalled that saying of the Bodhisattva, I felt the Bodhisattva's loving kindness; my heart felt warm and my nose stung a little—somewhat happy and yet somewhat aggrieved, like a child who has wandered and suffered outside for many years finally finding the way home.

Tonight while sitting in meditation I felt my whole body tingling, numb, and swollen, as if electric current were running through my entire body, with a slight stinging sensation, as if my whole body were enveloped in a strong electric current. I felt as if another self were standing outside the body, very clearly watching streams of golden electric current flowing through my body. Then there was great pressure at the eardrums, and somehow it seemed as if everything around me was suddenly blocked out.