Become Ocean 1: The ocean in meditation and contemplative neuroscience
- Till Gebel
- Mar 5, 2021
- 12 min read
Updated: Apr 17, 2023
My idea of relaxation is being on the West Coast of the Algarve in Portugal. Quite often I just sit there and watch the waves, as my sense of Self slowly reduces its intensity and there is only ONE appearance.
This post is about one of the most important teaching metaphors in Buddhism: the "Ocean and Wave" metaphor.
It is a teaching device to let the meditator experience "non-duality", ie a state where the felt sense of separation between Self and Non-Self is absent or diminished, if only temporarily.
It is also a metaphor, whose effect on the brain has been researched using EEG technology.
The Ocean and Wave metaphor in meditation and contemplative neuroscience
In Buddhist meditation tradition, in this analogy
the ocean represents the wide space of awareness or consciousness (terminology may vary)
the waves stand for all mental events: sensations, emotions, and thoughts, concepts, stories, feelings, memories, anticipations etc.
however, the waves (mental events) are not separate from the ocean (awareness), in fact, they ARE the ocean in the same way that the ocean IS its waves.
In psychological praxis, the metaphor is calming for me, as I drop the distinction between good waves and bad waves, small or big waves, crashing or gentle waves. As everything becomes waves that arise and subside again, forever, apparently arising from nowhere.
The force and immediacy of this metaphor have convinced even Sam Harris to use it in one of this Daily Meditations of the Waking Up app. He continues: "It's not often that I ask you to invoke a concept in this way, but it can be helpful. And then let go of it. "
The Ocean and Wave metaphor in Daniel P Brown´s meditation stage model
The Ocean and Wave metaphor, in Daniel P Brown´s model of Mahamudra meditation stages, is the first level of the One-Taste stage.
The subsequent levels are "Automatic Self Liberation" and "Non-Meditation". The table below is an overview.
Level | Description / definition |
Ocean-Wave | The metaphor and "view" described in this post |
The immediate recognition of mental events as soon as they arise and are re-cognised as "empty", ie as fabrications | |
Non-Meditation | The stage where the meditator has dropped all meditation strategies - when there is no more meditator as separate Self doing the meditation |
1. Ocean and waves in meditation
The ocean and wave metaphor is an essential element of teaching in several Buddhist traditions such as Mahamudra and Dzog Chen. It is the standard teaching metaphor of the poet Milarepa, and it has a long tradition.
The Ocean is only one of the ways in which the water element is used metaphorically. Other uses are river, lake etc.
re-cognized
The following quote is from the Lankavatara Sutra. I quote it here in two different translations, in the original formatting by the authors.
Lankavatara Sutra, Ocean and Wave metaphor quoted in Culadasa, The Mind Illuminated
Then the Blessed One summarized the teaching in these verses:
“Just like waves on the ocean
are stirred by wind
and dance across its surface,
never stopping for a moment,
the Ocean of the Unconscious
is stirred by the winds of external events
and made to dance with waves of Consciousness
in all their multiplicity.
Blue and red and other colors,
salt, conch shell, milk and honey,
the fragrance of fruit and flowers,
and rays of the sun and moon—
like the ocean and its waves,
they are neither separate nor the same.
The seven kinds of Consciousness
arise from the Unconscious mind.
Just as different kinds of waves
arise from the ocean,
different kinds of Consciousness
arise from the Unconscious Mind.
Though the Unconscious, the Narrator,
and the Consciousnesses
all take different forms,
these eight are one and the same,
no seer apart from the seen.
Just as the ocean and its waves cannot be separated,
so too in the mind the Unconscious and the Consciousnesses
cannot be separated.
Karma accumulates in the Unconscious
through the reflections of the Narrator
and the volitions of the Discriminating Mind,
from a world given form by the five Sensory Minds.” Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, IX (46). ((Yates (Culadasa) & Immergut, 2017, p. 219)
Lankavatara Sutra, Ocean and Wave metaphor translated by Red Pine
The Bhagavan then repeated the meaning of this in verse:
1. “Just like waves in a boundless sea / blown by a powerful wind / breakers in a black expanse / they never for a moment cease
2. In the Ocean of Alaya / stirred by the wind of externality / wave after wave of consciousness / breaks and swells again
3. Blue and red and every color / milk and sugar and conch shells161 / fragrances and fruits and flowers / the sun and moon and light
4. Like the ocean and its waves / are neither separate nor not separate / seven forms of consciousness / rise together with the mind162
5. Like the ever-changing sea / gives rise to different waves / repository consciousness / gives rise to different forms163
6. Mind, will, and consciousness / these refer to different forms / but forms devoid of differences / no seer or thing seen164
7. As the ocean and its waves / cannot be divided / the mind and the forms of consciousness / cannot be separated 8.1he mind is what gathers karma / the will considers what is gathered / the forms
(Pine, 2012, p. 79)
A digression about metaphors
Why are metaphors used extensively? It is difficult for meditation teachers (actually, for anyone) to describe mystic states of one-ness, or of non-duality, to those who have not experienced them yet. So, how to guide students to those experiences/states they never had?
By their very nature, which is not like our unreflected everyday experience, such experience seems to be ineffable, inexpressible.
However, as Daniel P Brown says in "Pointing out the Great Way", this is wrong: in the West, we have not developed a precise vocabulary for the physical and mental characteristics of extraordinary states. The Tibetan meditation culture, in contrast, has built a precise language for extraordinary states.
One reason for the alleged ineffability is our normal way of communicating. In language, the difficulty is firmly embedded within a reference system of a Self that is experienced as separate from Other, from "out there". It is a dualistic frame of reference. For example, "looking" presupposes a looker and something looked at. In Tibetan Buddhism, in contrast, there is "mind only". Everything is mind (actually its a bit more complex than that, but let's disregard it for now)
Our experienced perceptual dualism can be undone through meditation techniques. The meditator can "become" looker and looked-at, and awareness of this all simultaneously
Metaphors are indirect ways to steer the students' minds toward this, or other, goals. The mind can make use of metaphors in very creative ways, opening up new pathways and associations - something every contemporary hypnotist knows.
For example, metaphors were a key tool in the famous hypnotist Milton Erickson's hypnotic set of hypnotic techniques. It is therefore not surprising that the Mahamudra pointing out teaching methods and hypnosis have some commonalities.
Some of the standard teaching metaphors in Buddhist meditation are:
Ocean and Wave ( although I don´t understand how Tibetan cave yogis could translate an ocean metaphor into an inner representation!)
Mountain
Sun and Clouds
Mirage, City in the Sky
Mirror
Space (for the awakened mind)
Lamp / Butterlamp
Animals (dog, lion, garuda)
Dreams
Water bubbles
Rainbow
Reflections in a mirror
More... see my post.
The traditional Tibetan metaphors are mostly based on natural elements. Today, more contemporary and technical metaphors are usually added.
Cars and planes
Electronic devices
Laser sword
Sailboat
Information processing
There is more on Buddhist teaching metaphors in my post on metaphors.
The ocean and wave metaphor
The metaphor of ocean and wave is used frequently by Daniel P Brown in his 6-day meditation retreats. Phenomenologically, the meditator or meditation group is guided, using precise so-called pointing out instructions, to change their lookout position as vast, timeless, changeless, boundless awareness. The metaphor for this is the ocean and its waves. This is Brown's abstract description:
...the practitioner refines one’s awareness so as to operate from a perspective of awareness beyond time and spatialization wherein phenomena of consciousness are experienced as an undulating timeless, ocean-like awareness within which events come and go like waves arising and passing in an ocean. Events are thus viewed from the vantage point of a changeless, vast awareness. Awareness of the field "opens up" Once this high-resolution perception is stable the practitioner recalibrates once again to a coarse-grain perception.
Keith Dowman in "Dzogchen Non-Meditation" says it poetically like this:
The second metaphor for the freely-resting nature of mind is ‘ocean’. Leaving the sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ behind, aware of the deceptive nature of control of either the mind or the elements, of circumstance or condition, sensory perception, either internal or external, is like the ocean, calm and imperturbable in its depths and in constant movement on its surface. The depths where no light shines and no life moves have no form or quality; the surface may sometimes appear calm but the rollers are never still – they move either in harmony or in rough and wild chaos. What is quite clear is that no mind controls the ocean. It moves without apparent logic or reason. The sensory fields have no center, and no controller determines their contents. The ocean is a metaphor for the mind and also for the sensory fields, particularly the visual sensory field. The visual field has breadth and depth and is global in shape with its genesis in the eyes. Like the ocean, this field can be still, although its calmness is deceptive as it may become rough and violent in a moment. This is our field of meditation.
The student is not asked to imagine the ever-present sound of the ocean. Instead, music is used as a support tool. This combination overlaps with the use of music in traditional shamanic ceremonies and the evolving psychedelic therapy.
The ocean in an original text
recognised
To link back the 2020 retreat to the tradition, here is an old quote (bold is original, the other text is commentary by the translator). Here I have selected a verse of Vairotsana.
"That ultimate space that is like the ocean that gives rise to the multiplicity of things; creative potential, coextensive with space, is unpredictable in the forms that it takes.
The ocean is the source of all variety. Still, in its depths, its surface spontaneously takes on all peaceful and wrathful forms representing every kind of human experience. Just as the shape of the ocean’s surface is capricious and variable, so the form of creation, the shape of our experience, is changeable, variable, and unpredictable. The creativity of the pure essence of the mind is all-pervading like space, and where it appears to manifest as this or that is always uncertain.
In the pure essence of mind, the ultimate sovereign samadhi arises spontaneously, and vision is like a vast ocean, unstructured, as extensive as space.
The creative dynamic of the pure essence of the mind is ubiquitous, although its point of apparent manifestation is uncertain. In every adventitious thought or construct, the ultimate samadhi always arises without concentration or relaxation. With that, then, vision is like a vast ocean or like the sky. Vision has no structure, or it is simultaneously structured and destructured. Thought-free with the sense of sameness, it is coextensive with space. That is the vision."
The ocean is used in particular as a teaching device or pointing out tool to ease the student into a point of observation that is calm.
The ocean does not make an effort to re-integrate its waves or to calm them down. It all happens by itself. This encourages the Mahamudra / dzog chen meditation position where the mind exerts no effort, no activity to suppress or bring forth anything.
"Just as the great ocean observes its waves back into it, the moving events of the mind become calm of their own accord" (POW )
And "the metaphor of the waveless ocean... is the most common description used for the final stage of concentration" (POW )
Brown quotes Jawel Pampo:
Consider water and waves. When water arises as waves, the very water in question does not become other than water. Being nothing other than water even though it has arisen, these thoughts do not become other than their real nature [when arisen]. (PoW, pos 7078)
This metaphor only works fully, when the meditator at a deep level slips into the perspective/view of being the ocean. The meditator is therefore not asked to visualize an ocean out there, ie from the dualistic perspective of a watcher who watches a video of an ocean on a screen. Instead, the student is asked to"become the ocean" and its waves.
Ocean and Wave as precursor to One Taste and Equanimity
When we feel really happy, we like that, and we regard states of sadness and unhappiness and feeling regretful as extremely unpleasant. But if you look at what is occurring in your mind in either case, you will see that the nature of it, the stuff of which it is made, is no different from the nature of the mind itself. And in that sense, the occurrence of either delight or misery is like the appearance of waves on the surface of an ocean. For example, when you are experiencing delight in your mind, there is certainly an experience, because you are aware of it. But when you look for its substance, its nature, its essence, you find that there is nothing there. Or, when you are intensely sad, even miserable, if you look at the nature of the sadness or misery, then you will see that, while the sadness is there as a vivid appearance, just as the mind itself has no substantial existence, in the same way, the sadness has no substantial existence Namgyal 2011).
Ocean and Waves for teaching meditation to children
The ocean and wave metaphor is also useful to illustrate the working of the mind to children. The following text is teacher instructions from "The Elephant Path. Attention Development and Training in Children and Adolescents"
Have the child imagine the mind as the vast ocean. As a thought comes, have the child notice it, and then allow it to ride off with a wave. Then, have the child allow attention to float back to the depths of the ocean where it is calm and peaceful. Children begin catching their thoughts more quickly. They begin to see thoughts coming like the wave rolling in from the ocean, and then move out to sea again so that it is possible to return to the concentration object without getting caught up in the distraction. Like the coming and going of waves in an ocean one child said "it is like looking through a camera lens at an open field. You see a bird fly by. You see it, and it goes". (page 278f).
However, not that in these instructions the purpose is not to induce a non-dual state: it is used to teach concentration.
Music as an element to represent the ocean
In this meditation retreat, Ocean and Wave metaphor instructions were usually spoken and experienced before the background of Steve Roach's " Structures of Silence" music. This music very effectively creates an atmosphere of very slow, calm, waves. It is also used by Samaneri Jayasara to read original Buddhist texts.
The student is not asked to imagine the ever-present sound of the ocean. Instead, music is used as a supportive tool. This combination has overlapped with the use of music in traditional shamanic ceremonies and the evolving psychedelic therapy
2. Ocean and waves meditation in contemplative neuroscience
This section shows one measurable effect of taking on the ocean stance.
The "Ocean and Wave" metaphor is used to induce a very specific and measurable meditative state. The metaphor and corresponding brain state are explained in a 2018 research report on the brain states of meditators.
Such research looks for the neural changes induced by contemplative activities, providing a link between hard science and Eastern meditative traditions. This is called contemplative neuroscience.
This report is a prime example of contemplative neuroscience. The following short text extract is only just the annotation of the diagram. The full text is equally highly complex and very technical and detailed.
One can alternately listen to the "Unknown Philosophers" interview in 2021 (Brown 2021).
(Note: I do not expect you to read the following excerpt word by word! I did not! Just get an idea of how the language changes from contemplative terminology to brain terminology)
Fig. 1. Change in Gamma-2 (45–60 Hz) Current Density from baseline to across states within the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) [BAs: 24, 32, 33]. Key: BL- EO = baseline eyes-open/BL-EC = baseline eyes-closed/S1-2-3-4 = State 1-2-3-4. shift towards “effortless” state from baseline to meditation onset – requiring the “settling” into initial meditation essentially characterized by timelessness (state 1: ocean & waves). Neurophysiologically, we see this in the overall reduction in brain energy (gauged in terms of current density vector) across frequencies and ROIs. within meditation, which has now shifted one’s global experience out of the “effortful-effortless axis”, there is progressive increase in brain energy (current density vector magnitude) as the attainment of each state engages more complex executive functioning and active alertness (i.e. the brilliantly awake state of unified compassion, within state 4). However, such (‘extraordinary’) states of “awakening”
are not intentionally cognitively driven per se, rather highly effortless (and devoid of self-referential processing) to the practitioner at this stage, thus global brain energy remains lower than baseline (considered as ‘ordinary state’).3. An short outlook on psychedelics and Holotropic Breathwork
The reported increase of gamma brain waves through the ocean metaphor (when adopted) can also be observed through increased supply or own production of the compound DMT. DMT is one of the strongest acting psychedelics.
Stan Grof, in "Holotropic Breathwork", reports that "being ocean" is one of the possible holotropic states that can be attained through his method of breathing.
Resources
Yates (Culadasa), J., & Immergut, M. (2017). The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness. Hay House Uk.
Brown, D. P. & Unknown Philosophers. (2021, November 17). UP033 GUEST DR. DANIEL P. BROWN [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbkPtLBCSUI
Brown, D. P., [Buddha at the Gaspump Interview]. (2021, January 12). Daniel P. Brown - Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1438&v=YiDsgkOjsEA&feature=youtu.be
This interview provides a concise overview by Dan Brown of the Tibetan view of "enlightenment" and the profound role of this pointing-out metaphor
Brewer, J., & Brown, D. P. (1999). Mapping complex mind states: EEG neural substrates of meditative unified compassionate awarenes. Scribd. https://de.scribd.com/document/459103680/neuroawakening-pdf
Bissanti, M., Brown, D. P., & Pasari, J. (2022). The Elephant Path: Attention Development and Training in Children and Adolescents (2.). Mustang Bon Foundation.
Diperna, D. (n.d.). Pointing Out the Great Way Living Meditation 2022.09.14 Dusting di Perna.
Online
Grof, S., & Grof, C. (2010). Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy (SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) (Illustrated). SUNY Press. https://www.amazon.com/Holotropic-Breathwork-Self-Exploration-Transpersonal-Humanistic-ebook/dp/B0042X9WV4
Namgyal, L. T., & Rinpoche, K. T. (2011). The Ninth Karmapa’s Ocean of Definitive Meaning (New ed). Snow Lion. https://www.amazon.com/Ninth-Karmapas-Ocean-Definitive-Meaning/dp/155939370X
Pine, R. (2012). The Lankavatara Sutra: Translation and Commentary (English Edition) (Illustrated). Counterpoint. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Red-Pine-ebook/dp/B006WZS4YG/
Rigdzin, T. P., & Dowman, K. (2013). Original Perfection: Vairotsana’s Five Early Transmissions. Wisdom Publications. https://www.amazon.com/Original-Perfection-Vairotsanas-Early-Transmissions/dp/0861716809
"Original Perfection" (audio)
Read by Samaneri Jayasara. Note the water sounds accompanying the reading of a major traditional text moving the mind into open awareness (immediate intrinsic awareness). The water sounds shift from the river to the ocean shore.
Steve Roach - Topic. (2017, June 29). Structures From Silence [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsIjyJvhR9A
A piece of music that is very evocative of slow-moving waves, used by Dan Brown in his retreats as accompaniment to the "Ocean and Wave" meditation step.
Stewart, B., [The Quest]. (2021, January 24). DMT Quest Documentary [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My95s6ZryPg&feature=youtu.be
Reports recent research at theUniversity of Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the possibly central role of DMT for Human consciousness
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