Transcending Insanity, Part Five: Meditative Absorption

Sep 19, 2025

A deep dive into meditative absorption and how practice moves from cushion to everyday life. Short readings and a traditional passage probe the origin and nature of thought. A personal story about taking the bodhisattva vow and what it required. A simple clouds-and-sky metaphor illustrates living with open, sky-like awareness.

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INSIGHT

Practice Carries Off The Cushion

Meditative absorption applies off the cushion by staying fully present in life rather than lost in thoughts.
Training attention on the cushion increases your ability to be absorbed in everyday experience.

ADVICE

Be Absorbed In Direct Experience

Notice and become one with what you feel, hear, taste, and perceive instead of identifying with thoughts about them.
Use formal practice as rehearsal to increase your capacity for this embodied presence in daily life.

INSIGHT

Thoughts Come From Nowhere

Thoughts arise and pass without a fixed origin or destination; they are events rather than fundamentals.
Treating thoughts as central leads us away from experiencing what lies beyond them.

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In this episode, I explore the fifth of the six paramitas, or transcendent actions of the bodhisattva path: Meditative Absorption—sometimes just called meditation.

But this isn’t your typical “sit on the cushion and follow your breath” kind of conversation. We go deeper into what it means to live meditation—to carry the practice off the cushion and into our everyday experience.

Highlights from this episode:

Why the Buddhist path is so much more than stress relief
Meditation isn’t just about calming down or feeling better—though it may help with that. It’s a path of waking up, and of learning to live more fully and meaningfully.
What meditative absorption really means
On the cushion, we train our attention by returning again and again to an object—often the breath.

Off the cushion, meditative absorption means being fully present in our lives, moment to moment—absorbed in experience rather than just our thoughts about it.

A deep inquiry into thought itself
Where do thoughts come from? Where do they go? Can we remain absorbed in what lies beyond them?
An exquisite (and challenging) passage from a traditional Buddhist text
I read a short but powerful teaching on the nature of thought, mind, and perception—and how they are ultimately without a fixed basis.
What is a Bodhisattva, really?
Someone who vows to be of benefit to all beings—not because they’re a “good person,” but because, eventually, you realize… what else is there to do?
My personal story of taking the Bodhisattva Vow
Including what I gave up (and immediately wanted back), and why that experience still teaches me something today.
The cloud and sky metaphor for meditation
Your thoughts are the clouds. You are the sky. That sky-like awareness is what meditative absorption connects you to.

As always, you don’t have to be a Buddhist to find value in these teachings. The dharma is vast, pragmatic, and endlessly nuanced. I share what I’ve learned through 30+ years of practice, not because I have the answers—but because these teachings continue to challenge and change me.

If you enjoyed this episode:

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Produced by Citizens of Sound