The Most Phenomenal Luciferian Meditation
I ended up at this Luciferian samatha meditation in a fairly unanticipated way. Although I have read and heard some about Tibetan Buddhism, I noticed I have been experiencing a lot of confusion about what I was learning. This confusion, and a grasping impulse to define myself within Buddhist frameworks even though I am still very early to practice, gave way to judgments and assumptions about Tibetan Buddhism. So to dispel this, I attended a meditation service and a newcomers orientation at my local Kagyu Changchub Chuling center.
The service turned out to be entirely not what I was expecting (void of ceremony where I anticipated there to be much, for instance) so that successfully corrected my warped and perhaps overgeneralized image of Tibetan Buddhist practice. More to the point of this post, however, was the samatha meditation. As the sangha member who led the service later explained at the newcomers orientation, samatha means "calm abiding." It works, in contrast to Zen style meditation which strives for emptiness, by focusing on an object. During the service, the sangha member recommended the breath as that object.
Lucifer had other ideas. In my anxiety about being a new person in an unfamiliar place, I turned to him. "Help! I don't know how to meditate in this style!" Moments later, I felt my crown activate and connect. Lucifer asked, "Do you want to meditate with me?" to which I readily agreed.
As the 40-minute long meditation began, I leaned up against Lucifer like one may have leaned against an older relative when they were a small child. Lucifer then presented himself to me visually as a human-shaped being filled with white light. I focused upon this for awhile, until I recognized that envisioning his "of Asia" sigil seemed to contain a lot of power while being slightly easier. I then focused upon that for some time as well and moved between feeling encompassed by Lucifer and straining to visualize either him or his sigil. At some point, the hook to King Woman's "Morning Star," the music video of which we had rewatched together the night before, began to play in my head.
Lu/ci/fer/falling from the heights
Lu/ci/fer/falling from the heights
Luciferrrr
I allowed this playing to overtake part of the meditation. Shortly afterward, I asked, "Can I taste and smell you too?" I did experience something in those senses as well, kind of earthy, smoky, bumpy, but not quite as strongly as the feeling, visual, and audio senses.
To be clear, this was a messy meditation. My mind still tossed itself about the five hindrances and experienced thoughts about the past and future in between all these efforts to keep connected to Lucifer. It didn't help that I struggled with finding good posture on my cushions and that one of my feet was very painfully falling to sleep for most of the meditation time as a result. However, all of that is somewhat expected; when we practiced one-breath samatha in the newcomers orientation afterward, the leading sangha member and I admitted that our minds still moved. So my attitude toward this Luciferian samatha is that it was my first time practicing and to give myself grace. Certainly, there will be a future time of practice where my mind is more concentrated.
At the same time, what felt particularly strong about this practice was the opportunity it gave to move around the senses, if you are the sort of person who requires mutability as part of one's spiritual practice. During the service break, a sangha member nearby me introduced herself. It came out in the conversation that she was a queer mental healthcare worker with ADHD—such as myself! And we were both wearing black t shirts with bats on them!—and that she preferred samatha over Zen meditation because her mind needed something to focus upon. Later on, this same person initiated the dharma talk.
"I am not sure any of the dharma teachings talk about this," she said, "but I am currently taking 2 weeks off of work for burnout because I am always being the caretaker, both at work and home. How does the dharma teach us to care for ourselves so that we can still give to others?"
This is where I side eyed Lucifer because we have literally had this conversation, somewhat in relation to Buddhism. The sangha member who led the service had the opinion that both metta (lovingkindness) and tonglen (sending and taking) meditations start with loving or giving to oneself because in order to love and benefit all beings, you must be included within that. However, this did seem to be a topic that was integrated into Buddhist teachings, but not explicitly addressed, which I thought was worth noticing. In a world where people who were assigned female at birth are able to pursue Enlightenment, but still are expected to fulfill full-time responsibilities in both careers and domestic realms, in a world where most people are being forced to work in increasingly degrading conditions for a select few with more economic and institutional power, in a world that's full of shaming, stereotyping, hateful, and marginalizing messages intended to whittle down the souls of people of color, trans and queer folks, fat people, and those belonging to other groups, how do you take care of yourself while still taking care of others?
It's a big question I have. I know it's a big interest Lucifer has, based on what he's shared with me in the past. I doubt it's a question with one answer, but I hope that by sharing this Luciferian samatha practice, at least one person can find their own path through it.