What Meditation Are The Monks Doing All Day?
 

What kind of meditation do the monks do? I've heard some of them levitate. I don't imagine they are just repeating "Om" all day long. What are they doing? How did they manage to levitate themselves off the ground?

Do you mean Buddhist monks? Christian monks? Zen monks? Hindu monks? I am sure they do a wide variety of practices.

Perhaps the best known levitater is the Catholic monk Padre Pio (1887-1968). He would go into states of ecstasy and float up in the air.

It is not just monks in deep meditation who levitate. Other examples include:

The book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (Ostrander and Schroeder, 1970, p. 291) describes a Bulgarian farmer, aged forty-three, named Mikhail Drogzenovich, who rose about 1.2 meters above the ground and remained there for ten minutes while witnesses checked that there was no means of support. He maintained that he did this by will-power.

In the 19th century Daniel Dunglas Home was supposedly able to levitate although witness accounts are a bit vague and contradictory on details.

Theories of how to levitate vary, and are lacking in details. I have heard that the yogi reverses his or her magnetic polarity so that instead of being attracted to the ground they are repelled from the ground. What this actually means I do not know.

In the end, levitation is a siddhi, a power, an interesting example of our human potential but also considered as a distraction from spiritual attainment.

Peace.

Thank you for your reply. I'm really only familiar with Buddhist monks, but it doesn't really matter. They all seem to do bizarre things that no one can explain. I'm just wondering what kind of meditations they are doing that they can manage to do all those weird things.

There's a huge meditation trend going on right now and I can pretty much guarantee none of those "trendy" type people are going to achieve such things.

My take would be this...it may not matter 'what type' of meditation is done.
But when a person is still and silent for long periods and years they/we open to Divine Insights..they/ we come to realize Truth.
Part of Truth is that this place is a dream or illusion..so a person would rise above the facade or dream that
this world is..being able to do things extraordinaty to others..yet, simple and ordinary
for the masters that have awakened to what the heck is really going on...what creation is,
who the Creator is, etc.
Thus, we have brothers and sisters walking on water or manifesting bread out of thin air, basically manipulating atoms...i mean
since we were made in God's imagine and are co creators along with 'Him'...or our True Self.

Meditation has the potential to simply open us in stillness to Reality...gravity?
An agreement we bought into coming here...gravity a Universal Law?..nope.
:smile:

Thank you, Miss.Hepburn, insightful as always.

You know i just found out how to cancel auto correct and spellcheck...that last post of mine here
makes me laugh..typos not fixed , yet words changed before i caught them.
It seems every single thing that happens in this world is for one thing...to see this place as a joke...I mean,
never to take anything seriously..so only have fun finding God and Practicing the Presence!
:smile:

It's kind of difficult to see it as a joke. I probably should try to have more fun though.

Aside from contemplating their various sacred books and texts...

Many do "metta" (or, "sacred heart") meditations, for heart centre expansion and expansion of lovingkindness (and equanimity).

Many also do both metta and healing meditations, for people and places, and for the earth and its ecosystems more broadly.

There is extensive meditative, lucid group work done by monks in both of these broad areas, as well as in the areas of global consciousness and communication.

Of the powers you mention, they and various others are somewhat common among long-term practitioners, but are generally considered sort of like parlour tricks, in that they are almost (not exactly but almost) considered to be spurious outcomes of their more important meditative and group work.

Peace & blessings :hug3:
7L

Oh..I understand..and yet, it is a play on a stage..there is a point no matter what you see...it is obviously unreal...
like the movie I saw today...thrillling adventure making my heart beat and jump...yet unreal!
So in that sense there is a realization that happens.."Hey this isn't even real and look how invested I am!!"
...and ya have to laugh...but only when a diff perspective opens inside.

If it doesn't happen..that 'click' within..then, yes...it is near impossible to see this world as a joke.
I know.

And yet when the disciples were frightened....Jesus got up and quieted the storm.
It is a different paradigm...this diff view of the world....a whole diff perspective.
I see it often....it is a "shift" that happens...and it takes deliberate, consistent work!
(I was aided by doing A Course In Miracles. Oh, also by " The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss".)