TEARS

I'm listening to a brand new Jack Kornfield podcast from a Spirit Rock talk (I'm going to post it and discuss it a little bit as well). But, anyway, he quoted Achaan Cha "if you haven't cried really hard then you probably haven't meditated very much."
Which reminded me of something I keep wanting to ask others about.
I'd say for the last four or five months and especially the last month. I am crying ALL THE TIME (well, five or six times a day).
These aren't tears of sadness or suffering at all. They are this new, different, wonderful kind of tears that comes from some deep emotion welling up inside. The tears are almost always sparked by any conversation, movie/tv scene, reading from a book or a magazine, that touches on daughters, sons, siblings, parents, long time friends or partners, and, especially, death.
Let me repeat, I am not complaining. I love feeling things so strongly. It makes me feel so alive and so intimate with myself and the world.
I'm pretty certain it is a by-product of meditation.
Has anyone else ever gone through this?

Yep from me.

I used to cry during meditation, and still do occasionally, when experiencing a very beautiful moment and realizing that it's not something that I can have or that will last. But it's a good kind of sad, like being at a wedding. I also experienced a couple unbearable fits of sadness/loneliness as I realized that some things that were very dear to me were no longer available. But unbearable as they were, they were also wonderful somehow. I also more prone in general to feeling gleeful or sad, and I agree that it feels wonderful to open up emotionally.

"Has anyone else ever gone through this?"-telecaster

Yes, I'm a big baby. Have been for years, and it started when I got serious about meditation. I cry during movies and television shows. My eyes tear up during conversations with people. Embarrassing, but I guess I wouldn't change it, even if I could. I just feel very transparent to my emotions.

Oh man! When I started meditating in 2000 and then onward, I would just get this huge welling up of emotion, something stuck in my throat and always on the verge of tears and at times just balling whenever I witnessed a really poignant moment on TV or in a movie. Even bloody cartoons!!!!! It only began after I started meditating! Even now i get emotionally at things like that. But it isn't a negative reaction. It is almost like a massive rush of sympathetic joy or somehow just recognition of the beauty that humans and cartoons can be capable of, a connection with that tenderness.

"Oh man! When I started meditating in 2000 and then onward, I would just get this huge welling up of emotion, something stuck in my throat and always on the verge of tears and at times just balling whenever I witnessed a really poignant moment on TV or in a movie. Even bloody cartoons!!!!! It only began after I started meditating! Even now i get emotionally at things like that. But it isn't a negative reaction. It is almost like a massive rush of sympathetic joy or somehow just recognition of the beauty that humans and cartoons can be capable of, a connection with that tenderness."

that's my experience. it is just beautiful.

Yep, tears - for quite a while, and still. Then after practicing spontaneous qigong, laughter - big belly laughs.
And now tears and laughter and other emotions pass through me- just like a weather front. And the little "i" is amazed while awareness knows it's just weather.

Great thread Mike .

huh.

yes, this has happened to me too.

Interesting.

Haha I am noticing a trend. Tears are very normal. I was listening to a talk by Ajahn Munindo about Ajahn Chah aruno.org//index.php?option=com_content&...view&id=158&Itemid=9 bad audio quality but great short talk. He talks about when he gave the "living with the cobra" talk (my favorite talk ever) www.ajahnchah.org/book/Living_With_Cobra1.php he said afterward to women who had been staying in his monastery. "I saw you and its not that I was ignoring you, but I saw you were crying deeply and I knew you were getting the good teachings"

Like Leo said, its just changing weather...

Mike,

I have had tears because of both, at one stage there was an aweful thought regarding emptiness and questioning the existence of everything when there is no awareness of the object - solypisis and I struggled with what may mean in regard to my children.

Later I have shed tears with the realisation of the perfection and completeness

great topic

No stranger to that!

The funniest was when I was on a business trip flipping through channels, calculating how long I would watch TV before sitting practice. Then in one moment, I knew it was time to sit and I knew that I was going to cry (not feeling it, just knowing). So I sat down, felt the space of the room, and let myself watch sensations arise, kinda curious what would take place... and sure enough, pretty soon I was feeling sadness, mostly because there was such a thing as sadness in the world and humans destined to experience it. Mostly content-free, just deep recognition of the condition of sadness/misery. Hard to explain... but it came, move through my body, and then it was done. It really was like watching a storm blow through. I just shook my head and chuckled.

Still makes me laugh a little.

By the way, this was after a period of going through some very personally emotional sits, where there was a lot of content. I had worked through a lot of that and felt like I had matured a bit beyond child-like poor-me type sadness, beyond sappy sentimental type sadness, so I was really curious what would happen. And it was just sadness! So funny it could show itself that way!

Still, I'm sure there's plenty more cry to do...

Trungpa Rinpoche called what you guys are talking about "the genuine heart of sadness." What a beautiful phrase.
It's probably his most beautiful teaching, I'd say.

When I first encountered the phrase 'rain of wisdom' I figured it must refer to these tears, which always seem to be washing my vision totally clear. like timely showers.

Interesting that this is a thing that happens-- but not as a result of an intention to 'achieve' them. And there's zero time/distance, really, between being impervious and finding everything so moving. You don't get from before to after-- you're just here. With all your heart.

Contrast Tears for the "Self " and Tears for the "All"

I would call these "tears of truth" because this welling up happens to me when something strikes me as being very deeply true. As Mike described this and as it happens to me it's not about sadness so much as about that.

Not sadness as opposed to happiness. Something more akin to tenderness--the unarmored heart.

For me, so far, this is the greatest result of practice.
I imagine if one spends a LOT of time noting sensations, feelings, etc. that much must be uncovered after a while. For me it is like a floodgate has opened.
I look over at my 17-year-old daughter doing her homework while watcing TV and going on Facebook and texting her friends and playing with the dog and tormenting her brother and talking to me all at the same time and the emotion -- pure and strong -- just wells up automatically.
I think a year ago none of those feelings were available. There was way more distance between me and she and way more distance between myself and my feelings and my behaviors in regards to her.
This is the way I always wanted to live.