You finally sit down and the mind settles. It no longer runs off in every direction, the object stays where it is, a kind of stillness arrives that you haven’t felt before. You think: this time I’ve found it.
The tradition has a name for this state. It is called wild fox chan.
The longer you remain in it, the more sensitive the system becomes. Sounds appear from nowhere, images rise behind the eyes. Some students become convinced they have developed extraordinary perception. What they have actually developed is exposure to frequencies the ordinary scattered mind never registers, the system became sensitive enough to pick up what it previously filtered out, while gaining none of the stability required to tell those signals apart from the noise they arrive in.
There is another state. The mind is quiet, the object has not vanished, a deep sense of rest settles in, the kind you always imagined the practice should eventually deliver. Many students sit in this state for years, certain they are making steady progress.
The tradition calls this water buffalo chan.
Memory begins to fade quietly, understanding grows softer, the sharpness you once brought to daily life starts to thin. The body feels heavy in a way that sleep does not relieve. What they take for peace is a gradual dimming of the very faculty the practice was meant to sharpen.
These two states do not appear at the beginning, when the difficulties are obvious and failure is loud, they arrive only after the obvious obstacles have been passed, which is precisely why they are the most consequential traps on the path.
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