Meditation - what to do if there are multiple objects of meditation?

Originally posted by silent thunder
reply to post by RRokkyy

 

Interesting Kafka quote on parables, but all the varieties of meditation I mentioned upstream are practical, practice-oriented systems, rather than parables. Talk of parables seems irrelevant. Downhill skiing does not involve parables, and neither does Nenbutsu meditation. Both are practices.

I'd be interested to know why you think they are all invalid.

You can not practice meditation.

Good Night

Originally posted by RRokkyy
God is One,Oneness,Nondual,and everything is God.

So what's the difference between this, and what I originally said, which you decided to denounce? You use the word "God" while I don't?

Originally posted by bsbray11
There is only one reality. All of these things equally belong to that one thing. ... everything you think or feel or experience is all a part of the one thing, the singular, absolute reality.

Methinks you've learned some pretty words but you haven't internalized what they actually "mean" yet, or you would have immediately realized I was denying dualism through my entire post, instead of declaring my post made no sense to you.

And based on your responses to others here I'd say really you are just trolling for arguments. Whatever floats your boat man. Have at it.

reply to post by silent thunder


In this book I am reading I liked Insight medition most, and secondly Soto Zen.

This book says of Insight meditation, direct experience (method) "the object of meditation is whatever happens to be the most prominent sensation at any given moment." I will spare everyone the rest of the quote, it is under the section describing Insight meditation In this book: The Best Guide to Meditation by Davich.

That is exactly what I was trying to do when my problem occured!

I have been thinking about getting a book that deals specifically with insight meditation.

Now that I have more time I'll go down all your links and see if there are any others I think sit well with me. I noticed Insight was the first one on your list.

reply to post by RRokkyy


So you think the best path for a beginner or layman is nondualism with a focus on the more western idea of the "sacrifice of the heart?" Devotion, love, maybe?

Either way I appreciate the dialogue between you and the others. I'd rather not personally jump in on the philosophical side of things, just seeking advice. But very interested to read both sides of this argument.

Originally posted by silent thunder
For example:
-Vipassana or "insight" meditation

Shingon esoteric meditation

Mahamudra techniques

Gongyo techniques

Vibhajjavada analytical meditation

Nembutsu meditation

There are other examples as well. And then there are Taoist and Hindu meditations that I know little about but also involve different types of practice.

These are all interesting and I thank you for posting them.

One "meditation" (more like a physical exercise without moving) I've been practicing for years is by Robert Bruce and he calls it "mobile body awareness." I'm sure you can find it on Google but basically it is increasing physical awareness of your entire body, every nook and cranny, moving your attention around your body. Has a lot of similarities with yoga and I think it's a major key for physical health.


All these mental meditation practices, I think we all already do them to a very limited extent on a daily basis and just don't realize it.

For example when a scientist is cracking a scientific problem, or trying to formulate a new theory to explain new data, or even just analyze a circuit problem. That can take some deep analytical concentration. The whole process of working with a diagram, working math, all the other critical thinking, just acting out the meditation.

And when we are sharing feelings of love with family, friends, partners... It's very natural and can be very powerful. And if we think to redirect our attention to our heart center we can feel this, maybe much more easily than during a sitting meditation. Though I suppose the useful goal would be the ability to summon up sensations of love on demand, and to sustain them as long as we will.

I'm not trying to take away from sitting meditation. On the contrary I think it would only enhance our sitting meditation if we start making these connections. All of life is meditation. Except when you're asleep.

[edit on 17-2-2010 by bsbray11]

Just allow the distraction to become part of your awareness. Instead of fighting the distraction (mind) just see it for what it is whether a dog barking or the spin cycle, who cares?

Maybe that spin cycle will prove to be your greatest teacher!

reply to post by bsbray11


I do the mobile body awareness at times myself. Eckhart Tolle also describes a basic form of the same thing in The Power of Now, which is good. But I've read Robert Bruce too and Bruce goes into more detail on it.

I am like you I enjoy both sitting meditation and "Being in the Now" of everyday life.

I tried to just be aware of my situation today as a single unfolding moment/happening, and it really worked. I don't know if I went as "deep," but almost nothing bothered me or distracted me. It was like the problem never really came up.

I think I identify more with Taoist philosophy than Buddhist as time goes on. But I am becoming more intrigued with Vipassana and insight meditation.

Originally posted by antar
Just allow the distraction to become part of your awareness. Instead of fighting the distraction (mind)

Yeah, I found that to be exactly the problem as well. The problem is not the "distractions themselves," it's the whole mental thought/attitude of "GREAT!" or "DAMN IT!," that I know pretty well. These reactions I would have to the "distractions" were the distraction itself! The whole problem is not reacting to it. And the solution to that is "rolling with it," or maybe more precisely, fully accepting it as part of reality, part of your being, part of your experience of meditation.

Aside from that one could always just move to a quieter location. But no matter where I go there is always some noise, even if it's birds chirping. I've read about places so desolate that they are eerily silent. Deathly silent. And I've read of people meditating in these places for hours and having profound experiences. I'd love to visit such a mountain top or desolate western desert some time in my life, but I have to learn to do without them anyway. The desolate desert areas the Hopi and Anasazi inhabite(d) really fascinate me.....

Originally posted by Novise
I think I identify more with Taoist philosophy than Buddhist as time goes on. But I am becoming more intrigued with Vipassana and insight meditation.

Oh man, I really love Taoism. I like exploring all kinds of esoteric philosophies but the Tao te Ching really stands in a class of its own. Best path is no path. You can't beat that. I think I was looking exclusively at all these different philosophies until I read that text, and Zen koans at the same time, and it broke me. I dropped everything after that. I don't even think of philosophies the same anymore, I think of them more like colors that I put on my mind than anything that one "needs" to "follow" or etc. I study rocks and minerals and electrical engineering like they're sacred teachings. I really went crazy I guess. I bet you know the feeling too and it's really wonderful isn't it? No one can ever take it away from you.

I don't know why people have to complicate meditation.. Get into a symmetrical position, find silence and solitude and stare at the darkness in front of you. Once anything comes to mind, take notice. Subsequently, concentrate on the breathing and back onto the darkness in front of you. Continue and be very attentive during your exhalations...sink into it. Forget anything but the NOW.

Don't get thrown into dogmatic philosophies and just give yourself at least 30 minutes every day of solitude and contemplation. It should take approximately one-two weeks or so depending on your lifestyle to begin noticing the "cosmic" sounds. This means you're doing fine. If you doubt the esoteric purposes behind meditation or the subtle aspects thereof, this is an interesting reference to physiological and brainwave modifications during the meditative altered state.

Physiology of Kundalini Syndrome

Originally posted by Novise
reply to post by RRokkyy

 

So you think the best path for a beginner or layman is nondualism with a focus on the more western idea of the "sacrifice of the heart?" Devotion, love, maybe?
.

The path is called suffering. We are all on it.
Krishna taught the sacrifice of the body,Buddha taught the sacrifice of the mind,Jesus taught the sacrifice of the heart. Each became a path of ascent through misinterpretation. Everything must be sacrificed. And it is all about the sacrifice of the Egoself.

The beginner thinks there is a path that can be followed. But the Egoself cannot get rid of the Egoself through effort. Effort reinforces the Egoself.
The only reason one can get rid of the Egoself is because the Egoself is not fundamentally real. You are creating it in each moment.
So all you need to do is UNDERSTAND that the Egoself is not real and it will begin to disappear. This has nothing to do with concentrating on anything; Watching your breath,listening to sounds,chanting,etc.
As the Egoself begins to vanish it is replaced by the FULLNESS and LOVE-BLISS of Reality. Where there is no Effort only UNDERSTANDING there is this FULLNESS and LOVE-BLISS.
Love does not produce UNDERSTANDING,
UNDERSTANDING produces LOVE.
Reality is Love.
Reality is UNDERSTANDING, which is the Meditation of God.
This is the New Teaching. In comparison everything else seems to be a nasty discipline.
What dont you Understand?





[edit on 17-2-2010 by RRokkyy]

reply to post by Reptilian Ph.D


Thanks for the article link -- that's an excellent overview of Bentov. I had read his book but this article clarifies his ideas greatly.

reply to post by drew hempel


You're very welcome! I've read his book Stalking The Wild Pendulum and the Mechanics of Creation as well

reply to post by Reptilian Ph.D


Well I studied with this Chinese qigong master who works with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He went 49 days in full lotus in a cave in China taking no sleep, no food and no water. Check this out -- the news covered some of his miracle healing!

www.youtube.com...

Here's many video testimonials from people he healed of late term cancer, M.S., Parkinsons, etc.

www.springforestqigong.com...

reply to post by RRokkyy


That does make sense. I think a lot of people could relate to that. I don't fully understand how meditation is so different from it, at least not personally. Not everyone is trying to force anything to happen when they meditate, just looking for different ways to let go but still be awake. Like the metaphor of how you can't use an Iron to smooth out the ripples in a lake.

I'm pretty sure I could do, and have done on certain levels, what you talked about but I doubt I would stay "awake" without meditation in the background, supporting the whole thing. Also where would I go for further reading on it? I'm not disagreeing here, just continuing the dialogue.

I can definetly see the plus side of this, but why not do both? How would concentration/meditation bring you away from understanding any worse than any other activity?

[edit on 18-2-2010 by Novise]

[edit on 18-2-2010 by Novise]

Originally posted by Novise
How would concentration/meditation bring you away from understanding any worse than any other activity?

[edit on 18-2-2010 by Novise]

REAL MEDITATION or Radical Understanding is not something you do but that you discover you are already doing. It is Grace.
"Meditation is simply understanding as a radical process in consciousness."

Read these two books first:
www.beezone.com...
www.beezone.com...



THE MEDITATION OF UNDERSTANDING

Real meditation doesn't do anything for you. It has no purpose. When a person begins some form of seeking, he immediately turns to an effective, remedial technique that will get him quickly to his goal. Thus, when a man adapts to various kinds of religious and spiritual effort, he begins almost immediately to meditate in some way. The Christian and the devotee begin to pray and adapt to religious forms. The spiritual seeker begins to concentrate and internalize the mind. Others use drugs, study, critical thought, relaxation and poetry, pleasure, etc.

But real life, the way of understanding, is not another form of seeking. For the man of understanding, meditation is not adopted for the sake of something else. He does not pursue understanding or reality or any kind of experience through meditation. Real meditation is already a radical activity. It is understanding.

In the logic of Narcissus, the separative mentality, all things are seeking. But the man of understanding perceives the logic of reality and lives as it. Therefore, he is not concerned about meditation. His business is understanding, not ascent, vision, transformation, liberation, or any other goal. The way of understanding belongs to those who recognize the fruitlessness of seeking.

I do not recommend that you meditate. There is only understanding. Therefore, understand. And when understanding has become observation, reflection, insight and radical cognition, then the state of consciousness itself is meditation. When understanding has become a radical process, and the avoidance of relationship has become an inclusive and sufficient recognition, when you have understood that seeking is all a function of dilemma, and when you no longer are voluntarily motivated by the physical, mental or spiritual problem, then you are already meditating.

Meditation is simply understanding as a radical process in consciousness. It is what understanding is when it has become necessary and profound. There is no right motive for adopting it. There is only the discovery that you are already doing it.

Thus when understanding has become founded in you by observation of your life, and you have truly realized the radical process of avoidance on every level of your being, then you have ceased to approach life without intelligence, simply reacting, becoming motivated, and seeking various ends. Instead, you have begun to approach all experience with a simplicity in consciousness, a presence you bring to all things, which is understanding.

When you have begun to approach life with understanding, knowing the radical truth of understanding, then you have begun to meditate. Then understanding, the logic of reality, can be extended as itself to conscious or real meditation.

Real meditation is not purposive. It has no effect that it seeks to produce. It has no dilemma to solve. It has already become understanding, and understanding is conscious knowing. Understanding is in fact the knowledge that is consciousness, non separation, reality. Therefore, it is that to understand is already to meditate, to contemplate consciousness itself. And it does this not by an act of concentration on consciousness, or any form or center of consciousness, but by understanding experience, the action of consciousness.

Where there is understanding in life, what is actually being known is consciousness, unqualified reality. Thus, the understanding of experience by observation leads to the recognition of the avoidance of relationship as a radical activity. And even where this recognition arises it will also cease to be the fundamental object or activity of conscious life. It will simply give way to the fundamental perception prior to avoidance, which is reality, unqualified relationship, consciousness.

Thus, understanding first becomes actual in the mind, and then it is extended as enquiry. Enquiry is the approach of understanding to experience. And enquiry is meditation. It is in the form: "Avoiding relationship?"

As enquiry continues as the radical activity of life, even enquiry becomes occasional. Even in the beginning it is not repetitive, like a mantra. That which is identified and enjoyed in consciousness through enquiry does not need constant enquiry to reduce the tendencies of the mind and life to prior understanding. That reality which is the source and realization of enquiry eventually becomes the ready object of the mind and life, and one tends to return to it easily and naturally. Thus, when understanding becomes radical knowledge, there is no constant enquiry, no special meditation. Knowledge becomes consciousness itself, which is unqualified, which is "no-seeking" in the heart and "no-dilemma" in the mind.

The first form of meditation enjoyed in my life was the "bright." It is also the ultimate one. But the "bright" of my childhood was not fitted to understanding. It was not supported by real consciousness. I perceived it, but I could not control it. And at last it disappeared against my wishes. Thus, I became devoted to a path of seeking, but it was aided by my earliest intuition of reality, the "bright." I was required to pursue the faculty of my own consciousness. And I needed to understand before I could finally create, sustain and control the "bright," the Form of Reality.

The history of my experience as a seeker is a course of experimentation in relation to the forces of life conceived as the problem of existence on various levels of experience. In college I dealt with truth as an intellectual problem. In my period of writing and self-exploitation I dealt with it as a vital and emotional problem. With Rudi I dealt with it as a moral and psychic problem. In Scientology I dealt with it as the problem of the