The original and the ultimate spiritual cultivation method

Anapana.

As taught by the Buddha, a perfect matrix for cultivating from any level all the way to the highest liberation.

Not watching thoughts, not focusing on chakras, not posting stuff on forums thinking enlightenment is some sort of rational attitude.

No friends, this is the real deal, used secretly in the Zen school by Zen Masters who, after attaining to initial enlightenment, practiced anapana to fully cultivate their bodies and reach liberation.

Or by those, who, not yet having had some measure of awakening, seek it by climbing the degrees of samadhi and the transformation of the 5 elements of the body that comes with them.

Maybe, if the mood of the thread is conductive to it, I'll have the opportunity to explain in more detail my own understanding of the practice. But that is neither here nor there, the full path is contained within the short text itself.

www.accesstoinsight.org...

reply to post by Fevrier


Thank you for the link, I will check it out later after I wake up some more. So far, judging by your opening post,
I can tell you understand the idea more than a lot of others. This bodes well for the link being useful. I had quite godlike dreams just before waking up today.

"The Kid glove comes off" Bart Simpson said. Heh, that's off topic and about the masons partially. I get them now to a degree.. Haha it's a joke get it? Enlightened to a degree is me. If what I read jives with my knowledge of enlightenment, and how to be truly intuitive, not ego/body driven, then I will be back to post much more.

EDIT: the title says "Mindfullness of breathing." This is always what I have done, even though I didn't know why I should. I said I was going to get back into this after having quite meaningful dreams last night, to my girlfriend before she left for work.. Looks like we just got together to complete this step.

Odd how that always happens to me.

Glad to be of service.

Originally posted by Fevrier
Glad to be of service.

I've read through most of it now.. It's too perfect. I love the way it's written. You have no idea my gratitude.
It's now saved to my desktop. I will be re-reading it many times I am sure. It's not the knowledge that will matter, but knowing that others have done the same down a certain path, certainly helps.

The path, the knowledge, and the others, are in fact one.

If one of those elements is missing, then all are missing. So in fact, none of these elements are ever missing, but through one's practice they are more or less present in one's current life.

As an aside, practicing morality and virtue towards others, no matter who the others are, is the way of finding the path and the knowledge, and the others who are also walking the path.

This is because there are always "others" around, irrespective of knowledge and path, so arousing inner virtue is the path that requires no external knowledge, but undoubtably leads one to it - and this "external" knowledge always proves to not be quite so external, but rather transcends the differences of inner and outer, self and other.

reply to post by Fevrier


The more we read someone else works, the more we distanciate from the genuine
true self within this karma.

Im more about the mechanics of the cosmos, and the confrontation of the ego
than form of study. Any form is temporary, but the current state of your own
astral being is perfected by the cosmos to answer the questions we setup
for...

To me, enlightment is to hold you fire (force of will), and to reflect reality properly
through the funny mirrors of what we belive is real.... in there lies the cristal cave
of the wizard..

Sorry friend, but your post is chock-full of ego and delusions.

The way of true cultivation is not so much about the mechanics of the cosmos, but about uncovering the true nature of Mind and cultivating this current form until it is no longer an impediment, but a perfect Buddha body.

Working with the confrontations of the ego puts you firmly within the neverending road of karma working with karma.

Using a fundamental method for uncovering your fundamental nature takes you firmly out of karma.

Through virtuous deeds, concentration, and an attempt to directly realize the truth of Mind, you can awaken without method, but this in fact depends a lot on one's own potential, which itself depends on past life practice.

But since it all stems from the original Fundamental Nature, it's irrelevant whether or not you have more or less potential, or you reached some degree of awakening by yourself or by following a true method.

With compassion for yourself and others you should put away such distinctions and simply do your best - and when you have a method, not using it is akin to a lack of compassion for your own situation, and a lack of compassion for others, because by achieving real growth through a fundamental method you'd be better able to help them.

There is also no "genuine true self" within karma. A discussion of "true self" is extremely complicated, and would benefit absolutely nobody here, since there is nobody here who has broken the bounds of karma, thus nobody here to understand such a discussion. But I can tell you that someone who has seen some degree of fundamental nature and opened the middle heart (a prerequisite for enlightenment and, from the perspective of a human being, a terrifying experience) does not throw around concepts of true self, and certainly doesn't do it so lightly.

Lastly, enlightenment is not "to me", or to you, or to anyone, it is the fundamental state, and therefore cannot be described through opinions, and is beyond opinions.

This is not spiritual mumbo-jumbo, it's a way of saying that you should be careful that when you encounter the true teachings, even if you don't want to practice them yourself, you should not become very loud with your wrong (and self/belief/will-based) concepts of enlightenment.

In fact, initial awakening happens when one can break through the conceptual macro-attachment of the mind. This is when the real heart opens, but it's a rather high level, and not really accessible without hardcore practice (or should I say, very rarely accessible without).

Also, the concept that the cosmos is taking care of us and perfecting us is a new age concept, and wrong. Your astral being is living the same karma as you are, so it's in a nasty place, with no answers. And unless in your last life you were a high-level Bodhisattva, with powers beyond anything being discussed on these forums, way beond the paranormal, then you did not choose to come here - but rather came here by force of karma alone, and with no control over the process.

While Reality itself is perfect and beautiful, and we are always in it, and IT, we obscure it into this shadow we call existence. And existence is a mean and nasty place, and within existence, you need all the help you can get, and you need to put your shoulder up against that wall and push for all its worth, with compassion and without making any concepts of true self while you're still firmly in the gutter.

I fell asleep after I read the Anapatasati Sutta and I am glad that someone posted before me and you replied. I do not understand the concepts behind it the Anapatasati Sutta. When I read that some monks were teaching 10, 20 etc monks I foresaw myself doing math so I stopped and read on. Then there is a mention of some monks that have ended mental effluents, I'm not sure I can do this but sometimes I start to see animations behind closed eyes before I sleep and I just watch them. The part that worried me is understanding the words, which are translated, like I am breathing sensitive to etc. I'm not sure if I understand each of these sensitivities in depth without thinking about them too much and going off topic and stop the breathing exercise.

In truth it's like this.

The perfection of the cultivation matrix of Anapana is self-contained and endless. I could go on explaining it for a long time, and I don't even fully understand it.

In the Anapanasati sutra, the Buddha sort of adapts it to the conditions of a regular person, who judges things according to person-states and going from one state to another.

But you do not watch the states, or even worry about the states. You simply watch the breath.

You could call this attention to the breath, or knowing the breath, the Buddha calls it mindfulness.

Simply sitting down and becoming mindful of the breath is calming in and of itself, and this is a good support for mindfulness.

By being able to remain in mindfulness of the breath, eventually you analyze and understand the quality of mindfulness. You can say that mindfulness is involved with itself, and through analysis both mindfulness and analysis become stabilized as qualities.

This stability is, in and of itself, persistent, so it allows one more meditative stability, and thus persistence is born as a quality.

Abiding in mindfulness that is knowing itself (through the qualities of mindfulness, analysis and persistence), rapture and serenity are reached.

These are natural states that occur when consciousness is stable enough and not involved with disturbing objects. Anther explanation is that the fire element of the body is transforming, and as it transforms, a greater degree of stability is reached, and this stability fundamentally has the qualities of bliss and peace (rapture and serenity).

The final two qualities, or factors for awakening, are the truly important ones.

Concentration and equanimity. The samadhi stages, the fundamental meditative states, are in fact states of equal concentration, equanimous concentration. As concentration grows, so does equanimity. As equanimity grows, so does concentration.

So in fact what the Buddha does when telling you to simply sit down and be mindful of the breath, is to give you a support for mindfulness, so that mindfulness may become stable and reach concentration and equanimity.

The intermediate factors are the states one experiences as one climbs the degrees of samadhi and the body/5elements/consciousness transform.

Because you start with the breath, which is the air element, and the first element in the sequence of the creation of a universe, you then transform all of the others. Air element is process, as you become mindful of the breath - process itself stabilizes - this in itself is already a level of concentration and equanimity.

Simply sitting down to meditate is the seed of concentration. As you become mindful of the breath, process stabilizes, and within this stability the other elements also transform.

Basically, you are involving your consciousness with mindfulness, and as consciousness stabilizes, the elements transform - first the air element, then fire, then water (which is consciousness itself), and then, with consciousness/water element finally transformed, you can truly let go. You let go of attachments and aversions towards the world, you let go of clinging, and so on, and as you do so, you transform the space element.

So these are the 4 frames of reference. The final frame is space. Space is the element associated with conception, and conception in its purity form is the knowing nature.

So now we come back to samadhi. A Buddha once taught that samadhi, or concentration, is never separate from knowing. That concentration itself is knowing, and that samadhi is perfectly balanced knowing, or perfectly balanced not-knowing.

True samadhi does not cling to anything. So the final frame of reference empties the conception function of the mind, so that the mind may reach true samadhi, and let go of all objects of knowing, so that it can awaken to true Reality.

But NOW, in very practical terms, you can forget all I just said and return to it only if you are confused. The real practice is simply watching the breath, knowing the breath, being mindful of the breath - just sit down and do this, and the breath settle down and then starts to spread all throughout the body. This is the breath body the Buddha mentions.

This body is very real and fundamental, it is more real and fundamental than the "physical" body, because the physical body is a karmic composite of the 5 elements, while the breath body has the capacity of achieving samadhi, mastering process, and changing everything.

So this is anapana. Sit down and be mindful of the breath. The breath eventually forms a breath body, and base on this, emotions also become stable, and then consciousness become stable.

By this time, the breath already stops when you meditate, sometimes for minutes or dozens of minutes, maybe for hours if you're an advanced meditator. And because emotions have stabilized, consciousness finally becomes clear.

With clear consciousness, you can focus your mindfulness on mental qualities, you can finally turn your mindfulness towards its source, and become mindful of the mind itself.

In doing so, you let go of thoughts, of concepts, of everything - BUT NOW YOU CAN, because you have samadhi and everything is so stable and clear. You can literally see the consciousness structures as they come and go, thoughts as they come and go, emotions as they come and go.

And as the space element purifies, and conception is broken, the heart finally opens, and one can see the permanent aspect of the universe. At this point, one has very stable samadhi, and can take one's practice into the world, as it is no longer dependent on seclusion and sitting down and meditating. And as one works with concentration and heart, and further purifies the elements, the earth element also begins to change - the thought/emotion/process/clinging structures that held it forever impure are now transforming, so the earth element of the body also transforms.

But this is the level of a Bodhisattva, and of no direct concern to us. These are the 10 Bodhisattva Bhumis, and Bhumi literally means earth. The 10th Bhumi, right before a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha, is ultimately stable, and this is the quality of earth - its stability and endurance.

The functions that a Bodhisattva can fulfill within any universe are endless, so a high level Bodhisattva could explain the cultivation matrix of Anapana endlessly, applying its mindfulness-concentration-equanimity-knowing process to absolutely any situation any being might encounter.

Thank you for your input, I see that my needs are simple and I will be mindful of breathing from now on. I am going to re-read your posts and at least have them in mind when I am at rest before sleep. I wanted to ask you about this following reply to another member.

There is also no "genuine true self" within karma. A discussion of "true self" is extremely complicated, and would benefit absolutely nobody here, since there is nobody here who has broken the bounds of karma, thus nobody here to understand such a discussion. But I can tell you that someone who has seen some degree of fundamental nature and opened the middle heart (a prerequisite for enlightenment and, from the perspective of a human being, a terrifying experience) does not throw around concepts of true self, and certainly doesn't do it so lightly.

I've had an experience in my life which was not pretty externally to my family but every time I dwell about it I find myself embarrassed and at the same time astonished. Inside the experience I had no thoughts but only actions, coincidences and emotions which had meaning and purpose. It was a time that I can only rudimentally describe as a blank slate socially like I wiped my mind of self imposed restrictions. What was embarrassing about it was how it has destroyed my family's perception of me as an abiding societal being and now they are concerned about me.
I met someone in there and asked them two questions, "What is your name and what is your job" and he replied "Jesus de Nazareth" and I wept and said to him that I wanted to go back to the center. To which he responded "You are already in the center".
As you can probably tell I am a high functioning Bipolar, and what I am describing is a small part of my first episode at age 33. I pulled myself back to society by listening to Tibetan Ohm chants, it will happen again so I am trying to prepare myself. Next time I go back I want to meditate and reduce the effects my journey has on my family. Although the first time was idilic, alone in a 3rd world country and on the beach, the US is not too shy about putting me away somewhere terrifying.
I just need new tools that I can carry in my mind and travel free.

March 9 is 4 Etznab/Tijax. Like a gleaming new machete in the thick darkness of the jungle, wield Etznab’s energy to cut through to the core truth of things, peeling away layers of deception, half-truths, misplaced perceptions so that you can be whole again. Shed the ego and its complexities like an old skin you no longer need, and stretch those wings—remember this is a Men trecena—to carry you to a purer, simpler, higher ground.

Anapana will help you handle this.

If you accept that existence is consciousness-only, and that consciousness is simply an aspect of Mind, which Mind can cultivate, then it becomes an exercise of truly mastering function and virtue.

Heart is not the romantic ideals that people have of it. Heart is that which is unmoving and can fully reflect Mind, and be one with it. If heart opens even mildly, and this is not something that ever happens for the average person, but it can happen without any actual spiritual cultivation - if it happens it's like the entirety of the consciousness tableau of your life being pulled through heart.

Things can get shaken up pretty badly, or even mangled up, and take on whole new meanings and dimensions, or fully lose meaning and dimension. Ultimately, whether they take on meaning or lose all meaning is irrelevant, what is relevant is that you realize that this whole thing you call your life is consciousness-only, and that you have a choice of taking up function and virtue and learning to control the process.

As I said, anapana will help tremendously - if you learn to be mindful in the breath body and let go of all else, then at worst you'll simply have to retreat to another room for a few hours until you're stable, and act like nothing happened, even if in reality you are full of questions and fear about what you're experiencing.

The truth is, climbing the samadhi degrees towards awakening, and practicing doing good things for yourself and others - are the only real things you can do. So put all your energy into that, and eventually your karma will clear to the point where you're stable no matter what, and your family's opinion of you is also not that relevant anymore.

To this end, here are four mantras that can fully and permanently change your destiny.

First, the Zhunti mantra. This is a mantra secretly used in Zen, and it is one of the most powerful mantras - it CAN open the middle heart, and it IS the middle heart. It is, if you will, the perfect expression of the heart.

Namo Sadoh Nah
Samyak Sampo Doh
Jee-Tzu Nah
Dah Zah Toh
Ohm Zhurli Zhuli
Zhunti Soha
Ohm Brin

For many people it's very hard to learn.

Next, the Supreme 6-Syllable Mantra, which many people think is very mundane, because it's very popular and much used in Tibet. However, this is purely by the merit of Buddha Avalokiteshvara, and by no means indicative of the mantra being any less powerful.

Om Mani Padme Hum

It is profoundly related to Zhunti. Avalokiteshvara, when still a Bodhisattva, practiced with Om Mani Padme Hum, and when he reached deep samadhi with it, he heard countless Buddhas all shout the Zhunti mantra at him from countless universes.

Om Mani Padme Hum transforms the 6 wrong processes (bliss and pride, jealousy and need for entertainment, passion and desire, ignorance and prejudice, poverty and possessiveness, aggression and hatred) into 6 right functions (generosity, pure ethics, tolerance and patience, perseverance, concentration, wisdom). This transforms consciousness and the physical body, as karmically speaking, all your physical and consciousness processes are born of the balance between these fundamentally right or wrong 6 processes.

With Om Mani Padme Hum you can abide in the dirt of all existence, and with Zhunti, you are already beyond it.

Next,

Om Amrita Teja Vate Svaha.

It is the center (heart) of a much longer mantra, called the Ushnisha Vijaya. It gives birth to profound light and can lift you from all conflict and entrapment, and dark karma. It does many other things, but you can only discover them through practice.

And finally, Vajrasattva, who is the Buddha of perfect karma, or of no-karma, most pure one. His mantra basically melts karma, it no longer sticks to you in any way.

Om Vajrasattva Hum

This is his short mantra. There is also a 100 syllable Vajrsattva mantra, which is central to Tibetan Buddhist practice. When you're ready to learn it, look for it. You'll find it easily.

Mantra practice is also easy. Simply focus internally on a mantra. Concentrate, be mindful of it. As you reach degrees of concentration with it, you will also be able to be mindful of other things, such as walking, talking, landscapes, ANYTHING. As you reach concentration, the mantra is stable within you, and all else is also present around you, or not present, this no longer matters as much.

This is also a form of Zen practice, a form of right concentration, a form of gaining samadhi, and of changing one's destiny. Mantras have functions, and they teach you things. And they can be combined with being mindful of the breath.

Breath, Mind, and mantra are one. Who says this is difficult?

Just concentrate. Unlike the passing tableau of existence, which is always coming and going, a Buddha mantra is the perfectly stable aspect of a Buddha Mind. It is expressed so that all beings may practice their way back to it, but in truth, even when forgotten in the depth of deepest ignorance, mantras are actually always there, the fundamental language. But they are obscured.

btw OP, i believe you.

but i have a question.

you are saying what our friends is doing here is wrong.
but imho, they are trying their best to help ignorants like me.
i can see their approaches is more suitable for modern people.
they do better jobs than most hermits or monks who just wait for ignorants to visit them in forests, mountains, caves, or monasteries.

since you think their approaches are not good, what is the best approach to open the eyes of modern ignorants around the world, in your opinion?

note that i'm talking about global scale awakening.
because we cannot just appear in TV, Radio, forums, etc and tell people 'hey this world is illusion! there is no god!'
try this to any modern christian, and they will call you demons or false prophets
so there must be a better way to open these modern people' eyes through dharma teachings, right?

these days religions to me is no more than psychotherapy for mental patients, only to make it worst. this includes buddhism, hinduism, christians, and the rests. and i see their shrines as mental hospitals.
new agers imho do better job than them.

btw OP, i don't doubt buddha's teachings, in fact i honor them. it's also what i will study next.
but i feel that it wont work against modern people anymore.

reply to post by Fevrier

Thanks for the link will take a close look at it.

But something you said struck me in terms of what doesn't or cannot work ie: a rational attitude.

I've become convinced through recent studying of a certain "argument" and criticism of conventional or traditional spiritual pursuits that indeed there is a type of logical "wedge" of reason capable of causing the egoic, separative self to surrender in a type of wonderful joke to be had at it's own expense the very nature of which IS the realization of liberation.

I don't know if I can yet put this argument into a language framework, but I know there is one.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by Fevrier

 

Thanks for the link will take a close look at it.

But something you said struck me in terms of what doesn't or cannot work ie: a rational attitude.

I've become convinced through recent studying of a certain "argument" and criticism of conventional or traditional spiritual pursuits that indeed there is a type of logical "wedge" of reason capable of causing the egoic, separative self to surrender in a type of wonderful joke to be had at it's own expense the very nature of which IS the realization of liberation.

I don't know if I can yet put this argument into a language framework, but I know there is one.

Are you speaking english or is this google translate?

My apologies I shouldn't be rude.

The kind of rational approach you are talking about is a method of the Mind in itself, using a procedural walk through the various aspects of existence to show either how they fit together perfectly into spiritual cultivation, or how they don't fit together perfectly into personhood, causing suffering.

An awakened Mind can take any such walk, and it will have a rational beginning, a rational middle, and a rational end, and when looked at reasonably and without bias, it will appear rational, because it is.

But this is different from a non-awakened person trying to use reason in order to create a framework of rational beliefs by balancing thoughts, emotions, forms, views, and so on.

The non-awakened person is going through a karmic process, and involving karma with karma and using conceptual consciousness in a discriminatory fashion, and calling it reason.

This may, according to that person's morality and virtue, and his natural degree of concentration, lead to better or worse results. It might even lead to good results, and, if practiced intensely enough and with a view for the common good, it might even lead to a spiritual experience.

But this would happen through a process of concentration and emptying of thoughts and emotions and views, and of taking up pure action and moral behavior. How many people do this? This is far removed from what people do, which is build a construct of views that they call reason.

In contrast, awakened mind doesn't build anything, it simply witnesses Reality as is, and Reality itself is not a construct, not a composite of things, but just Fundamental Nature, Mind itself, so awakened Mind can witness itself directly and speak anything and it will at the very least be good, reasonable, and possessed by perfect and self-contained reason.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by Fevrier

 

Thanks for the link will take a close look at it.

But something you said struck me in terms of what doesn't or cannot work ie: a rational attitude.

I've become convinced through recent studying of a certain "argument" and criticism of conventional or traditional spiritual pursuits that indeed there is a type of logical "wedge" of reason capable of causing the egoic, separative self to surrender in a type of wonderful joke to be had at it's own expense the very nature of which IS the realization of liberation.

I don't know if I can yet put this argument into a language framework, but I know there is one.

You should worry about your own cultivation before you start painting pictures about enlightening the whole world.

If the whole world could be enlightened like that, it would already be. The Buddhas of all the universes would simply manifest here and enlighten everyone.

That's not how it works. There is a tremendous amount of karma at work here, and that karma IS, in fact, the world itself, and the people themselves.

All that you see around you which is ugly and wrong and inhuman and contrary to growth of any kind, IS the current karma of this world.

So how will you be able to change that. You cannot even begin to think of a way of reaching all these people. They all have different ways of even being physically reached, according to their karma. Then, once you are physically able to speak to them, they all have different delusions and different karma according to which they will or will not be able to practice.

You are tying yourself to the general population of the world, and in so doing, you share their fate.

Instead, cultivate, grow until you are no longer so deeply bound to the general ignorance, and then see what you can do around you. There is a lot of good to be done in small things, medium things, and big things, once the small and the medium propagate enough so that your power and effectiveness grow. And these things are in your immediate vicinity, or whenever you may travel.

But if you attach yourself to the concept of "everything", and solving everything, you are simply tying your own negative karma to a much larger, and probably much more negative karmic process.

How will that end?

New agers, which you mention, do little more than spread feel-good memes, conceptual processes with little power to empty anyone's karma and put them on a path of real growth. Is this a good thing? Honestly, no, as long as the fundamental level of the new age culture is not high enough (and it is very low, from a spiritual cultivation point of view) - it is like watering a plant that has been thrown out onto the concrete in the middle of a hot day. Sure, the water makes the plant feel better, but by the end of the day, it will be dead anyway.

And Buddhism is not confined to forest and monasteries. You just got access to a Buddhist sutra in the middle of a conspiracy forum, but instead of learning, you choose to involve yourself with your own conceptual practice, and go back to your belief that Buddhism lives in forests and monasteries.

Originally posted by dodol

Originally posted by Fevrier
You should worry about your own cultivation before you start painting pictures about enlightening the whole world.

If the whole world could be enlightened like that, it would already be. The Buddhas of all the universes would simply manifest here and enlighten everyone.

That's not how it works. There is a tremendous amount of karma at work here, and that karma IS, in fact, the world itself, and the people themselves.

All that you see around you which is ugly and wrong and inhuman and contrary to growth of any kind, IS the current karma of this world.

So how will you be able to change that. You cannot even begin to think of a way of reaching all these people. They all have different ways of even being physically reached, according to their karma. Then, once you are physically able to speak to them, they all have different delusions and different karma according to which they will or will not be able to practice.

You are tying yourself to the general population of the world, and in so doing, you share their fate.

Instead, cultivate, grow until you are no longer so deeply bound to the general ignorance, and then see what you can do around you. There is a lot of good to be done in small things, medium things, and big things, once the small and the medium propagate enough so that your power and effectiveness grow. And these things are in your immediate vicinity, or whenever you may travel.

But if you attach yourself to the concept of "everything", and solving everything, you are simply tying your own negative karma to a much larger, and probably much more negative karmic process.

How will that end?

New agers, which you mention, do little more than spread feel-good memes, conceptual processes with little power to empty anyone's karma and put them on a path of real growth. Is this a good thing? Honestly, no, as long as the fundamental level of the new age culture is not high enough (and it is very low, from a spiritual cultivation point of view) - it is like watering a plant that has been thrown out onto the concrete in the middle of a hot day. Sure, the water makes the plant feel better, but by the end of the day, it will be dead anyway.

And Buddhism is not confined to forest and monasteries. You just got access to a Buddhist sutra in the middle of a conspiracy forum, but instead of learning, you choose to involve yourself with your own conceptual practice, and go back to your belief that Buddhism lives in forests and monasteries.

Originally posted by dodol

edit on 9-3-2013 by Fevrier because: (no reason given)

Thanks a lot!!
It makes sense to me now.
Really appreciate your reply

Originally posted by Fevrier
With clear consciousness, you can focus your mindfulness on mental qualities, you can finally turn your mindfulness towards its source, and become mindful of the mind itself.

In doing so, you let go of thoughts, of concepts, of everything - BUT NOW YOU CAN, because you have samadhi and everything is so stable and clear. You can literally see the consciousness structures as they come and go, thoughts as they come and go, emotions as they come and go.

And as the space element purifies, and conception is broken, the heart finally opens, and one can see the permanent aspect of the universe. At this point, one has very stable samadhi, and can take one's practice into the world, as it is no longer dependent on seclusion and sitting down and meditating. And as one works with concentration and heart, and further purifies the elements, the earth element also begins to change - the thought/emotion/process/clinging structures that held it forever impure are now transforming, so the earth element of the body also transforms.

But this is the level of a Bodhisattva, and of no direct concern to us. These are the 10 Bodhisattva Bhumis, and Bhumi literally means earth. The 10th Bhumi, right before a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha, is ultimately stable, and this is the quality of earth - its stability and endurance.

The functions that a Bodhisattva can fulfill within any universe are endless, so a high level Bodhisattva could explain the cultivation matrix of Anapana endlessly, applying its mindfulness-concentration-equanimity-knowing process to absolutely any situation any being might encounter.

edit on 8-3-2013 by Fevrier because: (no reason given)

In this moment look toward your next thought. Watch the next thought arise. The one that is 'looking' is silent. The one that notices thought arise is the one constant in an ever changing scene. Know yourself as that - knowingly.
All seeing, all knowing and ever present.