stirling

Having seen a few of his videos now, there are a number of complete misunderstandings and mistruths about meditation in his videos. In this one, for example: ... he suggests that the goal of meditation is to "stop thinking", amongst a number of misguided thoughts. Speaking for myself, I would not trust him with my training - there are abundant other sources from verifiable lineages that I would rely on for my teachings.

Just looked him up myself. What an interesting story!

This sounds like someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Where there is insight into the reality of the non-dual, but the ego grabs onto it and creates a new enlightened "Self" there is STILL a duality. This generally creates the ego-driven teachers we sometimes see, and is a natural stage of development. The enlightened "person" is generally a short-lived phenomena, thank goodness, but it does seem like some get stuck there. Even a realized person should have a teacher to point dualities like this out and complete the path.

I would be careful about equating the manipulation of kundalini with Zen practice of any kind. What he is talking about here has much more in common with the American Satsang circuit than anything in the Zen or Cha'n schools. Being a master of Zen is not having a "self" that attempts to manipulate experience. My experience is that enlightenment is entirely possible without doing any practices intended to manipulate anything whatsoever, in fact just the opposite. Dropping all contriving of experience (meditation) is a very direct practice.

That's the trouble with these things, isn't it. There are different translations from different eras with different interpretations. If I were doing something scholarly with it all, or it was my special area of interest I would probably go to the trouble to work with it all in more detail. While I feel qualified to talk about it from the standpoint of its bearing on enlightenment, the specifics sometimes strike me as poorly translated. It is of interesting, but isn't my training and from a practice perspective is quite foreign to either the Zen approach or the Dzogchen approach I have spent my attention on and am attracted to practice. Ultimately, what matters, IMHO is that we find practices we are drawn to and devote ourselves to them wholeheartedly, ideally in the company of teacher that can help us keep it straight and clear. I dunno about the rest, but I agree that he found emptiness, which is what I would hope we all find in our practices. It won't surprise you, I am sure, that I find this idea of practice rather overcomplicated. Speaking for myself, I am entirely convinced that the simplicity of Zazen, and then hopefully or possibly, Shikantaza (by whichever label, from whatever tradition you might prefer), some type of morality teaching (precepts, bodhisattva training, or perhaps the Tibetan Lojong training) and perhaps learning to work with attachment and aversion through one's obscurations are a good setup. My experience is that enlightenment isn't hard to see or identify, so a lot of practices add unnecessary complexity... which isn't to say that complexity might not be precisely what some might need. I agree with Suzuki Roshi on this count. Zazen and Shikantaza are VERY simple in principle. My understanding is that there are 8 and then cessation: https://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php/9_Jhanas#The_Fourth_Jhana:_Utter_Peacefulness Cessation (Nirodha) is the 3rd Noble Truth and something (impermanently) we can all experience. Probably. It doesn't look like any Buddhist tradition I have learnt about, honestly. That isn't to say it might not be YOUR dharma door.

Interesting. I was using your previous quote to determine what he meant by one-pointedness in this context: If the Noble Eightfold Path's "Right Samadhi" is necessary for "one-pointedness" then I would have to be "formless", since the only way to perfect the Noble Eightfold Path is enlightenment. Perhaps it is a broader term and does simply mean uninterrupted focus. So what does "zest" mean to you, then? What is it that is suffusing your body in your experience? Zest certainly isn't something I associate with meditation. I think this makes much more sense: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-samadhi/jhana.html On the same page it says: ...suggesting that it is only foundational to the Eightfold Path. My experience is that you can take the object of either piti or sukkha and, noticing that it is a factor by finding it in the body (sukkha) or mind (piti) allow it to migrate from wherever you notice it, suffusing the rest of the body. The simple joy of sukkha is like the pleasure of a warm bath and piti is a sort of mental relaxation, like drinking a glass of cold water on a hot day but for the mind. Depending on the translation it makes sense to me, but it certainly speaks from a decidedly antique perspective. Looks like there 9 in the fourth Nikaya. It would be fourth in this list, the "utter peacefulness" referring specifically to the completeness of equanimity that defines it. Only in the 4th jhana is the mindfulness pure and the equanimity complete, as it is without the other factors. or: I'd still love a plain english version of what you are suggesting here. I might try it, but I'd need some clarity about what you mean. What are you looking for here, or hoping will happen? Is this a key practice to becoming enlightened in your mind? The entire field of experience is ultimately awareness, so it rests everywhere. I can look in between breaths, but it isn't any kind of special location. If it was enlightenment it would persist even during breath, or anything else. In any moment feeling and perceiving are constant, though the experience of a "self" that perceives them is gone. How are they different? Are you saying that YOU are in charge of feeling and perceiving? Bows.

Yes, probably. I'm sure you have, actually. It happens all the time! Have you ever had a teacher point out emptiness to you? With some repetition it is easy to begin to recognize how it happens both naturally, and in meditation practice all the time. I appreciate your enthusiasm. Historical authenticity, when it comes to the Buddha's teachings, doesn't concern me. Speaking for myself, I would trade the Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra for the entirety of the the Pali Canon texts. I am very grateful to the Buddha for his teachings, but also to any number of masters, including my personal teachers. In my opinion, living teaching teachers teach a living dharma that has a skillfulness we can't get from reading texts. The central thing that links good practices and teachings is a teacher's level of understanding, whether is it Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Sufi, Hindu, Dao, or whatever. Skillful teachings get recognized and spread. Realized beings can recognize skillful teachings immediately as they are illuminated by emptiness (Prajna). Perhaps. I will never know, I don't intend to go looking. If you are interested in the source of his teaching, you could ask him. I have heard he is an enthusiastic and friendly emailer. I don't think you get one-pointedness until 4th jhana, actually, which is the first of the "formless" jhanas. In 4th jhana the factors of sukha and dukka drop away and there is just equanimity and emptiness. Yes. The Noble Eightfold Path is actually the experience of enlightened mind... aspirational until there is insight. Acting from Wisdom (Prajna) perfects all of the "rights". First jhana is concentration on the sensation of piti. There is still thought. I don't think it is possible that thought and one-pointedness co-exist. Once our man Syd became an Arhat his mind would naturally have defaulted to a formless jhana in day to day consciousness. I would say 5th because it is the perfection of equanimity. Wherever you place your attention, whatever object you use in meditation, THERE is your awareness. I have come across similar practices before. My own late teacher taught a version of something Suzuki taught to work with pain that she learned from her teacher (herself a student of Suzukis) where you put your attention on the discomfort and through a series of examinations take apart it's qualities and permanence. There appears to be a similar instruction here, to me. Yes, I would agree with you. Using exercises where we move awareness we can take that apart a bit and see that the awareness we are comes from where awareness rests. Ultimately the Ayatana (senses) are seen to be empty... without specific location, not belonging to a self, happening now (see your Suzuki quote above). Find out for yourself if you are curious.

Like I said.... a last stab at it. We don't have to see eye to eye. Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

I don't see that being said in those passages, though I would agree that just "being" is, from one conceptual perspective, dependent origination in action since the subject is no longer present in the mix when just "being" is occurring. Not necessarily, but it could make sense. I can absolutely see the value of insight practice after resting in the formless jhanas at a variety of levels. When the mind is still many conceptual constructs, feelings, ideas, etc. can be deconstructed and liberated. I am not concerned with whether or not we are talking about the Buddha's exact intention or words. I don't believe that any of the early Buddhist works are necessarily one person instructions that somehow maintained their fidelity in an oral traditions until someone finally wrote them down 500 years later. It is foolish to believe such a thing or maintain that there is some authenticity there that other works don't have. People commonly can't remember what they have just heard, or fail to notice obvious things in experience all of the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers https://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows-notice.html As far as interpreting the Buddha: There have been countless realized beings since the Buddha, and more appear every day. Any of them might have invaluable insight and be able to teach from prajna. I assume this is a Brassington quote? I am abundantly sure that Brassington teaches from a particular set of reference materials. That they don't match the ones YOU might choose is a shame (see above), but I don't think it has anything to do with the validity of his teachings, qualification to teach, or his knowledge and experience of the jhanas. I have his book in a stack of books here to hand, so I'll share with you what he says his sources are. From the preface: This is a link to the sources he uses, from the book: https://www.leighb.com/links.htm You can make up your own mind about whether these are authentic enough for your tastes. It IS difficult to explain "one-pointedness". Why? Because you would be free of thought, which takes some training. This is why is not a factor in the 1st jhana, which is not formless. You also need a teacher that can verify or experience. What Koun Franz is talking about is not one-pointedness. Moving awareness around is interesting, but an activity of the mind. Deep absorptions like "one-pointedness" are not activities of the mind. Franz recommends this as an experiment, not a central practice. Is it possible that, in moving your awareness around you might realize that awareness doesn't reside behind your eyes, but is actually wherever attention is and become enlightened? Sure! But it isn't a tool that gets emphasized for a reason. The Buddha, for example, doesn't recommend it, as far as I am aware. BTW, if this IS a practice that appeals to you, you should check out Loch Kelly's book "Shift Into Freedom" which is heavy on exercises where you move awareness around in space and "unhook" it from the mental thought processes.

Let me take one last stab at this: Meditation creates the space for trauma to come up. It isn't intended to DIG it up, or force anything, but operates under the principle that living life itself is enough to create situations that surface trauma and undealt with situations, thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness (Sati) changes our relationship to the world. Properly developed (with both some morality training and bodhicitta practices) mindfulness gives us a pause in our reactivity and changes how we relate to difficult situations as they arise, thus reducing the load of new karma we are creating. By having less clinging and aversion to what life throws up we create less future karma to untwist. Meditation, when all techniques are dropped, is, in essence the SAME as enlightened mind, though we don't have the insight to see it. The benefits of resting the mind in its own nature are the same, but at a much milder level, as just BEING enlightened Mind. When putting together a puzzle one often creates little subgroups of assembled pieces that seem to go in a particular area. We know as we are doing this that all of these subgroups comprise a whole defined by the border, but can only speculate about what whole might actually look like (leaving aside the picture on the box lid for the moment). But, how would the puzzle be if we suddenly knew how the whole actually was, intimately? This is a decent metaphor to represent our work on the path. I have personally found great value in working to take apart my "core wounds" using the path of therapy, but that was only ever putting together some of the puzzle pieces into little assembled groups. Illuminating little corners of the larger picture. This isn't to say that doing so wasn't cumulatively valuable! Insight/awakening/stream-entry is a moment where suddenly the whole puzzle becomes visible. One realizes that the puzzle was never ultimately these small groups but was in fact always the "big picture". Now with the ability to see the "big picture", wounds can be seen to belong to an imaginary self, not the larger awareness we have always been. Over time, life continues to throw up situations that might have created drama in the past, but now it is obvious how our past karma created suffering out of these experience for us and we are liberated from having to act from our previous patterns. We realize that the person with thought we were, with all of their attachments, aversions and karma was never truly real, and that our relationship to worldly situations was born of a misunderstanding about the nature of reality.

Leigh's interpretation IS modern, but he bases it on the Pali texts (like most of what he does) as you can see in this piece I linked to earlier that is largely derivative of his book: https://www.lionsroar.com/entering-the-jhanas/ It IS a commentary, but commentaries aren't particularly rare or controversial. Many Buddhist practices are made to sound impossible or extremely difficult in the modern era but most of them ARE achievable with some work. Even enlightenment IS a possibility in this lifetime. The classics are integral and foundational, but these traditions aren't dead. There have been enlightened teachers sharing practices and wisdom since long before the Buddha, and there are still plenty of them on the planet today. They offer new perspectives that reflect the lives of people living NOW.

By "trance" he means jhana. Movement through them is shifting attention from the outside world... it is definitely gradual, but not related to awakening, since the jhanas are passing states, unlike stream-entry and enlightenment. Me too! You could likely do it too, since you have been a meditator for so many years, and probably already rest, at least briefly, if not for longer periods, in shikantaza. More on the jhanas here from Leigh Brassington, arguably our finest contemporary instructor on the topic: https://www.leighb.com/jhanas.htm Give it a try! Free instruction on the first one or two: https://www.lionsroar.com/entering-the-jhanas/ This sounds eerily familiar somehow. This is an interesting assertion. At face value, I don't think I can agree with you. How about some definitions in plain language on these. What is cessation of in/out breathing, and how is it an attainment? What is the "fifth limb", or a "survey sign". At face value it sounds like you are saying that if we stop breathing we are enlightened, but I am sure this isn't what you are intending to share.

What I am trying to get at is that non-dual insight into emptiness will definitely include seeing through the delusion of space/time/self-hood. There is no experiencer, or some might say the fabric of everything is the experiencer. It isn't an experience, it is seeing the underlying substratum that underpins all experiencing. It is a glimpse, and eventually a full-time seeing behind the curtain. It is a persistent understanding that is always present. It would be, yes. But, what IS a non-dual realization in your estimation? How would you define one? I see. Thank you. What I am describing would be underneath anything you could describe as a system, category, or structure. I understand that this may not make a lot of sense, or even seem possible. Yes, I believe we have agreed to disagree. Samatha-Vipassana is ultimately aiming at a deeper level underneath psychological or mental constructs, and in my experience is about as good as any practice for gnosis.

Yes.... and arguing the conceptual aspects, which isn't really helpful, IMHO. All of that grasping and clinging to ego is GREAT fuel for insight!

... it is, though.