ValleyStream

Rode my bike to the market to fetch some grub. Came home and immediately meditated while heart rate was up. Single cross legged seated to avoid becoming too relaxed. Well lit room and kept my eyes cracked open. I kept it kinda chilly in the house so that i would not become warm and too relaxed; it did not impede on my meditation (i was worried that the cold would). Meditated for a solid 30 minutes and only dozed off once or twice. i caught myself dozing and focused on my breathing and continued the practice. id say it was a success.

I will be using more tactics that were suggested by others in upcoming sessions.

Thank you, all.

If you wake up with answers and tranquil peaceful mind, no worries. If you wake up being disappointed that you fell asleep tell your mind to settle down and to get over it.

 

Peaceful calm mind in the mist of activity AND sitting in an empty room with no thing to do then you are already successful. The big deal is keeping this center when you stand up and engage in life.

 

Your doing meditation so I will give you a humble bow, be sure to spread the light

This is good insight.

I was told before that falling asleep while meditating is not a bad thing as long as you wake up feeling clear. Whenever i do fall asleep i try to just wake up with ease and not beat myself up about it.

Sleeping clears my head, so it is great.

I am able to actually meditate and remain clear minded due to my Taiji practice. So my problem is not a failure of meditation from falling asleep. I just personally want to be able to stay awake for 40 minutes and sit still while emptying.

I have received some great tactics on this thread that I will be putting into practice.

add me to the eyes-open crowd. And not just a little. Try to meditate on being awake. Wide awake and fully aware of your surroundings :-)

 

Try ...

 

But honestly, this is also a completely normal phase in the earlier stages. Do you also start to yawn a lot? If you do, don't suppress it. Open up the maw and yawn deeply, with all the noises that want to come out. After a while (months?) this phase will pass all on its own.

 

One more thing to consider: The less attention you give the internal processes, the more freedom they have to rectify themselves at their own pace.

I really do think that this is what i need to do (for now); focus more on staying awake and external things to train myself to relax while staying awake.

But yes, it comes down to time and persistent practice.

All in time.

This one is highly recommended

 

Thank you for this!

I was told its a sign you need more sleep.

 

A possible solution is meditate in a less comfortable position. That could be meditating in Seiza position (sitting on your knees) or wearing a stiff starched shirt/jacket.

Well, there is really no need for me to sleep more at night. perhaps i just need to nap and then meditate.

I do like the idea of sitting in a more uncomfortable position and what-not. I will put that into practice for sure.

Personally I don't like to be interrupted. But a timer helps me avoid deciding to stop early - instead I surrender the notion that I have any control over when I am going to stop.

 

Also just now in my meditation I realized how awake the act of "turning around the light of the mind" keeps me. It's the idea of sealing the light of consciousness using inward intent. There's a bit more on this in The Secret of the Golden Flower, a great taoist meditation guide. Hey look, there's one available for $4.64 shipped in volume 3 of Cleary's taoist classics. Either way, you'll want the Cleary tl.

I will have to check that out. It seems that ol' Tom Cleary knows his stuff.

What's the meditation technique that caused you to fall asleep?

Try another one! :-)

Well, i have an "audiobook/guide" for breathing & meditation that i sometimes refer to. It is basically designed to help you breathe into your lower dantian and adding more depth to your breath with an interval chime. It has a guide walking you through it all and i am sure there is more techniques beyond these two but i cant get past the 3rd or 4th chapter without falling asleep when sitting or standing. I have decided to not go beyond these beginning chapters until i can successfully keep myself awake for 20-30 minutes(perhaps indefinitely).

Also, i do the 6 healing sounds and internal smile techniques. this seems to work up until a certain point. Once i go through the 6 healing sounds and i focus on converting the negative energy into positive energy i tend to doze off. Perhaps i should just run though another round of healing sounds if ever i feel tired.

I will take your advice of trying other techniques. i just need to find some good resources. Any suggested online forums or documents for techniques?

do you close your eyes when you meditate? try meditating with your eyes open by just a little bit, one of the things it aims to help is to beat drowsiness

I plan on attempting this. Sounds like it will be very effective. Thank you.

I like the idea of a timer being utilized. I could set up a timer on certain intervals and if i find that i can stay awake from one interval to the next i could extend the intervals it to where it would wake me up after a certain amount of time. It may distract me from my actual meditation but at this point i am more concerned to training myself to stay awake.

Perhaps i should try meditating after exercise. Like you said, Daeluin, i could walk around or wait until after Taiji. This is something i have yet to put into practice because i usually do Taiji in the evenings but i could start a morning Qigong routine and meditate in correlation with that. Good advice.

One thing is for sure though... it will just take time and persistent practice.

I think I am drinking a real beer because it tastes delicious...but then I remember that everything is an illusion and I realize I don't understand anything.

I have a regular problem of falling asleep when meditating if I am sitting or laying down.

I can usually meditate for 10-15 minutes without a problem but whenever I go any longer there is a good chance that i will fade into sleep.

Through my Taiji practice I have been able to accomplish effective standing meditation without dozing off to dream land but when sitting or laying I find myself falling asleep while meditating on a regular basis.

I have a good diet. I exercise regularly. I sleep a solid 8 hours a night (usually 930pm-530am). I never meditate after a large meal or in the evening when i am tired.

Granted, i am fairly new to meditating and some advice i have read on other forums is that this problem will pass with time and practice but i thought that you guys would have a few helpful things to say.

Any help would be appreciated.

David E. Mungello. Leibniz's Interpretation of Neo-Confucianism

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1397760

Thank you for this.

They call it empathy .

I am all about the simplicity. Difficult questions should have simple answers, i say.

It is very remarkable that the inventor of the binary numeral system our computers are using, the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, had a keen interest in the I Ching.

Oh wow, i had no idea. That is very neat. I will be reading up more on him in relation to the I Ching. Great insight, Michael.

Immediately my search led me to this recent article...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/21/ancient-book-wisdom-i-ching-computer-binary-code

The ending of the article is good stuff....

"So when scientific thinkers – including many of my favourite science fiction writers – ask whether computers can create "virtual realities" or "artificial intelligence", they are missing the point. Of course we can create ever deeper and more complex layers of the dream of reality to get lost in. The real question is, can we wake up from the dream we're in already?"

Actually a fair amount of theorizing came directly after reading the intro in The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth. A bit of study of the Ho and Luo diagrams is also recommended, as well as five element theory, which directly leads to chinese astrology - the 5, doubled (yang/yin) is the energy we absorb from the heavens (the 10 heavenly stems), and the 6, doubled (yang/yin) (the chinese astrology animals) is the energy stored in the earth (the 12 earthly branches). The hexagenary cycle describes how they merge over sixty phase cycles and are mapped out over the year, month, day, and hour in chinese astrology, and in the l'uo pan in feng shui. Ni Hua Ching's book goes into this as well. Having a thorough understanding of how the five elements work within both the pre-celestial bagua and the post-celestial bagua is also important, and again the key lies in the Ho and Luo diagrams. Studying the 12 earthly branches as they flow through the yearly seasons is also very enlightening... or at least it was to me. Learning to feel how the earth month between two elements helps to contain, balance and transform the energies is quite poignant - ie how the "dragon" (known as the entrepreneur, among other things), is positioned between the wood and fire seasons, and is able to position resources where they will best be spent, i.e. placeing wood in the fire pit, so that when it burns the burning is useful. Etc.

The Link to the "Taoist Theory and Practice of Internal Alchemy" document is great. Another thing to be added to the top of my reading list. I Ching, TTC, Zhuangzi, Feng Shui and now "Taoist Theory and Practice of Internal Alchemy" along with Taijiquan, Neidan and all my college work. I truely enjoy being a student.

Thanks again, Daeluin.

Alternately there is the Taoist I Ching, a Thomas Cleary translation of Liu I-ming's commentaries on the I Ching, with specific notes on the firing process and neidan. Overall a great version to consult for a clear depiction of the interplay of yin and yang from a very objective perspective. I feel it really captures the root. I recommend the taoist classics volume 4 edition, which includes some other writings by Liu I-ming at the end, but the other edition is available a bit cheaper.

I have acquired a copy of the other edition for close to nothing and i am very excited to delve into it; it has been a long time coming for me and the I Ching. I will be starting tonight after my Calculus test.

I want to obtain The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth, by Ni Hua Ching but i am on a sparse student budget and just cannot afford to purchase something of that measure. Perhaps i will sneak it into next semesters "curriculum" of required texts.

Thank you for the recommendations, Daeluin.

Yes, top to bottom like that. As far as 溪, considering that nobody's objected to it, and that there is a person with the name 谷溪, I think you're safe. It's a cool name

Thank you, dustybeijing.

So, what I have now should read as "Valley Stream" top to bottom if I am correct. Should it be written top to bottom? Also, a confirmation that it is correct would be super cool.

On some real levels, Thanks everybody.

This is a good point, though in modern Chinese 浴 means bath (which probably doesn't make a difference since we're talking Daoism, not modern China, but thought I'd point it out to be thorough!)

 

As far as the second character,

 

流 , as in English, is both a noun and verb (a stream, to stream), which creates a little ambiguity. I don't think a stream in a valley would be called a 谷流

 

溪 is just a noun, and I think might be better. There's actually a Chinese painter called 谷溪, perhaps you could steal his signature

Aha! it makes sense. So my picture is annotating "to flow" under Valley. I think i will "steal" the painters signature. After looking into some translations of the name it is what i am going for. 2 nouns rather than a verb. Thank you!

Whatever you do use, if you want to make it look pretty I quite like this site:

 

http://www.skyfont.com/?char=%E8%B0%B7%E6%BA%AA&font=%E5%8D%9A%E6%B4%8B%E8%A1%8C%E4%B9%A67000&template=1024-880&layout=2&size=128&hspace=0&vspace=64&forecolor=%23000000&backcolor=%23ffffff

 

(I assume you have access to an image editor to have made your current avatar...)

This is a great site! thank you!

I am guessing that you ask this based on the DDJ chapter 66 where some translate the opening line with 'valley streams'?

 

The oldest text, the Guodian Bamboo, has in Line 1 浴 (Yu) instead of 谷 (Gu). From a pictorial point of view, this seems to support the idea of streams flowing down the mountain into the valley.

 

Seal example of Yu:

 

 

Seal example of Gu:

 

Well, i intended to have it translated as a name if that is possible. My Family name is translated as valley stream in swedish, Hence my user name is ValleyStream. I believe my profile picture is working now. Do i have it right on the picture?

Also the I Ching is basically binary yin/yang.

I have always attributed the trigrams as being binary. My limited knowledge of the I Ching does not allow me to make much more of an observation than that. I really need to get on that I Ching.

Following this principle of something arising from nothing, the 2 polarities divide to become 4, and we arise at spacial dimension, in my opinion.

I think that this is some righteous theory. How the nothing between the 2 is "something", therefore there is 3. It just makes sence how this would continue in that fashion into 5 and 6 and how they relate in our spacial/spiritual comprehension. I really need to read more into all of this to understand exactly what you are getting at but i would like you to know that this will be taken with a grain of salt (as you said)...along with a cup of tea and a intensive study. great stuff.

The I Ching clearly shows us the patterns of change within cycles, and how to ever remain in balance within change. If your mind is so inclined, this is a great resource at our disposal. In Taomeow's interview it is recommended to study the I Ching even before the Tao Te Ching.

I have actually been holding off on researching into The I Ching because i do not have access to a quality "copy". Believe it or not, Northern rural USA has a sparse collection of quality eastern philosophy texts. I can find a couple free "versions" online but i dont know where to start; and i dont want to spend money on a copy with little insight on the different translations and interpretations. Any suggestions on a certain translation/version that will grant a new student, such as myself, a quality introductory read?

My profile picture is the one i am talking about. Classical chinese painting with 2 characters. Just wondering if it reads as, "Valley Stream". If not, what i should so to fix it.

hmmm... your picture is broken again. Can you upload whatever image it is you're trying to use here in this thread?

Is the image i described not the one that you see?

All things work because of natural laws that make it so. We have not invented anything. what works has always existed. New technology makes us do the same old stuff with a new device. Who invented the wheel when round things roll.

This is so true. I tell people that my goal of my major is not to invent something (like most people in this school), rather it is to apply principles to obtain an ease of living. Certain people look at me like a fool but i guess that this is similar to the Peng bird and the observation of the cicada and the dove...i guess. but what do i know, for i am just a student.