Seeker of Wisdom

Love is associated with biological processes - but so is hate, and indifference, and so on. Whatever a person is feeling has biological correlates, so why only dismiss love as an illusion? If the absence of love and emotions is being a cold cruel asshole - well, the mental states involved in that also have biological correlates! So wouldn't cold-cruel-assholery be illusory too? IMHO trying to figure out the exact nature of the relationship between the mind and body is a minefield and a distraction. Look, let's get back to basics. Just stick to experience - see in an experiential way what is going on, what effect it has, what you can do to get better effects. Here's some snippets of the Kalama Sutta: I think you're making things a lot more intellectual than they need to be. If you feel goodwill, it's better for you and the people you interact with. Simple. Maybe try some metta practice: http://www.wildmind.org/metta/introduction. What do you mean? Do you expect 'giving love freely' to happen in some certain way, have a certain result for you? What is this "me vs them" bubble? In what way do others force you to do anything? Go on... Who has more of an ego - the person who has a lot of goodwill, or the person who is closed off? I suppose there's the risk that someone might be kind but conceited about their kindness, but this is not a reason to be less kind, eh? It sounds to me like part of you wants to be more in touch with your emotions, and another part is looking for reasons to close itself off from emotions.

In what way? What do you mean by 'preserving life'? 'Supposed'? Who cares about 'supposed'? The universe doesn't care. Nobody built it to carry out some particular function. Reality just is what it is, does what it does. The question isn't 'am I meant to progress', but 'do I want to'. Whatever you mean by spiritual progression and going forward. If you don't want any specific outcome for your actions, sure, it doesn't matter what methods you use. But if you want a cup of tea, you'll want to do things like boil water and have a mug and teabag ready. Yeah, but some consequences/experiences are preferable to others. I mean, it's all the same to the universe whether you help people or run around flaying them (even karma is just an impersonal happening), but you don't live as though these options are exactly equal, do you? Because they aren't equal to you. And when you want to achieve something - and you do - you follow a method you consider likely to bring the results. It's straightforward cause and effect, isn't it? Don't get too mired in your head. There's always people philosophizing ideas that they obviously don't actually live by. When there is a gulf between your ideas and your everyday life, there's something you're missing.

Doing shamatha then vipassana won't cause interference - actually the shamatha will make your mind nicely clear and focused, which greatly benefits vipassana. It's like trying to dig into the truth with a sharper tool. It'd be ideal to do vipassana directly after shamatha to maximize this, though no need to be too picky about it. Also worth noting - vipassana isn't just for when you're on the cushion or doing walking meditation. It's best to try to keep a current of that mindful investigation all through your day. If you watch your thoughts as 'just thoughts' arising and ceasing - yeah, that will be vipassana. Satipatthana sutta: 'When the mind is X, he discerns that the mind is X. [...] This is how a monk remains focused on the mind in & of itself.' Don't forget to notice the calmness or whatever else as 'just X' arising and ceasing. If you can be aware of it, it's a phenomenon! It's difficult to disembed from thoughts and see them objectively as phenomena because we are very conceptual beings, and we build our narratives to a large extent out of thoughts. We're just used to using thoughts in narratives, rather than seeing them as phenomena. It gets easier as you build up the habit of this different way of seeing through practice. It may be easier at first to focus more of your vipassana towards sensory experiences, which are easier to see in this way. Building up concentration also helps.

Well firstly, this insight is phenomenological. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Also this insight is about the real nuts-and-bolts of phenomena, on the level of 'things in and of themselves'. Like in the Bahiya sutta: 'in the seen just the seen...'. This is about seeing phenomena as they are in a very objective way. For example, people usually think of impermanence on a macroscopic, conceptual level - 'one day I will die, so I should focus on important things...', which is all well and good and skillful, but not the sort of insight that vipassana brings. Or people might have a much more profound recognition of their mortality, from an accident or something - still not vipassana impermanence insight. Vipassana insight into impermanence comes from directly seeing how phenomena arise and cease on a much more moment-to-moment, 'microscopic' level. Ordinary insights can be described in ways that fit personal narratives, they could make sense written in a biography - 'and this made me realize that I won't live forever so...'. Vipassana-style insights are much more impersonal, on the level of fundamental processes - 'phenomena are impermanent'. If you learn things about your personality and how to deal with problems better and why certain things bother you or anything like that while doing vipassana - great! That stuff is really useful and meaningful and worth actively cultivating. But that's macroscopic, personal-narrative insight, not the microscopic, phenomenology insight vipassana specifically targets. This is why noting can be really useful. Apply an objective label like 'thought' or 'sadness' or 'memory', etc, to a phenomenon as it arises, and it really helps you stay with things in and of themselves. So, what is it you learn about phenomena exactly? One valid answer is dependent origination - how phenomena arise and cease as part of a causal web with each other. Another is the Four Noble Truths. But a way of looking at this that's really useful in helping you do the practice is the three characteristics: Impermanence (look closely at phenomena - are things that looked solid actually made of smaller, arising-and-passing phenomena? How many separate, brief flashes of sensation make up an itch?) Dukkha (look at how the mind inclines towards/away from certain phenomena. Why are you doing this stuff anyway? Vipassanize the phenomena involved in that!) Anatta (When there's an experience of sight, is there a 'me' at the center who's doing the seeing, or just an experience of sight interacting with other phenomena? Is there a 'self' doing this practice, or is vipassana itself just phenomena?)

I'll disagree with this view. We all know from our own experience that it is possible to achieve change. We have neuroplasticity. Practice results in greater skill, thinking and acting in certain ways results in personal changes. There's the argument though that although we may be able to get to a certain 'readiness' by personal effort, we cannot become awakened under our own power because so long as we have some delusion anything we do will be tainted by it and so be in some way self-centered, ego-reinforcing - which would mean we need divine grace to cross that gap. I can see the logic there, but I think differently. I'm rereading Thanissaro's Wings to Awakening right now - a lot of the stuff he writes about skillfulness and karma is very illuminating on this IMHO. I'll try to summarize some of what he has to say. So our unawakened experience works by the past setting the conditions for the present. In the present, we choose to do certain things. What we do in the present might build up on what happened in the past (keep practicing piano, you'll play better) or move it in a different direction (stop drinking, over time urges decrease). So what we've got is a net of positive and negative feedback loops. There are certain points in this net where it is possible to enter present input (seeing the four noble truths, etc.) which unbinds this system (awakening) by deleting the delusions integral to it. It isn't possible to do this until you've cultivated skill to see things that clearly (virtue, concentration, insight). But it is possible to cross that bridge by your own practice. You do the practice until your insight removes the problem - you can't just delete the problem, but you can cultivate insight which will. My 2 cents.

Hi VF. If you'd like to learn more I'd advise you to firstly get a shamatha practice going. Here's a pretty good guide: http://www.wildmind.org/mindfulness With some shamatha under your belt it should be easier to make sense of everything else, and vipassana is more effective with a mind trained by shamatha. Also I'd suggest reading The Dhammapada. This translation is solid and the introduction is a pretty good intro to Buddhism and Theravada: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.intro.budd.html From there, read other articles and suttas on access to insight so you get a flavour of things. And of course ask Dao Bums if you're confused! When you've been practicing shamatha and learning for a while (Honestly, getting that foundation will help so much) start practicing vipassana. So on the cushion you'll start with shamatha to rev your mind up, then do vipassana, and off the cushion keep that vipassana running as well as you can. You'll have some understanding of the theory by then, but to really learn what to do, why and what for, try Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram. http://static.squarespace.com/static/5037f52d84ae1e87f694cfda/t/5055915f84aedaeee9181119/1347785055665/ MCTB is the vipassana book in my opinion, and although it leans towards the Mahasi Sayadaw 'noting' approach you can apply it to Goenka's scanning or any other approach to this practice. Best of luck with your practice!

Anusayas?

People who say this are peddling a thin version of mindfulness which definitely is escapism. One of the key things they're missing is that thoughts which refer to the past or future occur in the present. Think about something from ten years ago. That thought won't happen ten years ago - it will happen now. And so does anything you do to process those thoughts, whether you try to escape them or engage with them or just watch them pass through. It is impossible to be anywhere except the present. The question is not 'am I in the present?', but 'am I fully engaged with what's going on and what I'm doing, in a mindful manner?' By ignoring these thoughts, they are in fact ignoring an important part of present-moment experience. It is impossible to be anywhere except the present - but it is possible to close your eyes to a section of it, and cling tight to another section of it. This is a habit mindfulness is meant to unravel. Yes, absolutely! This is the other key thing these people are missing.

The Attention Revolution by Alan Wallace - gave me a good understanding of the theory and practice of shamatha. Up till then I'd been stumbling around doing vague meditationy stuff without really knowing what I was even trying to do. Having a direction, being able to say 'I'm doing this, in this way, because this, for this', really flipped switches. Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram - like the above, but for vipassana, and what's more... a whole new shiny pragmatic no-nonsense approach to the whole thing. Wow. So much territory filled in, the path from this to that laid out plain and shown to be doable.

Cool. Have you looked into the esoteric/mystical side of Christianity? Might be a good idea for you if you haven't.

Like Apech said - 'numb' and 'mindful' aren't the same. When you are mindful you still have thoughts and emotions, it's just that you're aware of them in an objective, phenomenological sense. So instead of 'I am angry' or 'I am happy' it's 'this is anger', 'this is happiness' (anatta!), and you see how they're made of brief (impermanent!) events linked together, and how they interact with thoughts and physical sensations (dependent origination). So you gain deep insight, and also having that 'step back' of objectivity gives you room to deal with things skilfully rather than getting swept into rage or whatever. Interestingly when thought tapers down a lot in shamatha practice (more about concentration on one object - like the breath or metta - to gain mental clarity and jhanas, than vipassana's mindfulness of whatever arises and ceases in experience to gain insight and awakening) feelings of rapture and joy can arise because of the temporary enhanced calm and clarity. So very positive feelings can actually come from a reduction of thought. Arguably the more physical-ish rapture component is an energetic phenomenon, with a loosened mind allowing other things to unwind too.

Vipassana, as I see it, wasn't designed with energetic phenomena in mind. Of course it has energetic effects, but the primary idea is mindfulness (objective awareness of experience - 'in the seen just the seen', etc) resulting in insight (into dependent origination, the three characteristics - anicca, dukkha, anatta - four noble truths) and awakening. So if you're going on a retreat to practice vipassana, you'll get maximum benefit by focusing solely on vipassana. It's not just that doing qigong or reiki on the retreat might have conflicting energetic effects - it's that you're diverting focus from one goal (insight) to another (energetics) and back again. You might find this article interesting: http://integrateddaniel.info/the-arising-and-passing-away/

Someone who isn't awakened thinks that there is body, feeling, etc, AND some kind of subject/perceiver which has/owns the experience of those things, standing a bit apart and impossible to pin down. Someone who is awakened knows that the idea of that separate, impossible to pin down subject is an illusion. That there is just body, feeling, etc. In either case what your body/mind system is, is the same set of stuff. But when you aren't awakened, and think there's some homunculus owning that stuff, this perceptual distortion causes many tensions and conflicts with the simple truth. It's like you're constantly trying to see something out of the corner of your eye, and when you realize there's actually nothing there you can let that fruitless search go. So yeah there's absolutely a difference between awake and asleep - one sees clearly the simple truth, one stresses themselves out concocting random confusing crud. IMHO the mistake you've made is denying too much. You've been dissociating from your humanity, your own emotions and experiences, your own body, thinking that by doing this you reach a higher 'absolute' truth. But the truth of no-self isn't a higher truth, it is a radically imminent truth. You see it by really seeing your body and feelings and emotions, all your human experiences, just as they occur to you, seeing how they occur with no need, no place for, this weird homunculus thing. You see it in this moment. This flash of anxiety, this tension in your stomach, this thought of dinner, this itch in your eyebrow. You become awake not by dissociating to a higher truth, but by descending into an imminent truth.

Just because there is no subject/perceiver standing apart from experience, like a homunculus sitting inside your head... doesn't mean that the mind/body system which is 'you' isn't real. Your thoughts and emotions and memories and desires are all real things, as are everyone else's. Really ponder and internalize that. What even is this distinction between the 'relative' and 'absolute'? Reality isn't split in two chunks like that. Body, feeling, perception, desire, consciousness: these things are real. It's just that they aren't owned by an independent subject. So don't deny anything that actually exists. These things are what your experience is made of. They are your life, live it!

Some quotes about goals I like from Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, 'A Clear Goal':

I'd say just be pragmatic. It's very easy to misuse advanced perspectives like 'no path', 'no goal', 'Buddha nature', etc. But... The average person has no path or goals for this stuff, and the average person isn't awakened. If you want awakening, you have to do stuff. Simple truth! Practice gets you to the precipice, at which point true surrender happens and you see the truth of those advanced perspectives I mentioned. But true surrender won't happen unless you do practice to climb to that precipice.

Trul khor? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trul_khor

For me renunciation means not being caught up in stuff. So you fancy an ice cream - OK, why not? But you don't think that the ice cream will give you some kind of ultimate satisfaction, you don't see yourself as a self with an ice cream shaped hole in it, and if it turns out that you can't get ice cream at that time, you don't have some full-on tantrum over it. Renunciation isn't a matter of what you have, it's a matter of what you grasp for. Living in a cave with nothing when you actually crave all sorts of stuff is avoidance, while living a normal life but unfettered (lovely gold chains not wrapped around you) is renunciation. Living in a cave with nothing can just be a useful tool to help loosen it up.

It's difficult to advise you where to start without knowing what you're looking for. Are you looking for physical health, energetic-related stuff, and so on? Maybe try Daoist Nei Gong by Damo Mitchell. Are you looking for mental clarity, wisdom and awakening? Try MCTB and the last link below. In general, I think the last link below should be a good all-purpose starting point, because all paths call for calming the stormy mind a bit in some way.

Aetherous and Brian are making good points IMO. If it's feasible for your friend to go make amends with someone they've wronged, of course that's a positive action. But if it isn't feasible, well, what's done is done. Instead of beating themselves up, it's more productive to move on and act virtuously in the present and future. No value comes from this kind of guilt. If you're a good person now, that is the case no matter what happened before. So be a good person. Re: self-forgiveness, metta practice may also be helpful. Here's a good place to start.

'Suppressing' is going about it the wrong way. The untrained mind tends to be like a crazy monkey, and when the average person tries to stop it the only way they know is suppression. But grabbing its neck and tying it down doesn't really help. It takes effort to hold it down, and the second you release it, it goes back to jumping around. That's the most important thing to understand about suppressing thought - it doesn't change your mind's ordinary walking-around habits. You need to get it so the monkey is happy to calmly walk about, and calmly sit down. This is what shamatha, one of the main branches of Buddhist meditation, is all about (the other main branch is vipassana, which is about insight). The basic principle is you take an object to focus on, and attend to it. And every time you get distracted, you just let go of the distraction, putting your attention back on the object. Over time the mind becomes increasingly used to settling on an object. A great guide to mindfulness of breathing is here: http://www.wildmind.org/mindfulness

Depends what kind of path you're interested in. I don't have much to say on the qi side of things (though Daoist Nei Gong by Damo Mitchell is a good read IMHO). Now, you say you want to become enlightened - people mean different things by that. If what you mean by 'enlightened' is the sort of thing Buddhism is about, then IMHO one of the most useful books you could read is MCTB by Daniel Ingram. It explains things far more clearly than basically anything else. Also the classic meditation method for people to start with is mindfulness of breathing - a great starting guide is here. Try it out - you'll get more clarity which you can bring to anything else you want to do. Whatever path you end up following, more stability, focus and calm won't exactly hold you back.

This is a no-no to anyone who isn't nuts.

To clarify my position - vipassana definitely can and does have energetic benefits. But this isn't the primary thing it's intended for, so you may end up going through the progress of insight whether or not this was your intention. If you only want energetic effects, look elsewhere. If you want energy and insight, vipassana should serve you well.

Vipassana is primarily meant for cultivating insight, paying attention to experiences coming and going to see impermanence, etc. There can be energetic effects, but if this is your main interest IMHO you'd be better off doing something else, like qi gong, which is designed for energy work. Here's a description (from here) of energetic experiences people can have in the fourth stage in the progress of insight: