stirling Posted 17 hours ago 1 hour ago, Cobie said: In my experience too, at times it’s not for the faint hearted. Aligning with the Dao/the water, initially caused fear and panick. This is the "self" realizing that it has dropped out and grasping at its illusory existence. It is not uncommon. 1 hour ago, Cobie said: Eventually results come from sitting through it. But imo best to take it at a pace that’s comfortable, I listen to myself. Yes... no need to force anything. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 17 hours ago (edited) 3 hours ago, liminal_luke said: Should it? I´m not sure but think this is a great question for discussion. My own experience is that meditation is definitely not fun. 10 hours ago, BigSkyDiamond said: from article at link above, i love this part: "" it's most important to enjoy the meditation. Meditation should be fun." The quote is from the "Tips for New Meditators" guide, published by a Buddhist monastery. https://www.dhammagiri.net/post/tips-for-new-meditators If it is jarring, well, there are a whole lot of smiling Buddha statues out there. I remember a few years back at work, someone mentioned a silent meditation retreat was being held (three days? three weeks? something like that), and it was hilarious to see the visceral instant response for the three of us who shared that office. My boss practically ran out of the room screaming. I lit up in a huge grin and said sign me up. The third guy looked utterly baffled and perplexed and said why would anyone even want to do that. Edited 16 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Apech Posted 16 hours ago 19 hours ago, Surya said: In an earlier thread Stirling and I had a chat about meditation. I said that it didn’t work for me, and Apech replied that meditation is one of the worst thought subjects out there. So, that leads to the question: how is it done correctly? What even is it? Ofc, I could (and have) googled it, but I’d much rather here what experienced bums has to say. Thank you Since I was mentioned I thought I would reply. I think @Surya you meant 'taught' not 'thought' ... so one of the worst taught subjects out there. Agreed. It is badly taught. My approach is to say that if you do it (and many people including probably most Buddhists don't) then it is the most important thing you do. There are a very large number of techniques for meditation (which I have heard by a great Lama described as 'toys') none of which are anything other than that. Just techniques - which may or may not be useful depending on how applied. Even then those techniques only seek to replicate or encourage processes which naturally happen in your body or your mind. Motivation is the starting point. You want to be relaxed? Ok have a cup of tea and listen to some ambient music ... or go for a walk in the park. You want powers? You'll probably end up with haemorrhoids and myopia. So what do you want? Ask yourself that first. Spend a long time asking yourself. If you have problems you'd like to cure ... why have you got those problems in the first place. Do you have an explanation for that? Did they just drop on you like cosmic bird shit from heaven? Or do they arise from somewhere for some reason? Why would sitting down to meditate have any relevance to that? Maybe you want some kind of relief. A break from stress? Maybe you want your thoughts to stop? Maybe you want better health. All reasonable things to want. But will meditation help you with this? Well maybe but then you will have turned it into your therapy. So no. Meditation is not therapy. It might actually make you feel worse! If you still want to meditate don't start with your mind so much. Just start with your body. Don't worry about thoughts and feelings that come and go. Just settle your body like a cat does. Just sit for a short while. That's a beginning. Expect nothing. You won't be disappointed. 2 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 16 hours ago (edited) 8 minutes ago, Apech said: Maybe you want some kind of relief. A break from stress? Maybe you want your thoughts to stop? Maybe you want better health. All reasonable things to want. But will meditation help you with this? In my experience, yes. Yes it has, and yes it does. All of the above. Edited 16 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
thelerner Posted 16 hours ago Even now after decades after 25 or so minutes the concept BORING still hits me when I'm meditating. On the other hand my 2nd most pleasurable time is the twilight when I'm just waking up- body perfectly relaxed, mind open..conscious..luxuriously quiet. The state I aim for in meditation. I enjoy guided meditations but they are crutches. I think guided breathing rhythms are closer to meditation. There's a nice 7in-7hold-7out audio that I like, lasts 30 minutes of a 3 breath a minute cycle. Watching my timing, how close I am starting and ending each cycle mindfully to the tones. How many thoughts appear during the 30 minutes. It's good training. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Apech Posted 15 hours ago 48 minutes ago, BigSkyDiamond said: In my experience, yes. Yes it has, and yes it does. All of the above. Would you care to say more? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 15 hours ago (edited) 21 minutes ago, Apech said: Would you care to say more? It helps me with the things listed so I answered yes. I am a practical person so I need to see practical tangible benefits from meditation spill over and carry over into my dailly life. And yes they do. Edited 15 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Apech Posted 15 hours ago 1 minute ago, BigSkyDiamond said: It helps me with the things listed so I answered yes. I am a practical person so I need to see practical tangible benefits from meditation spill over and carry over into my dailly life. And yes they do. How do you meditate? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cobie Posted 15 hours ago 1 hour ago, Apech said: … Just settle your body like a cat does … 1 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 15 hours ago (edited) 28 minutes ago, Apech said: How do you meditate? Walking in nature once or twice a day. quiet sitting deep diaphragmatic breathing qi gong that is eyes closed and verrrrrrrry slow observe and let go be the sky and watch the the passing clouds (thoughts, feelings, distractions) just float on by stillness, silence, spacious (thanks DocBenway-Steve for recommending the Luminous Mind book) drop into the core floor sitting with accupressure, self massage, EFT (tapping), listening to body, limb unwinding peace be still. be still and know that I AM these are done throughout the day; and also in specific "dedicated time" set aside which i document to ensure practice is consistent. Edited 14 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
forestofclarity Posted 15 hours ago Obviously, it depends on what one means by meditation. If you mean samadhi, then one the method is fairly simple as set forth in the Yoga Sutras. 1. Follow a moral code. 2. Choose an "object" of meditation. 3. Disengage from other objects. 4. Place your mind on the object of meditation. 5. Repeat 3-4. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cobie Posted 14 hours ago (edited) 2 hours ago, BigSkyDiamond said: … there are a whole lot of smiling Buddha statues out there .. ignore them, just be your grumpy self Edited 14 hours ago by Cobie 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mark Foote Posted 14 hours ago (edited) 2 hours ago, Apech said: So what do you want? Ask yourself that first. Well, I had posted "The Tubes" playing "What Do You Want from Life", but it was too depressing. Sorry about that... Edited 14 hours ago by Mark Foote 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mark Foote Posted 14 hours ago Look ma, no hands! No mention of meditation, at all! No where to go, nothing to do. Written almost fifteen years ago, now. Waking Up and Falling Asleep I have a practice that I’d like to offer, something that I believe is already part of the general repertoire of this community, even though the details I will provide here are new. The practice I have in mind is a practice that everybody is already familiar with, even if they don’t think of it as a practice. What I’m referring to is waking up in the morning, or falling asleep at night; if you’ve ever had a hard time waking up or falling asleep, then you know that there can indeed be a practice! In my experience, the practice is the same, whether I am waking up or falling asleep: when I realize my physical sense of location in space, and realize it as it occurs from one moment to the next, then I wake up or fall asleep as appropriate. This practice is useful, when I wake up in the middle of the night and need to go back to sleep, or when I want to feel more physically alive in the morning. This practice is also useful when I want to feel my connection to everything around me, because my sense of place registers the contact of my awareness with each thing, as contact occurs. Just before I fall asleep, my awareness can move very readily, and my sense of where I am tends to move with it. This is also true when I am waking up, although it can be harder to recognize (I tend to live through my eyes in the daytime, and associate my sense of place with them). When my awareness shifts readily, I realize that my ability to feel my location in space is made possible in part by the freedom of my awareness to move. I sometimes overlook my location in space because I attach to what I’m feeling, or I’m averse to it, or I ignore it. The result is that I lose the freedom of my awareness to shift and move, and I have difficulty relaxing or staying alert. When I allow what I feel to enter into where I am, then my awareness remains free, and I can relax and keep my wits about me. To me, a lot of what this community is about is living life from exactly where we are. When we really live from where we are, we discover that everything and everyone around us is a part of where we are, and that our actions truly belong to where we are. This kind of action is the only really selfless action I know. There’s nothing special about having a sense of place, and yet I find my peace of mind depends on my sense of place most of all. That is why I would like to recommend the practice of “waking up and falling asleep” to everyone. Wrote a book about it: https://zenmudra.com/A-Natural-Mindfulness.pdf 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 14 hours ago (edited) box breathing, also known as square breathing. squarrel shown here Edited 14 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
steve Posted 13 hours ago 23 hours ago, Surya said: In an earlier thread Stirling and I had a chat about meditation. I said that it didn’t work for me, and Apech replied that meditation is one of the worst thought subjects out there. So, that leads to the question: how is it done correctly? What even is it? What is it? Many answers are possible and valid. One that is meaningful for me at the moment is that it is my personal investigation into who I am not in order to discover who I am. How is it done correctly? By being true to myself and fully open to my own authentic experience. Much, much more can be said of course but this is what comes up for me at the moment that seems worth sharing. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taomeow Posted 12 hours ago 16 hours ago, Master Logray said: There are many types of meditations, for many different purposes. They range from sitting to walking to varied movements, from immobile to slow or even faster. They may empty the mind yet some actively engage the conscious mind. Some can be learnt in 10 minutes and the others could take 10 years to start off. It is like walking. Walking is merely a process for your purposes. In some of the oldest shamanic traditions (e.g. Mongolian), meditation is called a "horse." Same idea as your "walking" -- only faster. It's neither the goal nor the destination of practice, it's not self-serving. It is a vehicle that serves to take the practitioner to some kind of "elsewhere." A meditation aiming to get "nowhere," to arrive at "nothing," may accomplish just that. An exploratory one -- "wherever it may take me" -- may accomplish that and take you "somewhere." A taoist meditation (the kind I'm most familiar with) may be "free form" or highly structured (typically combining the two, either in one sitting or in different ones), and the goal you're aiming at may keep shifting, or even disappearing, and something entirely unexpected might take its place instead. It can be "boring" (with a nod to @liminal_luke ) or joyous (when I experimented, rather briefly, with Max's kunlun, it often had me in stitches -- I would wind up laughing half the time, at nothing in particular, it was just "funny" in its "unattached" state, sort of like the Platonic idea of "funny.") It can be easy or difficult -- I'm in favor of difficult, there's things to overcome there and if one gives up unless it's easy, it's like what Castaneda's (possibly made up) protagonist, Don Juan, called "indulging like a son of a bitch." On the other hand, you don't want to whip that "horse" mercilessly, you need to understand that it's alive and feeling, and just summarily ignoring the fact may finish off your "horse" before you arrive anywhere interesting. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 12 hours ago (edited) 2 hours ago, Mark Foote said: Just before I fall asleep, my awareness can move very readily, and my sense of where I am tends to move with it. This is also true when I am waking up, although it can be harder to recognize (I tend to live through my eyes in the daytime, and associate my sense of place with them). When my awareness shifts readily, I realize that my ability to feel my location in space is made possible in part by the freedom of my awareness to move. There’s nothing special about having a sense of place, and yet I find my peace of mind depends on my sense of place most of all. Wrote a book about it: https://zenmudra.com/A-Natural-Mindfulness.pdf i always like revisiting the book in link above. The drawings and names, of bones and muscles, help me visualize and locate and work with specific areas. I am fond of anatomy and physiology books and charts And yes it is a great exercise to move my point of awareness around within the physical body. Typically it rests behind my eyes. I believe it IS important, because for me it illustrates and reiterates that "i am not my body." A teacher has us do additional exercises in this vein. One is to move the point of awareness outside the physical body, and view the body from that vantage point, say up in the corner of the room and see myself sitting typing at the computer. And then another exercise is to hold both views simultaneously. See the aerial view of me at the computer from my point of awareness up in the corner of the room; and at the same time my point of awareness is still behind my eyes in my physical body. That one feels clunkier. Teacher describes it as feeling strange but that it can become as natural as being able to hear and see at the same time (which is also dealing with two streams of data at the same time). I don't do the both views at the same time very often. But I do the point of awareness outside the body regularly. Teacher also has us do this while we are moving, for instance outside on my daily walk in nature my point of awareness is oh say 10 feet higher than my head, and five feet to the right and five feet behind as the body walks. This shifts the framework entirely, from oh my awareness is in the physical body; to instead oh the physical body is in my awareness. For me this is important, and as the post phrases it, it brings me peace of mind. It is a felt sense of oh! this is the truth of who i am. It just feels very natural and clear to be a point of awareness. Indeed, i am not my body. ---------------- [Extending this even further, everything physical (not just the physical body) is in my awareness. In that scenario (another exercise) my awareness expands from a point to be much "bigger" and it holds and contains the walking path, the building, the trees, the town, the continent, the planet, the universe and everything in it. That is an even bigger shift in the belief system. But it demonstrates what that pesky phrase means "you contain the whole world". Literally it's all in your head, like that other phrase about the physical world has no more substance than a dream, or is an illusion.] Those are some of the exercises that teacher has us doing . Edited 11 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
liminal_luke Posted 12 hours ago (edited) If meditation means samadhi or a feeling of oneness or dropping the sense of self, count me out of this discussion. When those things happen to me on the regular, I´ll let you know. But if meditation means sitting on a cushion and attempting to just be, then yeah, I can speak to that. Most of us, me very much included, have things about ourselves that are back of mind, things maybe we don´t like to think about so much. Like maybe the very ordinary but still real trauma of growing up with parents who didn´t know how to give us what we needed when we were five. That´s the kind of stuff I don´t think about very much -- unless I´m sitting on a cushion and attempting to "just be." In that meditation context, all the BS that was in the back of my mind moves to the front. Oops! I know meditation isn´t supposed to be therapy, exactly, but I do think that getting to know the hidden parts of myself better is therapeutic. It´s relaxing. All that stuffed away ordinary trauma can tighten my muscles and constrict my breath. When I become conscious of it and let the associated feelings run their course, my body relaxes. This feels good. Perhaps none of this has anything to do with real purpose of meditation in a formal or technical sense, but this has been my experience. Edited 11 hours ago by liminal_luke 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 11 hours ago (edited) 28 minutes ago, liminal_luke said: That´s the kind of stuff I don´t think about very much -- unless I´m sitting on a cushion and attempting to "just be." In that medition context, all the BS that was in the back of my mind moves to the front. Oops! I know meditation isn´t supposed to be therapy, exactly, but I do think that getting to know the hidden parts of myself better is therapeutic. It´s relaxing. All that stuffed away ordinary trauma can tighten my muscles and constrict my breath. When I become conscious of it and let the associated feelings run their course, my body relaxes. This feels good. Perhaps none of this has anything to do with real purpose of meditation in a formal or technical sense, but this has been my experience. In my view, what is described above YES has everything to do with it and YES it is very much part of meditation. Trust your experience. It does not have to look a certain way, and it does not have to look or be like anyone else's. You are the authority on what works for you, and on your own healing. Nobody else is. Edited 11 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
forestofclarity Posted 11 hours ago 48 minutes ago, liminal_luke said: Perhaps none of this has anything to do with real purpose of meditation in a formal or technical sense, Sounds a lot like objectless shamatha (calm abiding) with the dissolution of vasanas (mind habits). Sorry. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Master Logray Posted 7 hours ago 4 hours ago, Taomeow said: In some of the oldest shamanic traditions (e.g. Mongolian), meditation is called a "horse." Same idea as your "walking" -- only faster. It's neither the goal nor the destination of practice, it's not self-serving. It is a vehicle that serves to take the practitioner to some kind of "elsewhere." A meditation aiming to get "nowhere," to arrive at "nothing," may accomplish just that. An exploratory one -- "wherever it may take me" -- may accomplish that and take you "somewhere." I love this paragraph. For Taoist meditation, yes, some of those have so much things to do during meditation that I sometimes wonder if the term meditation is correctly describing it or not. Boredom is very useful and essential. If boredom is an issue, how can a person can sit more than 10 minutes after the initial "fun" or relaxed phase. For me, I found boredom gives me a more quieter mind during the Covid period when the whole society was bored including myself. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigSkyDiamond Posted 7 hours ago (edited) boredom is an emotion so it is treated like any other emotion, or any other thought, that arises. observe it, allow it, and it floats on by. whatever distraction arises is part of the practice. barking dog, loud leafblower, noisy neighbors. listen for the silence that is in and around and between the noises. there is always an underlying stillness, so i can rest in that awareness. Edited 7 hours ago by BigSkyDiamond Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sherman Krebbs Posted 7 hours ago 26 minutes ago, BigSkyDiamond said: boredom is an emotion so it is treated like any other emotion, or any other thought, that arises. observe it, allow it, and it floats on by Sorry, I could not resist Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lairg Posted 5 hours ago (edited) Many years ago a form of meditation just appeared in my consciousness as I studied for my final university exams. It worked quite well. Then I learned a mantra meditation - Transcendental Meditation. That worked better - particularly the advanced techniques Some years later in meditation I was shown a different technique each morning for a week. The first was the most important for spiritual science: Rising on the Planes Decades later it became clear to me that meditating in the heart is the key in the human phase. I have posted about that https://www.thedaobums.com/search/?&q=heart&author=Lairg&sortby=newest Edited 5 hours ago by Lairg Share this post Link to post Share on other sites