Meditation MEGATHREAD

[Draggletail]

I don't claim meditation, it is useless, can't get anywhere with it in. Everybody is born with it, most of us forget, few look for it again. It is not like a cheque you claim at the bank or guiness book of records.

It feels great but has no goal, and when meditation is present even that "I" of feeling great becomes just one feeling great, or bad but than it dont matter any more. Than bad feels great and great feels bad, yes that is really possible.

 

Richard you are more than welcome to start all exploration now, fresh, clean, empty, free from the past, free from unwillingness.

dutch, it sounds like you've experienced 'The First Rank of Tozan' - it's a zen thing as I understand it. Not thay I know much about it, but found this coincidentally while Googling.

Once you get to stage one (of the First Rank of Tozan) you’ve realized that there’s more to life than just the relative world. You’ve had an experience of the transcendent which underlies the relative world, and you’ve learned how to get into the transcendent when you want to. You can’t, however, stay there. When you stop doing whatever allows you to get there, you return to the relative. You can visit, but you can’t stay.

 

In the transcendent, everything just “is”. It isn’t good or bad. In fact, there are no qualities to anything, and no distinctions are made. Qualities and distinctions are part of the relative world. What’s more, the transcendent has no beginning and no ending. It’s unborn and undying. It also has no boundaries. It includes everything. Everything is in it, and it is in everything. From the transcendent, there’s nowhere to go, because you’re everywhere. There’s nothing to get, because you’re everything. And, there’s nothing to be afraid of, because there’s nothing outside of you that could threaten you. Everything, including the suffering of the world, is just part of the dance of the universe. Everything is perfect, peaceful, and timeless. In the transcendent, it’s always now.

 

You visit this place, once you learn how to do that, and it renews you, revitalizes you, beckons you. It tells you that there’s something more to life than you thought there was. Eckhardt Tolle is inviting people into this space, and gives some great hints on how to get into it. Unless you make certain fundamental shifts in perspective, though, your mind keeps pulling you back to the relative world, to the world of the past and the future, and out of the now moment.

 

So that’s the first stage. You can visit the transcendent, but it isn’t your permanent experience. To get to the second stage, there are some important insights you need to have and certain things you need to drop. The first thing you need to do to get to the second stage is to fully surrender to what is. In doing this you understand at a deep level that there are certain things about the universe and about being human that just are the way they are. There’s no escape from them, and there’s no changing them, and resisting them just creates suffering.

 

For instance, people, things, and events exist in time. They come into being and eventually pass away. Because of this, and because to be here as a human being you have to be attached, at least a little bit, to the people, things, and events in your life, there always will be suffering in the world. Most people, of course, are attached a lot, and as a result they suffer a lot. People live, and then they die. There are causes and effects–karma. Sometimes you don’t get what you want. Sometimes you get what you don’t want. Resistance to these fundamental facts of existance, and attachment to it being otherwise, creates suffering, and keeps you stuck in the relative world.

[PaliRichard]

I don't claim meditation, it is useless, can't get anywhere with it in. Everybody is born with it, most of us forget, few look for it again. It is not like a cheque you claim at the bank or guiness book of records.

It feels great but has no goal, and when meditation is present even that "I" of feeling great becomes just one feeling great, or bad but than it dont matter any more. Than bad feels great and great feels bad, yes that is really possible.

 

Richard you are more than welcome to start all exploration now, fresh, clean, empty, free from the past, free from unwillingness.

 

This still sounds like the pre identity state of an infant or the state of the brain damage cases I alluded to earlier though, it is not a state of meditation, neither is it the state that Draggletail puts forward above.

 

There is another Zen description that explains in a much clearer way what Draggletail is sayong (I usually try and stay away from Zen as it is usually easily misunderstood, the challenge stands about the mountain no mountain mountain line from Donovan I put forward earlier in the thread BTW).

 

The mind during meditation should be a lake with the moons reflection in it, that is an accirate (and not all Zen sayings are) Zen description of what the Buddha taught, and it is far different to the description that you are putting to us as meditation, which still comes across as unknowable because there is no experiencer.

[pattricia]

Did you know that meditating for 12 mins a day for eight weeks, boosted blood flow in the parts of the brain responsible for recall. ? In other words it improves your memory. Now thats what I like to hear.

[PaliRichard]

This still sounds like the pre identity state of an infant or the state of the brain damage cases I alluded to earlier though, it is not a state of meditation, neither is it the state that Draggletail puts forward above.

 

There is another Zen description that explains in a much clearer way what Draggletail is sayong (I usually try and stay away from Zen as it is usually easily misunderstood, the challenge stands about the mountain no mountain mountain line from Donovan I put forward earlier in the thread BTW).

 

The mind during meditation should be a lake with the moons reflection in it, that is an accirate (and not all Zen sayings are) Zen description of what the Buddha taught, and it is far different to the description that you are putting to us as meditation, which still comes across as unknowable because there is no experiencer.

 

I'm going to expand on this because I was on my phone when I made the post and can't really see what I'm doing.

 

I really want to clarify something dutch, I'm not disagreeing with you because I want to argue, but because I want to understand what you mean by meditation. I want you to bear this in mind when you are reading this post because I am going to be honest with you and you may disagree with what I say.

 

Earlier in the thread johncocker said

 

the rajneesh'ies I"ve met in india and other countrys are a lesson in arrogance and egocentric behavior[/Quote]

 

I think this is one of the most insightful things I have read on this post, because it cuts to the core of what I have been trying to say.

 

Funilly enough, in the car earlier I was listening to a Dhamma talk (Buddhist sermon) and the speaker touched upon this subject, he said he had been talking to an expert in Buddhism, someone who had studied the Pali canon all his life, and that the man could recite any line from any Sutta in the whole canon (The Pali canon his huge, it is considered to be in the region of eleven times bigger than the Bible). When it came to understanding the scriptures however, the speaker said the expert didn't really have any insight, he really didn't know where to start, because he had studied the canon only on an academic level.

 

dutch, all the posts you have made, and some aspects in particular, lead me to the feeling that you are somewhat like this expert. I get the impression that you have read plenty of books and may have even met many inspirational teachers but you have only understood on an intellectual level.

 

You may have got the impression that I am somewhat anti Zen, this is not the case, but I do think it is counter productive for the reason that its very simplicity is an obstacle to insight into it.

 

When I first started learning about Buddhism I understood it perfectly - or so I thought - but I understood it on an intellectual level. That didn't stop me making statements like 'We're all one with reality', or 'The self doesn't really exist' to try to make myself sound like I had some amazing insight.

 

When I started meditating under my first Zen teacher and I made such statements he would just laugh at me, outright, and tell me that if I thought there was no seperation between myself and the universe I might as well just give up meditating. Being headstrong I would cleverly (I thought) draw his attention to those I considered were masters on the path and point out that it was them who were saying the universe and myself were one and there was no self. He simply said they were wrong, and that they needed to meditate more and talk less.

 

When I left his training he presented me with a book, it had quotes from the masters I had been pointing out to him when I started, the ones he said were wrong. He told me I ncould do worse than learn from those masters! Needless to say I was confused, but you know what? He was right on both counts.

 

I didn't find this out until much later in my Zen training (I left the Mahayana school when I 'discovered' the Theravada, but I had many years training in Zen meditation) when I realised, which is the key word, realized what my original teacher had been saying.

 

When one understands as they are the teachings it is easy to put them into words, abstractions (in Zen anyway) are used between master and student, but shouldn't really be used in a general forum. All meditators understand that the experience cannot be put into words, but that doesn't mean that there are not ways in which we can speak about it.

 

That is why I think you only understand on an intellectual level and not an experiential one, because I have been there myself, and the way you make abstract statements, (actually contradicting abstract statements) but cannot actually put your experience into any form of explanation suggests that you haven't had the experience and have merely drawn on the examples of others that you are attracted to.

 

The other thing I suspected and again it was reading someone elses post that alerted me to this was that the things that you are reading are inspired by Hindu meditation (whether the authors acknowledge this or not is another thing) If this is the case I can understand at least on a philosophical level what it is that you are saying, but, and it is a big but simply because you claim that your meditation is without religious boundries, my understanding of that philosophy comes only in context of the whole Hindu philosophy, it needs certain religious aspects to make any sense.

 

In relation to this I refer you back to my earlier posts about Buddha saying that such states, (and this brings us back round to my johncocker quote) despite appearing to be without any aspect of self, are in themselves states of clinging, but because we are clinging to a feeling of universal oneness we don't realise it. In this way such states can be the hardest of all to break away from, because we think that we are free of any state at all.

 

I stress, I haven't experienced such states myself, and cannot categorically state that you haven't, which is what started this whole to ing and fro ing in the first place - because if such states are to be experienced, I would like to understand more about them in preperation for if I do experience them. It is simply that they are alien to the meditation that I know, and as such want to know both sides - I have the opinion of the Buddha - what I don't have is the opinion from the Hindu perspective who claims that this is union with Brahma.

 

I hope you understand what I am trying to say, as you don't seem to have understood it in any of my other posts, and what I am suggesting is not that my, or Buddhist, or whatever form of meditation is somehow 'higher' or 'better' than yours, even the thought from the Buddhist perspective would prove to me that I myself don't know the first thing about Buddhism! But all I want is a simple swapping of philosophy, put to me without the ego and the abstract remarks and the belittling of my system, in plain, simple words that I can ask you questions and recieve straight answers from, a simple philosophical overview of what you mean and I will be more than happy to answer any questions you have about Buddhism and it's meditation practices.

 

It has to be philosophical unless I directly experience it.

 

Sorry for the long, long, post.

 

It's magha puja tomorrow so I wont be online, so if you do reply I am not being rude by delaying responding to you.

 

.....and please if you don't have anything to say to me on the subject, don't respond, I would rather that than have another abstract comment

 

Take care.

[PaliRichard]

Did you know that meditating for 12 mins a day for eight weeks, boosted blood flow in the parts of the brain responsible for recall. ? In other words it improves your memory. Now thats what I like to hear.

 

Meditating, even simple meditating has many health benefits, both physical and mental, and the good thing is they are constantly using it in studies to find out more about it

 

[Kadogo]

" Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better " - Emile Coue.

 

Not worked for Nick Clegg though, has it ?

[Mrs Overall]

Did you know that meditating for 12 mins a day for eight weeks, boosted blood flow in the parts of the brain responsible for recall. ? In other words it improves your memory. Now thats what I like to hear.

 

 

Same here Pattricia, all the rest of this is going straight over my head:roll:

[dutch]

Did you know that meditating for 12 mins a day for eight weeks, boosted blood flow in the parts of the brain responsible for recall. ? In other words it improves your memory. Now thats what I like to hear.

 

World of meditation is full of surprises.

[dutch]

Richard, how are you dhamma friend.

 

I have "not reached" any "rank anywhere" and don't need to have it either, you can have it and ill live without it!

You have higher better meditation, I don't have that, the lower meditation if it is there will do the job fine for me.

I have not read one book about meditation for over 10 years now, given them away now.

 

I would love to know what the buddha really knew but I will never know it.

[janie48]

Meditating, even simple meditating has many health benefits, both physical and mental, and the good thing is they are constantly using it in studies to find out more about it

 

 

Is this simple meditation any good as a starter Richard?

 

http://www.summum.us/meditation/simple.shtml