Maddie

I've only recently begun to do Samatha meditation for any significant length of time. Is it normal for it to make you feel "weird" at first?

I've noticed that after my exhale there is a very small pause, but between inhale and exhale there does not seem to be a pause. So is what Master Nan is saying is to focus on that pause? Also does anyone else notice all sorts of subconscious goo bubble up after doing Samatha?

I may not have a correct understanding of this, BUT this is what I've seemed to notice about meditation lately. With Samatha first of all its very hard to do. It seems like just about every second I have to bring my focus back to the present. Yet even if I do a relatively short amount of Samatha it seems like after that all sorts of stuff bubbles up from the depths and then I have to do quite a bit of Vipassana to deal with it. So today for example. I did 40 min of Zhunti mantra followed by 20 min of Samatha to make a nice even hour. After that I start feeling "fidgety" so a little later I go and do Vipassana. Well it was like my mind felt like this wild caged beast as I first sat to do Vipassana. When I closed my eyes I almost literally visualized this angry ape in a cage thrashing about wanting to be anywhere and doing anything other than sitting in meditation. It was very intense. It took a good 1 hour and 20 min for things to settle down. Is this a standard pattern?

Is there a difference between Anapana and Samantha? If so what is it?

where is this option? I'd really like to hear this :-)

After you mentioned that I realized that I have very little pause in between my breaths. I just finished doing Samantha before I got back online. What I find challenging is sometimes (like in the case of this session) I have to constantly keep bringing my mind back to the present, breath, ect... as in like every second. It's not always that way, but it is frequently. Does this get easier with time?

That's interesting since the heart houses the mind/shen/spirit/consciousness

would you mind explaining more about focusing on the gaps between breaths? Do you simply focus awareness that they are occurring? And what is the purpose of this?

That might explain how they are able to navigate during their long seasonal migrations.

Well I'll have to give that mudra a try next time haha

Ok I think one great benefit to cultivating Metta is that its the perfect antidote to just about anything negative that might come up during meditation. This would not only include insights into less than flattering things about one's self, but also it helps keep the ego in check when you think about others, to not judge them or compete with them, but to want good for them.

Do you do that magical Taoist talisman sort of calligraphy?

I know I've already mentioned this some, but after some more meditation the insight deepens lol. So they way it seems to me from at least a subjective point of view is that Samantha improves my concentration for Vipassana AND creates space for the latent subconscious to arise thus making me aware of what really is in there. Then Vipassana allows me to dissect those elements of the subconscious that arise through observation until this seem to .. um... dissolve? At least that's how it seems. So here is how its gone. The past few days I did a lot of Samantha. Last night I got hit with all sorts of strong desire of mostly the sexual variety. This morning I did a Vipassana session before clinic and the desire dissolved to a large degree. I got back from clinic and did another Vipassana session and at least on a conscious level I can't detect any desire at the moment. Now I'm not naive enough to think I've eliminated all desire lol, but what I am saying is that at this moment I am not consciously aware of any. But never to worry I'm sure some more Samantha will uncover a fresh batch haha. In the midst of this evenings Vipassana session when I was staring desire in the face and it felt intense for a while it suddenly became so crystal clear as to why one would reincarnate if they had not eliminated attachments and cravings. Just that deep strong instinctual urge to have, and experience the sensation of the senses is so powerful the thought of abandoning it would seem like the greatest disaster for the subconscious. I found this little clip from Ajahn Sona interesting in light of this day I've had lol. Plus I think his monastery in BC is sweet :-)

There are a lot of different mudras you can use during meditation, just depends on what it is your wanting to do.

Yea I guess that's why the Chinese/Taiwanese girls love talking to me though they tend to avoid most of the other white guys at my school lol. I'm the weird white guy that is doing heart meditations and not trying to get into their pants haha. *haha I watched some of that TV show, its kind of cheesy but like you said "cute" lol

Before my clinic shirt I did an hour of Vipassana in order to look into this desire issue. So when I sat down in meditation I began by observing my heart as this is where I felt the most sensation. It was as though the desire was emanating from there. I felt a lot of sensation in my heart and it was quite strong. After a little while of observing my heart I felt this sensation go up the left side of my neck and into the lower left quadrant of my head, much like it did a couple weeks ago when I was going through this same thing. I'm assuming this heart sensation radiating up the left side of my neck to my head is part of the internal channel of the heart meridian that goes to the brain/upper dan tien. I definitely felt my caroitd artery involved and I'm assuming my left vagus nerve? So now I'm feeling my heart, neck and part of my head all pulsate at the same time, all connected. After this goes on for a while I then feel this sensation radiate down my arms to my little and ring fingers where the heart, small intestine and san jiao meridians run to. So now I'm feeling all of the above at the same time. I'm not trying to make this happen, simply observing it. The only part of my heart meridian that I did not feel was the internal branch that goes down to the small intestine. Next I then notice more detail about my heart. I notice two points in my heart that seem to be particularly strong in sensation which are the right atrium behind my third intercoastal space in my chest and the bottom of my left ventricle behind my left scapula in the back. I don't know why I thought this but it seemed like to me that these we the "poles" of my heart (though I'm not sure which one was positive and which one was negative) and my hearts qi field seemed to emanate from these points. Anyways at this point I'm simply observing these sensations but aside from noting where they are and how they feel there is really nothing of spectacular insight going on. But then after some more time of observing all of this, how it feels I begin to uncover the delusion that my heart shen is buying into. So I see that my heart is convinced that seeking after these cravings and desires will bring happiness (thus the heart is pursuing its emotion... joy). Why my heart/consciousness does not seem to realize is how this craving and desire actually produce suffering as the Buddha said. Though my heart/consciousness is just operating from the conditioning of my subconscious with out realizing what's really going on. So its is at this point that while I'm aware of my heart craving and desire that I mentally play out the scenario in my mind of how this craving was really just frustrating me and not making me happy at all. It was especially at this point where I felt how much doing a bunch of Samantha the past several days had helped as this took a great deal of focused concentration. After focusing on how desire really made me feel in the present as opposed to just being lost in the desire itself all that sensation I felt in my heart and its meridians seemed to subside quite a bit. I can tell there is definitely more to do, but it was nice to see how simply observing the processes with in me and trying to see exactly what was going on rather than just to blindly go with it really helped. I plan on doing a few more of these Vipassana sessions today and hopefully this desire thing will be brought into a greater degree of balance.

Yea this seems to be one situation where Vipassana seems to work pretty good for me. When this last happened a couple weeks ago I observed how, and where I felt it and after a while it sort of dissolved and that was when I was talking about all those funky qi transformations. So I reckon I'll do that again here soon. *In fact upon further consideration I remembered that the last time I found myself in this same situation I had also been doing quite a bit of Samantha previously, and I had to apply Vipassana to the specific situation that arose. So what I'm thinking is happening is that Samantha makes a lot of "space". Any vacuum likes to be filled. So I think that with the space created by Samantha that what the Buddhists label as the latent/dormant aspects of the min that are always there but hidden in the subconscious come to the surface and become known to the conscious. It makes me think of what you said yesterday about how as we cultivate our consciousness become more and more aware of what is actually in the subconscious. Apparently Samantha is effective in allowing that to happen.

Of course herbs like that have their place. There is a whole chapter of herbs the "calm the spirit".

Ok so I noticed again that when ever I feel desire (though the frequency of times seems to be lessening) that it just stays in my heart (making it beat fast and hard) but it never gets past my heart anymore it seems. I don't feel arousal in the genital area, but heart pressure. So I just sit up with it for a while like tonight and do the heart sound. I guess I don't understand why its all in the heart now? Isn't that odd?

I'm not sure why this happens from time to time, but I've spent most of the night with my heart really flaring up with desire and I've just been sitting here trying to be mindful of it while doing the heart healing sound. I think I'm finally starting to get a little sleepy though most of the night is gone. I don't really understand why this happens every so often. I did do quite a bit of Samantha today, don't know if that's somehow related. *I suppose another clue was that today it was hard to focus on studying. With the heart housing the mind I suppose that makes sense as well.

One thing I've been confused about and trying to reconcile is the apparent contradiction of martial arts and Buddhism. As Buddhism is about not harming people and Shaolin trains in martial arts which is about fighting people I'm not sure how these two reconcile. Don't get me wrong I think Shaolin is cool, and I like martial arts, but as I study Buddhism more I'm confused about this.

Yea something funky definitely happens with time perception in situations like that. I remember one time someone filmed me sparring and when I was watching the play back it looked so different than how I remember experiencing it as it happened. Watching it, it looked so fast, but from my perspective the time seemed much slower. *Actually the martial art topic got me to thinking about something. I've noticed that in my TCM school its often the Chinese students that are the least interested in cultivation, qi, ect. Most of them tend to approach TCM as just another job. Some of them were telling me that even in China TCM is sort of looked at as second rate after western medicine. So I was pondering the irony of the western students being more into Tao than the Chinese students. They also told me that its very uncommon for Chinese young people there to study marital arts. Now I realize that the cultural revolution played a big part in this but these attitudes even apply to Taiwanese students who did not have a cultural revolution in their past. So I began to wonder why the Chinese seemed to have lost faith in their own culture and heritage. Then being the good history major that I am, I thought back to the Boxer Rebellion. Around the turn of the 20th century the Chinese (with good reason) were sick and tired of their country being dominated by the west. Missionaries were undermining their traditions while western businesses were dominating the economy. Part of the reason for this domination was that somewhere along the line a lot of western technology had outstripped the Chinese technology. The Chinese had lost the Opium wars (which opened the door for outside domination) largely due to their guns and cannons being inferior to those of the west. Realizing that their modern weapon technology was outclassed they began to hope in another kind of technology that they had which the west was not privy to. They hoped to rely on Kung Fu to oust the westerners. This is why it was called the Boxer Rebellion. To the westerners Kung Fu fighters were "boxers". Since Iron Shirt qigong when practiced to a high level made one very resistant to bladed weapons the martial artists assumed that they would be impervious to bullets as well. Well they weren't and as the failure of the Boxer Revolution showed Kung Fu and qigong were no match for modern weapons. This defeat caused the Chinese to swing way far in the other direction and loose faith in many of their traditions like Kung Fu and qigong. Instead of realizing both the limitations of Kung Fu and its advantages they just lost hope and threw the baby out with the bath water.

Nice, very informative. Wow I love listening to people of high cultivation talk. I was so relaxed just listening to her talk. She probably could have been talking about how to clean your toilet and I would have still found it soothing haha.

I am only vaguely familiar with this topic, but isn't there a branch of qigong calligraphy, and these calligraphy scrolls can have quite powerful attributes?

I know I know it baffles me lol. In fact it was martial arts that got me interested in qigong in the first place. I saw Dr. Yang's book about Qigong and Martial arts and I was like everyone else who as a kid saw a Kung fu movie and was like "oh that's the secret stuff they train that makes them so good" lol. So I got the book and started and lo and behold I got way better at marital arts fast! I didn't anticipate all the other stuff that came with it though. I eventually even changed styles from mostly stand up striking to Brazilian jujitsu grappling because with grappling you could stop an opponent with out hurting them (if you wanted to). But yea it was cool cause if I did qigong before practice it was like during sparing it was much easier to pick up on the subtle signs that the opponent would telegraph before they made a move and you could be a couple steps ahead of them. It also seemed to improve my speed and made taking a hit a little easier. But yea that's pretty cool about Joe Rogan. I don't know how many countless UFC matches I've listened to him announce lol. Ah that was my dream for a while there in Alaska, I trained hard, but as my MMA friends say now I got "soft" on them haha. I didn't enjoy hurting people anymore, but they all seemed to get off on it.