Seeker of Wisdom

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:

Yes! You hit the nail on the head. KL, if you're aware of something, it's just another experience, not self or self's. A self apart from experience makes no sense either. Therefore...

Past, present, future.

Don't focus on 'not thinking'. Focus on being calm, clear and focused - thought will gradually reduce in a natural, healthy way. If you actively try to stop thinking, you'll just be suppressing thought when what you need to be doing is training the mind to actually like being quiet. How? Again: http://www.wildmind.org/mindfulness Your breathing will also become subtler by itself. It's nothing to worry about, as your mind settles further you need less oxygen. It's just the opposite of what happens to your breathing when you're stressed.

What you're looking for IMO is mindfulness of breathing. It's designed for developing the ability to concentrate well, alongside calm and clarity. Here's a straightforward guide: http://www.wildmind.org/mindfulness Hope that helps.

The point of the phrase is to immerse oneself in the spirit of it, and for that to spill over into action. To become a more benevolent person to all the beings one comes across. This is not a topic where there's any point being intellectual about things. There is no need to do any interpretation. There is no need to be clever or sophisticated here. Of course a deer isn't happy to be eaten by wolves. But how does this have any bearing on whether or not it's a good thing for a human to cultivate altruistic intentions? How is someone who regularly drums into their mind 'may all beings be happy' likely to act? I'm going to take a wild guess here and say 'better'.

Of course it's unrealistic for all beings to be happy... but that's missing the point. The point is to cultivate metta and have that show in our words and actions as far as possible. If you treat all you come across kindly because you have genuine metta, you're living to the spirit of the words, trying to be a beacon of benevolence to the beings you come across. Try meditating with the slogan 'may all beings be happy', then try meditating with the slogan 'may all beings be happy, except when this causes logical inconsistencies'.

I see Buddhism slightly differently. Our experience (Buddhism is about the nature of experience, the nature of things 'in themselves' isn't the point here) is what it is, but we misprocess it out of ignorance and mistake that confused mess for the experience itself. So it's not that there's a reality hidden behind the appearance, it's that we're actively projecting a falsehood onto the reality. So then the whole idea that awakening is about escaping a dream life doesn't apply. Life is just life - so why not see it as it is? Waking up from the illusions we project means total immersion in the actual experience as it really happens. Which doesn't sound too different from Daoism to me. We can be rid of the illusions of permanence, self, etc. Illusion is a distortion of our natural condition - ignoring some chunks of experience and over-magnifying others results in a distorted picture, and it causes a subtle tension to constantly be running away from our own experience. Constantly blocking out that bit there, shifting that across, a never-ending struggle to create a convincing image of stability with a subject (self) at the center of it all. So long as we aren't awakened, we're constantly processing experience to try to get it to fit our delusions. Which makes it impossible to truly embrace experience, to truly just be. So much more free, open and simple to see in the seen just the seen, in the heard just the heard, in the sensed just the sensed, in the cognized just the cognized...

If you're not practicing super intensely or doing very hardcore energetic-based stuff, you ought to be fine. Maybe start off with half an hour mindfulness of breathing each day. http://www.wildmind.org/mindfulness In time you might want to do more, and branch out into other practices, but you'll get a very solid foundation. You'll clear up a lot of restlessness and gain a lot of clarity and stability just from that.

Shamatha is about cultivating a strong, balanced, calm, focused mind. The basic mechanics of it is you take an object such as the breath, gently put your attention on it to the exclusion of everything else, and, whenever you notice you're off the object, you gently bring yourself back to it. Through this practice, the mind learns to settle one-pointedly without much effort, without being restless or sleepy. This is meant to take you to access concentration and the jhanas. Here's a decent guide to doing the practice: http://www.wildmind.org/mindfulness Vipassana is about cultivating the kind of insight/wisdom you need to awaken - directly perceiving the Three Characteristics (impermanence, dukkha, anatta) in your experience. There are various approaches to it, such as body scanning or noting practice. Rather than focusing single-pointedly on one object, you pay attention to whatever comes up in the present objectively, in as much detail as possible. For example, you may have an itch on your face - is that one sensation, or a cloud of very rapidly arising and passing (i.e. impermanent!) mini sensations? Shamatha is like calibrating your instrument so you can perfectly measure anything. Vipassana is like running the experiment. Shamatha is like getting a bright, steady torch. Vipassana is like reading the markings on the cave wall. You might find it helpful to read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha if you haven't already. Part 1, Chapters 2, 3 & 4 will explain the above a bit more. Hence why the shamatha/vipassana way of mapping meditation is a bit artificial, and just one way of doing it. It's a very useful concept for Theravada, and often for other Buddhist systems. It may not map so well onto practices from other traditions, and with different goals. Dividing spiritual practices into different classes is like dividing the planet up into continents. Are Europe and Asia separate continents, or Eurasia? It depends what you're trying to do - so long as you don't confuse Istanbul for Kenya, you're doing something right.

You asked about metta recently - that should help. Focus especially on cultivating metta for yourself, using the advice you've been given on that. Like others have said, try to really feel whatever you're feeling, even if you're blocking out a lot of it. Your subconscious should gradually learn it's OK to feel, if you keep trying to engage fully with whatever you are feeling. Neutral feelings are also feelings you can go deeply into. Maybe you need to find a way to give yourself permission to be angry. Punch something (soft) over and over like you mean it, and see if the physical act unlocks emotion. Chop an onion (yes, go get an onion) and see if onion tears unlock some sad tears. You might also consider going to a therapist, if possible. Having someone who really knows their stuff help you figure out what your mind is doing and how to change it is probably worth a shot. And open up to someone in real life about everything that happened, if you haven't already. Best wishes, KL.

Following on from this. MN 19: MN 20:

Completely forget about concentration for now. One thing that may help is metta practice, especially cultivating metta for yourself. Another trick is to label your mind states. Say to yourself 'anger', 'boredom', 'imagining', etc. Simple one word labels. If you're not sure what label to use, use 'uncertainty' or even just 'thing'. If it can be labeled, it isn't you. Try qi gong or gentle hatha yoga. Try lying down and relaxing your muscles with each exhalation. Or just lie down and don't do anything in particular. If shamatha makes you tense, I think you've missed something about it. It's about relaxed concentration. You learn to be calm and relaxed first, and then you focus on the object without tensing up, gently releasing any distractions. The concentration builds gradually, as you calmly return to the object over and over. Relaxation is the tree's roots, stability its trunk, vividness its leaves. Spend a good long while just learning to relax. I know that's a bit boring and it doesn't feel you're making progress, but it saves you a great deal of time and issues later on. When you are ready to return to shamatha, that relaxation will make it a completely different experience. Seriously.

Mindfulness of breathing is particularly useful as a shamatha practice (for cultivating concentration/calm), while body scanning is a vipassana practice (for insight). (This division is a little artificial, but it's a useful heuristic, especially early on). Metta is a great shamatha practice too, but it's also something you can work on during your day, off the cushion, to cultivate the heart. I would suggest to focus on shamatha until you're confident you've got access concentration. Try mindfulness of breathing for a while, try metta for a while, try doing a session of each for a while. You kinda have to feel your way a bit. Once you've got access concentration sorted, then start to add body scanning. It's up to you whether you want 50/50 shamatha/vipassana or some other ratio. Key to vipassana is momentum. Try to keep up body scanning off the cushion too, as much as possible. With body scanning, it's important to emphasise moment to moment awareness. Try to see how the sensations are constantly flickering, on the order of fractions of a second. (Hence the need for access concentration!) How fast is stuff arising and passing? That's how you really see impermanence.

I've found a clear depiction of the states and stages one goes through from Theravada, particularly the 'Pragmatic (or Hardcore) Dharma' variant. Anyway... the stages of shamatha practice are: Improving calm and concentration until you reach - Access concentration (http://downtoearthdharmablog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/access-concentration-pragmatic-approach.html) Rapture and joy starting to develop alongside better concentration until - The jhanas: 1-8.*The form jhanas - The 1st jhana - consists of (subtle) thinking, (subtle) examining, rapture (physical bliss) and joy (mental bliss). The rapture and joy come from pacifying the hindrances. - The 2nd jhana - with the fading of all thought and examination comes unification of mind, which causes deeper rapture and joy. - The 3rd jhana - as above, but with rapture dropped, so has deeper joy. - The 4th jhana - with joy dropped too, there's deep unification of mind and equanimity, profoundly still. *The formless jhanas - Infinite space - like the 4th jhana, but letting go of all sense of location so it feels like space extending boundlessly in all directions. - Infinite consciousness - like the above, but tune out of the space and into the awareness of the space. - Nothingness - like the above, but you sort of 'ignore' everything so you get focused on the perception of utter blankness. Try to imagine a void, and you'll see that blankness is itself a mental image. This jhana is sort of like that. - Neither perception nor non-perception - tune out of the experience of attending to that nothingness, so experience becomes very refined. There's something there, vividly so, but it's like a wisp of smoke. The stages of vipassana are more complicated - you move through a set of states until getting to the first level of awakening, and repeat for further levels. Here's one description of the progress of insight: http://contemplativefitnessbook.com/book-two-theory/the-progress-of-insight-map/ Much more detail on all this is in http://static.squarespace.com/static/5037f52d84ae1e87f694cfda/t/5055915f84aedaeee9181119/1347785055665/ Generally the practice itself doesn't need to be changed much, it's more that you change and approach the same practice differently. Hope this helps.

I'm not a big fan of the Tulku system. I don't see why it would even be relevant if someone is the reincarnation of so-and-so. Surely the Buddha would just care about a person's qualities in the present, not who they used to be? And how can someone be said to be the reincarnation of someone's speech or someone's body - what does that even mean? This custom means children are being taken, superstitiously declared the rebirth of someone else, and hot-housed to be Bodhisattvas. When it works out well we get HHDL - someone with natural aptitude and interest trained from a young age - but there's also a high risk of kids being forced into something they don't want and even being abused horribly. Separating culture from the core can be hard. Some stuff is clearly mythology. Some stuff is clearly the monastic community bigging up monasticism. Other things are less obvious. IMHO a major pointer is to work on being a decent person, shamatha and vipassana - and see what actually happens. Be as pragmatic about the thing as possible - run the experiment and see what you get.

Nobody is doubting that TI has had real experiences, the question is whether or not they represent what the Dzogchen tradition calls rigpa. I'm not going to weigh in on that - I know next to nothing about Dzogchen and haven't experienced anything like what TI has. There definitely is a place, an important place, for people saying 'hey, not doubting your experience, but I think you're mistaken when you call it X because ... It may be Y or Z, perhaps.' We don't want anyone calling any experience anything, because then there's no point having terminology! Terms can be misused, especially when it comes to this kind of thing. But then - my above example was reasonable. Too many people say 'You think that was X? Trololol, the texts say nothing like that!' and walk away pleased with themselves for being Mr Dharma Protector™. Often it really feels like these people simply don't think anyone can achieve anything really any more, and that even if someone did, they wouldn't talk about it under any circumstances. Who does this help? Personally I'm glad for TI's experience reports. They're interesting and very encouraging, and I remember him giving very helpful pointers to people unsure whether they were experiencing something or something else.

I used to think that Islam is an inherently violent religion, because the Qur'an is an inherently violent text. Now my view is somewhere between 'Islam is a religion of peace' and 'Islam is a religion of the sword'. First, let's get some things straight: this has nothing whatsoever to do with race, and pointing out issues with Islam and issues in Muslim communities is not the same as hating Muslims. And most Muslims are decent people. It is very easy to read the Qur'an and conclude that it calls for violence. There are so many verses that do exactly that. It's clear to me that Saudi Arabia's interpretation of the Qur'an isn't without scriptural support. However, it is also possible to read it and conclude that it calls for peace except in very specific circumstances, and then with strong rules about treating prisoners properly and the like. Both sides have scholars and scripture behind their interpretation. Therefore, to say that one side aren't 'real Muslims' is just a no true Scotsman argument. Both sides consider the Qur'an the word of Allah via prophet Muhammad. Both may follow the five pillars. This makes them both Muslims. It's just that one side fits in modern society and are nice people, and one side doesn't and aren't. There are peaceful Muslims and violet Muslims. Islam is a body of text and ideas from which both draw different strands. Saying that the violent ones can't be 'real Muslims' because 'Islam is a religion of peace' holds back the project of advancing a peaceful interpretation of Islam suitable for the modern world, IMHO. It makes it difficult to address issues with homophobia and misogyny and the like in the Muslim world, because then you can be accused of being Islamaphobic. Maajid Nawaz considers this 'racism of low expectations'. If it's Islamaphobic to point out high rates of homophobia among Muslims, for example, how is the issue to be dealt with? And doesn't this imply that Muslims are somehow incapable of improving, and can't be expected to meet the rest of society's moral standards? ISIS and their ilk didn't spring up solely because of all the crap going on in the middle East. There was an underlying potential for it because those violent verses are prevalent in the Qur'an. The challenge is to argue convincingly to people leaning towards extremism that a peaceful interpretation is superior to a violent one. This will take a more sophisticated debate than 'Islam is peaceful, mkay?' There are horrific things in the Bible too. Things which led towards the Crusades and witch burning and the Spanish Inquisition. Not so long ago, people argued against the abolition of slavery by quoting the Bible! Now there are still Christian terrorists... but nothing on a scale like ISIS. Why is that? How did a peaceful interpretation become so overwhelmingly more popular? Why do some Christians think gays are an abomination, while others ignore that part of the Bible entirely? I think that's a major key to all this.

Except things are skillful or unskillful. Murdering random people is unskillful, for example. The difference is the kind of results these things lead to. Skillful qualities produce skillful results - dependent origination. Unskillful qualities produce unskillful results - dependent origination. Of course there's no self-nature of 'skillfulness' or 'unskillfulness', but it's valid relative truth and a core theme of Dharma that thoughts, words and deeds lead to either benefit or harm. And for a Vajrayana POV, here's Padmasambhava:

Looks good! I just found a bunch of her work up on access to insight too, think I'll have to read some of that: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/kee/

You can't free yourself directly, but you can short-circuit the process by which you trap yourself. Since everything feeds into a cycle, the way out is by feeding something into the cycle that unbinds it, a thorn to pick out the thorn - gnosis. Thanissaro:

Metta practice can help with trouble sleeping. This is a decent guide you can use to get the feel of it:

Thames Valley Police made the most British PSA ever, comparing tea to sexual consent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXju34Uwuys

I would guess either Daoist, or a Zen paradoxical reference to Buddha-nature. If all things are impermanent, how can you seek and find something invariable? Well, Buddha-nature is not a thing, but the principle that we can awaken, and this can't change or be destroyed if the essence of awakening is standing nowhere. The process of standing somewhere ('becoming') has to be fueled. What if it stops (i.e. the person awakens)? That lack of becoming doesn't need to be fueled. That absence of standing somewhere is then 'permanent'. Can the absence of something be considered permanent? In a way, perhaps. It's a very interesting flip in perspective.

I agree that impermanence is central - but according to Buddhism there isn't a thing in us which neither varies nor dies. That's the dizzying thing, and it can seem disturbing. But I think that's where really profound freedom comes in, because with absolutely nothing to hold on to, there is nowhere to stand. So you don't take a stand, you don't put yourself anywhere and so nothing can fall out from beneath you. And what is the nature of the seen, heard, sensed and cognized?