Seeker of Wisdom

Thanks TI, all clear. Our conversation does point out once again some mistakes AYP makes. The fact that our independent experiences correlate to clear stages laid out many years ago contradicts the simple 'inner silence' idea, as there are definite stages of development based on much more than mere mental quiet, which anyone who practices shamatha will see for themselves. Also, AYP would just treat nimittas as scenery, but by keeping on a physical sensation it would not be possible to get past the form skhanda or even stage 4 shamatha, probably. Yogani can't seem to understand the idea of adapting practices as one advances and has certain experiences.

Hi, TI. My practice is going well, although as per the instructions in The Attention Revolution I focus on the sensation of breathing at the nostrils. Alan Wallace says the nimitta will form by itself in stage 4, and although your method sounds like it works for you, I'm sticking to Wallace's. Visualisation just doesn't suit me personally. In my hour-long session I only experience coarse excitation for a max of 15 seconds at a time. I'm easily on the breath most of the session, so I've achieved the 3rd stage of shamatha. Just a bit more stability and I'll reach the 4th! When it appears, I will focus on the nimitta. I often get a peaceful\content happiness in practice which I can see becoming rapture in later stages, and a nice cool chi flowing up to my neck at times. In daily life, I feel a certain stability that's grounded in the world, but comes with a relaxing sense of resting in it without being affected much. I've noticed the same thing about the breath and the mind. The breath can become very subtle as the mind settles. Focusing on the subtler sensation helps bring out more vividness, encouraging stability and relaxation, refining the breath more. So there's a neat upward spiral there.

Read 'The Attention Revolution' by Alan Wallace, and get started on the path to direct experience! Bill Bodri is also good, there's a link to his site in my signature. Aside from that, think deeply from every angle before coming to conclusions, question your deepest assumptions... and in this internet age, be strongly on guard against pseudoscience and rumours passed off as fact. As for what the truth is, I suggest looking into anatman, sunyata and dialectical monism as food for thought.

Hi Crunchy. I've done a lot of work on the twisted underbelly of my own psyche, so I have a few insights and tips for you. First, as you already know repression is worse than useless. What you want to do instead is watch your angry thoughts and emotions, as they arise, as a neutral observer. This gives you the mental space needed to get to the root of the problem, and not act inappropriately. Now, you can introspect. Sit down with pen and paper. Write what made you angry and why. Then question the reason for your anger, and keep going until there's no further to go. An example of how this may go could be: Builder made me angry->hammering disturbed me->trying to work->I was inconvenienced->I should have quiet in my own home->I have right over my home to be as I want. So in this example, we now see that the builder actually prompted anger because of an unreasonable territorial mindset. Now we can work on this root mindset calmly by making factual statements: I can't always expect to have control. He was just doing his job. My neighbour has the right to get a builder to work on her house. This is a house, not territory I need to defend from invaders. What this exercise does is actually get to the root of our thinking and reprogram it, making it more helpful, accurate and reasonable. You will often find rigid 'shoulds' that lead to anger and frustration when they are inevitably broken, like 'others should follow my standards'. You'll find territorial, aggressive, defensive\paranoid mental habits, leftovers from the jungle. Read 'the chimp paradox' for more on that! Continuing our example, now we can approach the builder calmly if we wish and sort out a solution, such as not working at a specific time or doing a different task at that time. Much better than screaming at him or sitting at home getting worked up and suppressing it! Hope that helps. And of course, there's the good old 'talk to a friend' for clearing anger which you've already suppressed. Meditation rocks too, check out 'the attention revolution' by Allen Wallace.

Allan Wallace seems to define coarse laxity as a state where the attention is on a stagnant blank state WITHIN the surface mind, where thoughts normally occur. This is very different to the bright clear awareness BELOW the conceptual mind, which is natural, but just hidden by the hindrances. The first is reached through suppressing thoughts, or tiring out the mind through mindless repetition until it gives up thought, as in DM. The second is unveiled through shamatha.

If you aren't feeling sleep deprived, what's so bad about being conscious an extra 8 hours each day? That's like two more decades of experience in the same lifetime. I would use that extra time to cultivate, exercise, learn and relax. If your body doesn't need sleep, why try to make it sleep?

I just read The Attention Revolution, by Alan Wallace. It's a great book on the stages and practice of shamatha; how it ties into the path; the relation between shamatha and vipassanna; the basics of lucid dreaming or dream yoga, and also touches on things like the 4 immeasurables. It's mainly focused on 3 techniques: anapana, resting the mind in the natural state, and awareness of awareness. Wallace suggests moving through these increasingly subtle practices as you advance, and goes into detail on adjustments you can make along the way. But the information can be easily applied to any shamatha method, and in particular Wallace explains how to use anapana through all the stages by focusing on nimittas then counterpart signs as they appear. Highly recommended!

If you aren't feeling sleep deprived, then there's no problem here. For whatever reason your body simply needs less sleep now. Just use the extra time usefully.

My perspective is, imagine an octopus. Each mind-stream is an individual tentacle, but each tentacle has a common basis (the head) and the whole thing is 'octopus'. You can't say they're separate, but nor is it quite oneness. As for 'one consciousness'... I don't think consciousness is any more fundamental than matter or chi! Just another skhanda, not self and subject to change. I see the Self as the fundamental 'suchness' behind the emptiness of phenomena, not consciousness.

Also maybe try some yoga inversions to help your lymph nodes flush, but take it easy.

Just meditate and try to be virtuous. Cultivate mental clarity, non-clinging and focus, and retain your jing. Everything will open up by itself when you let go and let your chi flow! Read http://www.meditationexpert.com/Stages2.pdf. It tells you pretty much all you need to know about this aspect of the path.

I agree with you. I never said I expected Zhunti to somehow make me become enlightened. I'm using this mantra because, quite simply, I'm getting benefits. And if it does turn out to really get me contact with Zhunti, well, that could hardly hurt.

Thanks for the advice TI. I just got 'the attention revolution' and will start it soon. #edit# finished it, and I highly recommend it. http://thetaobums.com/topic/26645-the-attention-revolution/

Hi TI. Basically I focus on the whole experience of breathing. The flow of air through the nose, movement of the chest and stomach, etc. I'm not yet at a stage where there are nimittas, breath stopping or such, but I guess the next step for me would be observing chi, and from there... I'll see what's natural as I get there.

Some comments on how my experience of a few months of anapana contrasts with my nearly 2 years of DM. There is a very clear difference. Have you ever been so focused you didn't notice stuff in the background? That happened to me a few times as a child, before my mind got cluttered I guess. Now due to anapana, it's happened again a few times (and I mean in daily activity, not just while meditating). This makes it obvious to me that whereas DM gave superficial relaxation and torpor, anapana is already making a lasting difference to my mental functioning. The process of TRYING to focus weeds out mental flickering and releases more of the mind's clarity, stability and strength. There's no random bobbing up and down like when I did AYP. Of course I'm most clear just after practice, but there's a consistent depth of awareness during the day, because with actual sustained effort, torpor and flickering are cut naturally as they arise and are weakened for lasting change. The same would apply for any real practice.

As far as I'm concerned, if there is this Zhunti person and I am connecting to her through this mantra, that's great. But so far I have no evidence it's true, so I'm assuming it's not until I do. HOWEVER, is this mantra practice helping stabilise my mind? Yes. Is focusing on a virtuous aim, along with a name which reminds me of what I wish to be, helping me be more virtuous and determined to progress? Yes. Is it affecting my heart chakra, somehow? Yes. I agree with the need for scepticism! Blind faith makes no sense to me at all. I believe things on experience and logic.

Bill Bodri says: Also see this on anapana.

Try imagining taking off your head and resting it on your lap.

Now I'm getting a mild ache in the heart.

It's been a while since I added to this thread, but I just realized there's another important point to mention - AYP's approach to daily activity outside practices. So this approach is to do practices twice a day, and completely forget about it for the whole rest of the day. Even if the AYP practices were effective and safe, this approach would be a case of one step forward, one step back. If between practices you don't use mindfulness/introspection/virtue cultivation/mantra/self-inquiry/etc; surely there will be cultivation during practice time but in the majority of the day the old samskaras will be reasserting themselves? Common sense states that cultivation requires sustained practice because we're trying to completely overhaul the deepest layers of negative habits, ignorance, and so on. How can one advance far in (for example) shamatha from concentrating in meditation for the AYP suggested 40mins (20mins, 2 sessions), then returning to usual multitasking and mindlessness for the rest of the day? And when we consider that in AYP meditation involves no effort at all... well, it's not hard to see that mental flickering will not be uprooted to unveil natural stability, just glossed over with torpor or at best relaxation. The same applies for any aspect of the path to enlightenment.

All energy/form developments like yuan chi and spiritual body are a necessary part of the journey to enlightenment. However, they are not something you need to do deliberately (they happen naturally as the mind refines). And if you want all channels to open fully, that requires letting go of the body anyway so the mind no longer crimps the flow by clinging to it. Energy work is only worth anything to the extent that it makes the mind easier to work with. Cultivating wisdom, clarity and virtue is 10,000 times more important than all the jing, chi, etc stuff. Energy work is a really useful auxiliary that speeds things up a lot. We can't ignore it, but if we attach to it then we're creating new hindrances.

Some kind of cross legged is ideal as it helps open the nadis in the legs. However, when you meditate you have to be able to work with the mind without the body disturbing you so comfort is far more important. A chair is fine. Even lying down is fine if you need to. Order of importance IMO: Comfort Straight back Upright Crossed legs As for dealing with the pain, try very gentle yoga asanas with a competent teacher, chiropractors, and turmeric (good for joints I'm told).

I'm so damn sick of people here in the West teaching and practicing yoga as mere physical exercise. It's been turned into a buzzword so people who know nothing about yoga can come up with any wacky exercise regime and call it 'yoga'. When yoga first came to the West, it was taken as the spiritual practice that it is. Then, very quickly, Western yoga degraded into a semi-mystical practice for hippies with no actual disciplined search for enlightenment. And now the pathalogical materialism of the US, UK etc has degraded 'yoga' in these countries into shite like aqua yoga or anti-gravity yoga with no connection whatsoever to spirituality beside maybe using the odd sanskrit word without understanding what it means. Of course there are people on here and elsewhere who actually do yoga. But, what do we find in most (probably not all to be fair) of the yoga studios (run by teachers who are no closer to real attainment than the students, but have just done a bullshit teacher training course) - mere aerobics with a little pranayama and, if you're lucky, light meditation. 90mins of relaxation once a week, done with no spiritual intent and forgotten once out of the studio for another week. Is exercise good? Yes. But don't call it yoga! F*** sake...

No worries, we're all flawed and I appreciate being prompted to look honestly at myself. What's the story there, I'm intrigued.

This practice is great. I can really feel it beginning to clear up the heart. It fits in nicely with my anapana and other practices, helping to train the mind to be focused and clear outside sitting meditation. Also, I can do it all day long. I look forward to seeing what this mantra does once you get into millions of repetitions.