Seeker of Wisdom

Obviously there isn't nothing. You can state with certainty that experience exists. Looking at a chair maybe you can doubt 'chair' and you really should doubt 'looker' - but you can't doubt 'looking'. Good question. What about skill? If you want a certain outcome, won't some things be skilful and others unskilful, relative to you at least? Or maybe being nice is just... nice? Decision-making occurs. Does whether or not the outcome is determined really matter? Yeah (except strike out 'without something happening'). Cool, huh?

Obviously Mahayana and Vajrayana weren't taught by Shakyamuni. However, there is a lot of brilliant material in there. If you learn/apply the early stuff well first, you can get a lot more out of the later stuff IMO. You also have to look to the spirit and symbolism behind the words.

I would say that if someone knows how to make the switch from attending to their lives to attending to the fundamental nature of experience and vice versa as needed, they will do fine. The issue is if someone makes it all about story, and all about massaging their feelings, and never allows themselves to really refine samadhi or really investigate phenomena. Of course it's better to virtuously absorb yourself in story than to have nothing to say besides 'this is impermanent' - that's also extreme. Awakening lies between the two.

Improving basic physical health is a necessary part of Daoism and improving basic mental health is a necessary part of Buddhism. However, when I think we need to ask 'therapeutic of what, with what priorities?' Because this: doesn't sound to me like what the Buddha intended. Buddhism notes that there are different kinds of problems people have and thus different levels of goal to aim for. If someone is psychologically vulnerable, of course it's fine for them to work on mindfulness merely in the watered-down way therapists teach it, as a method to smooth life's edges. If metta helps them feel better, fantastic. It is wonderful to tone down the excessive anger and fear and stress and so on and cultivate love and courage and calm. But this is not what higher levels of shamatha and vipassana are about. This is not what awakening is about. It's a problem when grown adults can't forget the way they feel about this or that issue for long enough to seriously stay with the breath as a means to cultivate samadhi. If someone thinks they're practising vipassana but really they're massaging their feelings rather than observing how they arise and cease, they can waste whole retreats spinning in the content of their stories rather than gaining insight into the nature of experience. Gaining the insight which flows into awakening requires a shift of focus from what an experience refers to (seeing a lamp) or feels like (seeing a lamp - neutral) to the fundamental qualities of experience itself (seeing - impermanent, dukkha, anatta; -> neutral feeling - impermanent, dukkha, anatta). Therapy has its place but doesn't go so far because it inherently works on the level of story. Hardcore Dharma is largely a reaction against precisely this.

Well Steve made some great points. On guidelines - if we look at the 5 precepts, they're presented as things people choose for the benefits they bring. Just following rules because someone has made them misses the intended spirit. Also, they have both negative and positive aspects. For example: 'Abandoning the taking of life, he abstains from the taking of life. He dwells with his rod laid down, his knife laid down, scrupulous, kind, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings.' On 'suffering': this is a common but bit misleading translation of 'dukkha', which is really something deeper. It's more like a sort of tension caused by our grasping to experiences, rules, views and especially to our sense of self, based in ignorance. To be free of this grasping and ignorance is to be free of dukkha and experience life in a much more fresh, open way. Buddhism doesn't deny that positive things exist, and in fact virtue, samadhi and wisdom can all bring different joyful flavours.

Ron Crouch on vipassana: Look at whatever comes closely. How long does it last? How are you attaching to it or shoving it away? Do you own it? You don't need to do anything special to introduce pain to work with. If you just stay still for a bit, you will quickly have itches you want to scratch, aches, boredom, etc. Just be sensible about recognizing when you actually should move or stop.

Realisation of reality - yes. The other things, not so much. How can anyone not be in the present? If awakening meant a lack of thought, then it'd be a very flimsy thing which you'd have to switch off whenever you needed to do anything. The ability to still the mind may be very useful, and a certain level of concentration ability is needed for good vipassana, but it's more important to see directly the true nature of whatever happens. Whether you're absorbed in utter stillness, feeling one with everything, thinking over a complicated issue, walking to the shops, or whatever... you directly see it as impermanent, arising and passing every moment. Terminology. Awakening = enlightenment. From a Buddhist perspective, the experiences you might describe in terms like 'explosion of light', 'unity', 'God' or 'Cosmos' aren't in a special category above things like an itch in your knee or hearing a car drive past. All experiences are equally powerful sources of fundamental insight: that everything is impermanent, dukkha and anatta. This fundamental insight is the heart of awakening from a Buddhist POV. You get it by looking closely at everything until it sinks in.

Part of the difficulty here is defining 'awakening'. Different people and different traditions have different - in some cases utterly contradictory - opinions on what awakening is about. From a Buddhist perspective, I might say it involves recognizing that all experience without exception is impermanent, not worth grasping, and not 'me' or 'mine'. Many people along this path describe energetic phenomena, but it seems to me to be more an effect of awakening than a cause for it. You may find this interesting: http://integrateddaniel.info/the-arising-and-passing-away/

Karl, I must ask - do you do any sort of practice other than philosophical reasoning? There's not much point being here unless you do some sort of meditation, yoga, qigong, something. Reason is useful and necessary and good to develop, but nobody ever built a car using just a screwdriver. You seem to put a lot of different states and stages under this label 'trance' that really don't belong there. A hypnotic or between-awake-and-asleep trance is different from the alert blissful focus which counteracts the physical senses and thought you get through shamatha, is different from the various perceptual shifts occurring through vipashyana, is different from the koan's Great Doubt and kensho. There are many experiences and shifts this stuff can produce which to an outside observer may look like trance ('they don't seem to hear me, must be in trance') but are actually very different. If you want to understand koan, go to original sources or, better yet, engage it fully yourself. You really sound like a caveman trying to deduce what a computer is from his own experiences of flint and spears - his reasoning may be logical, but he doesn't have enough data to reach the right conclusion. I haven't practised koan myself, but my understanding is that the whole value of it is that you can't untangle it. The idea is to focus all the mind's investigative power towards something it cannot solve until a point is reached called 'Great Doubt', a giving up of the attempt to intellectually solve the koan, a shift in the conceptual framework. This results in 'kensho', gnosis of the true meaning of the koan or what it's really getting at. Of course A can't also be something other than A. But what really is A?

You misunderstand. I said that different views have different levels of accuracy and lead to different results, which is surely the opposite of saying that they're all equal. There are correct views and there are incorrect views.

You may find this interesting then (from DN 1): You are right that all views are pointers, not the thing itself. However, different views have different effects. Some fingers point to the moon, some don't; and while none are themselves the moon, if you ask someone to point to the moon and they point at a dog, they aren't helping you much. They are pointing in the wrong place. From a Buddhist perspective, views of self are antithetical to awakening - this is itself a definite statement, "looking at things without imputing 'me' or 'mine' (apart from conventional usage, of course) is more reflective of the true nature of things than imputing views of 'me' and 'mine' and thus is a better bet for awakening". Dividing views into skilful and unskilful, and acting on that insight, is an important part of the practice. Letting go of attachment to views does NOT mean that everything is just an opinion and all fingers point to the moon equally well. It means you recognise that all views are pointers at something, that no view is itself 'the answer' - while still acknowledging that different views do lead to different places. Basically, don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I can suggest are a few things you might find helpful. Most important is to see this as a process. What you've got now isn't 'bad meditation'. In the same way someone who has just started running may not be able to run that far or fast but they aren't running 'badly', because the body strengthens over time with the exercise. One tip: Lie down and pay attention to your body, as you breathe in try to release physical tension, as you breathe out feel like the tension is oozing out. As any restlessness or thoughts arise, breathe them out very gently, and go back to the breath and body. Another tip: guided meditations may be easier to stay with, because there's something to listen to. Try this one: http://alohadharma.com/2015/04/22/guided-metta-meditation-audio/ Also: a more mobile practice may help getting past this initial restlessness. Hatha yoga, qigong and tai chi are all options. Do one of those for a while, then sitting meditation will be easier both physically and mentally.

Here's a metaphor for the last page and a half of this thread.

What Karl's saying as far as I can see, TI, is that the problem isn't if a practice has been customised in itself, but whether the customisation results in better or worse effects, and people should evaluate their practices carefully.

I can't support a site that blocks posts that moderators think express opinions or methods the site's owner disagrees with.

In Theravada, awakening comes from vipassana (directly realizing impermanence, dukkha, anatta, dependent origination, four noble truths, etc). Shamatha and virtue are also needed of course. Intellectual study can help, but doesn't bring about awakening. Laypeople can achieve the same awakening, the lifestyle just makes it harder. My understanding of the bodhisattva path is that one tries to reach awakening, but with the aim of still being reborn themselves so that they can keep guiding others to awakening. This is the same basic practice, but with the development of bodhichitta, and realizing emptiness in addition to what an arhat realizes. I think a pratyekabuddha is basically a Buddha who decides not to teach. But I'm fairly confused, tbh. *shrug*

*ignore, double post*

Some smart points! I don't get nirvana or emptiness anything like enough to really grasp all of what he's saying, but there's something compelling in his idea that 'In the equipoise of the middle way, the infinite and the void are sustained. They complement each other; they balance each other out.' It's very strange that the Buddha is said to have initially not wanted to teach, and that the Pali Canon says nothing about the bodhisattva path. I don't buy the idea that people at the time weren't ready for Mahayana. Come on. Yet the bodhisattva ideal is incredible compassion - I see no way taking it seriously couldn't be beneficial - and emptiness makes sense, it's just taking anatta further. Practice probably answers these questions more than any amount of pondering could, of course.

More affected by awakening than a cause for it, though tuning them up might help clear leaves off the line.

They have an accent in just the same way everyone else does. But their accent happens to be what's been codified as the standard. Remember the standard dialect isn't an average of the others, it's arbitrarily produced by the people who write dictionaries, etc. The standard dialect isn't inherently the 'pure' form of the language. It's chosen based on economic factors. If Liverpool had been the capital of the UK, the people who decided what to codify as standard would have used scouse, and scousers would be saying 'we don't have an accent'.

Some British accents:

Everyone has an accent. What you're thinking of as 'correct' is 'standard American English'. Every country has a codified 'standard' version of its language, used for official things and stuff. Now, the standard version tends to be based on wealthier regions of the country, because more official-ish business goes nationwide from there. So people living there think 'I don't have an accent' - they do, it's just naturally close to the standard dialect. Languages and dialects form from people interacting over time. What people tend to think of as 'correct' grammar is just how the standard dialect has been codified. But regional dialects actually do have their own unwritten rules, developed over time. You're only speaking wrongly if you're breaking the rules of the dialect you're trying to use. What's wrong in standard may be right in non-standard and vice versa. For example, copula deletion (removing the verb 'to be' when the referent is obvious) is a rule of African-American dialects - 'he over there', not 'he is over there' - like in Ancient Greek. I can't tell you much about standard American English. But standard British English was developed around the time of the printing press, because standardisation was needed for books, newspapers, etc. And where where most presses and publishers? The wealthier areas of London and nearby. So that's the dialect SBE is based on, so people from near those same areas think 'we don't have an accent'. They do - it just happens to be the one SBE is closest to. And who's most educated? The people with access to books and education. So SBE became associated with wealthier educated people, because they spoke similarly to it anyway.

I completely agree. Noting is for insight, not samadhi. Yes. There's something very Bahiya-suttaish about it. Noting leaves no room for 'me', 'mine', etc. Vision is just vision, thought is just thought, emotion just emotion. Really incredible in its bare simplicity. That's when you stop noting. Noting is a vipashyana tool, like breath-counting is a shamatha tool. Yep.

I've been practising noting for a few months. My experience so far hasn't been dramatic like yours, but there's been progress in seeing stuff as not me/mine and deconstructing experience into smaller briefer sensations. I think it's an excellent practice. Noting helps objectify stuff and keeps you honest about whether you're actually doing it or not. It's just a tool for paying attention to what's going on and seeing how it really is, which is essentially how awakening happens. Perhaps you crossed A&P, then stalled in dissolution? Your description sounds like that: amazing vibrations -> boring couch potato stage. Not sure where I am on the maps myself, because I've had no really obvious landmarks. I interviewed Ingram here: http://thedaobums.com/topic/38892-tdbs-interview-with-daniel-ingram/

'Mindfulness meditation' is a pretty slippery term IMHO. Mindfulness is simply one mental faculty which different forms of meditation combine with different things. In vipashyana, it's combined with an investigative quality, applied to whatever comes up. In shamatha, it's combined with concentration, applied to just one object. The kind of mindfulness practice used in psychotherapy - just being aware of everything without judgement - doesn't usually go beyond helping people with anxiety, etc.