Emptiness and the conditions for awakening

[neimad]

sean you never stop researching.

 

keep up the great work.

 

i have been slightly derailed in my endeavours recently i have discovered, but i am seeking at putting myself back on track.

 

did you just receive certification in CST? if that was you.... congragulations, you are an inspiration with all your hard work.

[Trunk]

Via Primal Contraction and Release

by Jana Dixon

"I came to the conclusion that primal contraction is held mostly in the small muscles that lie closest to the spinal column."

Now, where have I heard that before???

[thelerner]

We have some newbies around and I thought I'd take the liberty to go through some oldies but goodies posts. I'll resurrect a couple of old posts for your reading pleasure.

 

Michael

 

P.S. Does this make sense or is it annoying?

[sean]

I've stumbled across something that is probably incredibly obvious to others here, but really new for me. I'm not sure I can even really explain it very well, or exactly how/if it relates to this thread, but I'll take a shot at it anyway.

 

Ok, so to go into emtpiness, into an experience with the causal, we typically still our bodies first. Then we find a focal point. Sometimes the meditation has no focal point, as in shikantaza. No focal point, in a way, is also a sort of focal point in there is at least a subtle emphasis on not consciously maintaining a focal point. Another common point of focus is the breath. Another is mantra, which is what I use. So we gently train our minds to basically rest our awareness on one thing. It's not really so much about concentration, or contracting our attention to our chosen focus. It's more like gently holding an expanding space that continues to include our focus, even as the focus itself opens up in the space.

 

Ok, so here's where it gets really obvious. Anything can be a point of focus. More specifically I am realizing the value of using various centers of the body as focal points. So for example, I am experimenting with just holding my awareness in my lower torso, the LTT, which includes the belly, gentials, anus, lower back and everything inside of course. So I am using this physical area of my body as a focus to drop into the causal. What I am finding interesting about all this is not so much that any part of my body can be used to take me into emptiness, but my experience that taking parts of my body with me into emptiness is a form of alchemy!

 

Right around now is when Trunk should come in and rightly slap the shit out of me and anyone else who thinks this is news btw.

 

So I've been playing with doing more formal, timed, emptiness meditations starting with the LTT as my focal point. It feels like I am opening the density of specific forms to make room for the wisdom of the formless. Some kind of strange paradox like ... dipping the LTT into emptiness, so that it can open up and allow more room to be full with emptiness.

 

One caveat is that I'm not sure I would be having much succcess with this technique were I not to have established my ability to stay with a point of focus and move into emptiness with mantra first. Mantra practice occurs in the mind, closer to the formless, so maybe an easier bridge for beginners. Also mantra can conveniently interrupt thought and bring your attention to the empty space between thought. Also, using the LTT as a focal point for meditation might be a bigger challenge than mantra to a beginner for other reasons. First is that it's a broad physical region of the body that the mind may not know how to hold as "one place." Second, there could be trouble even just accessing sensation in this area. This region is notoriously repressed, and even a frequent site of stored trauma that could come to the surface through the clear awareness of meditation. So a natural resistance to premature resurfacing of trauma may cause another layer of distraction.

 

So this is probably an intermediate meditation for reasons similar to why I think genuine moving meditation, moving meditation that actually brings one deeper into an embodiment of emptiness, is advanced.

 

 

Sean

[Cameron]

Most zen teachers I read about do lots of focus on LTT. One of the first zen books I read used the visualization to imagine your nose is 2 inches below your navel(ltt) and imagine you are breathing from there.

 

So instead of being on your face your nose has actually 'dropped' into this area below the navel. Eventually, your mind and breath are so connected to this that you breathe from the ltt anturally without effort.

 

Something I am still working on after years of practice I am nowhere near as natural as any baby that can do this naturally.

[thelerner]

I've been doing more work in bed in the morning. I've been combining pieces from my guided meditation collection. Start out w/ bone breathing, lighting up my skeleton(ala Chei Nei Tsang CD), then brain cleansing (ala Minkes Tao Basics), have the light circle down my spine vertebra by vertebra. Then maybe a Winn Fusion cycle using the elements as seasons circling them. Or some quiet kotodama(vowel chanting) from Ecstatic Kabbalah.

 

I find the morning before I'm up to be the best time to meditate and do energy work. My mind is naturally quiet.

 

Michael

[rex]

Edited July 11, 2007 by rex

[Ian]

 

 

Ok, so here's where it gets really obvious. Anything can be a point of focus. More specifically I am realizing the value of using various centers of the body as focal points. .....

 

One caveat is that I'm not sure I would be having much succcess with this technique were I not to have established my ability to stay with a point of focus and move into emptiness with mantra first. Mantra practice occurs in the mind, closer to the formless, so maybe an easier bridge for beginners. Also mantra can conveniently interrupt thought and bring your attention to the empty space between thought. Also, using the LTT as a focal point for meditation might be a bigger challenge than mantra to a beginner for other reasons.

 

Ha! Interesting.

 

This is more or less what I've been doing for a couple of years.

 

The fascinating thing is that Sifu Yap used to teach his students to use a mantra, inside a lower body space, not the tan tien, but behind the bladder, I forget the name.

 

BUT he changed to just feeling the arse on the chair, because the mantra, iho, is further away from emptiness in that it requires mind, where feeling doesn't.

 

Anyway, enjoy. I recommend keeping it low in the body, but I'm like that.