How do you properly drop your Brain into the Lower Dan Tien?

[dwai]

Not exhausting at all it will become automatic - when you have an itch your mind goes to the itch - no thinking involved.

Yes that's what I meant to say. It should not be exhausting, but if we think too much, it is

In other words, it seems to me that people tend to "think" about "thinking from the LDT" than just feeling. The OP used the title "Dropping the brain to the LDT". That seems like a bad premise to start with...

Edited November 7, 2014 by dwai

[Spotless]

freeform, thanks for that. I guess my point would be that as far as the heart-mind at the tan-tien, no amount of physical relaxation can actually bring the heart-mind to the tan-t'ien, but only the relinquishment of volition.

 

Regarding trance, although the translation of "jhana" adopted by the Pali Text Society by the middle-length volumes was "meditation", "jhana" was translated "trance" when the kindred sayings were published thirty years earlier. Semantics? Here's the description of the first rupa (material) jhana:

 

“…as a skilled bath-attendant or (bath-attendant) apprentice, having sprinkled bath-powder into a bronze vessel, might knead it while repeatedly sprinkling it with water until the ball of lather had taken up moisture, was drenched with moisture, suffused with moisture inside and out but without any oozing. Even so… does (a person) saturate, permeate, suffuse this very body with the rapture and joy that are born of aloofness; there is no part of (the) whole body that is not suffused with the rapture and joy born of aloofness. While (such a person) is thus diligent, ardent, self-resolute, those memories and aspirations that are worldly are got rid of; by getting rid of them, the mind is inwardly settled, calmed, focused, concentrated.”

(MN III 92-93, PTS pg 132-134)

This is, to me, a description of what it feels like when the heart-mind is in the lower abdomen. The only words I've been able to find in the first four Nikayas about how such a concentration comes about are:

 

“"...making self-surrender (one's) object of thought, (one) lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness of mind."

(SN V 200, Pali Text Society V 176)

Which is not to say that "making self-surrender (one's) object of thought" induces a state of concentration or one-pointedness of mind, but only that it's conducive. At least that's my reading.

 

About trance, I wrote this in my introduction to the material quoted previously:

 

The psychotherapist Milton Erickson held that trance is an everyday occurrence for everyone. Getting lost in a train of thought, or absorbed in an athletic endeavor, he described as examples of trance.

In his practice, Erickson regularly invited his clients to enter into trance, out of regard for the benefit of the client. That a client entered into trance in response to such an invitation, Erickson viewed as a result of the unconscious decision of the client, quite outside of Erikson’s control.

Erickson was famous for what came to be called "the confusion technique" in the induction of hypnosis, and in particular for his "handshake induction". By subtly interrupting someone in the middle of the expected course of an habitual activity, like shaking hands, Erickson enabled them to enter a state of trance. For Erickson, the confusion technique could also be applied through engaging the patient’s mind with a sentence whose meaning could not be found through the normal interpretation of the words and syntax (engaging the patient’s mind in a transderivational search).

Mention of the induction of trance, which was explicitly recognized and described in the teachings of Gautama the Buddha and was obliquely referenced in the remarks of Bodhidharma, the first Zen teacher in China (entering "the Way" in Denkoroku), is largely absent in the Chinese and Japanese literature of Zen. At the same time, instances of sentences whose meaning cannot be found through the normal interpretation of the words and whose utterance may therefore enable the induction of trance in the listener are ubiquitous in the literature.

The induction of trance serves to heighten the experience of the senses (a fact that Erickson noted), and thereby to allow a person under the right circumstances to discover activity in the senses that underlie the experience of self. Neuroscientists Olaf Blanke and Christine Mohr hypothesized that the tactile/proprioceptive/kinesthetic and vestibular senses in combination with the ocular sense are principally responsible for what is regarded as the experience of self. Particularly important to their conclusion was the observation that persons who experience themselves as being simultaneously in two places at once (a particular kind of out-of-body experience) appear to have a dysfunction in one or another of these senses.

(the references are in the original,

here

)

Long post, but I will add this story:

 

'The Patriarch asked, "Where do you come from?" Nan-yueh answered, "From Mt. Sung". The Patriarch said, "What is it that comes like this?" Nan-yueh replied, "To say anything would be wrong". The Patriarch said, "Then is it contingent on practice and verification?" Nan-yueh said, "Practice and verification are not nonexistent, they are not to be defiled."'

("Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation", by Carl Bielefeldt, pg 138)

 

An excellent response to the trance subject.

 

Translation difficulty is pretty clearly illustrated by the "aloofness" reference as this would be much better replaced by "neutrality".

 

The hypnotist is very correct - most people live their entire life in trance. Switching them into trance is not switching them out of trance but redirecting their trance state. A deeper trance state is simply more suggestible and makes many out of body exercises very easy to do and manipulate. It's perfect for the shortcut loving ego and the street magician (whether they have a PHD or not).

 

As volition drops away one can enter aloofness / trance but if you were to actually see the spirit in this process it is not a desired effect as it relates to movement disengaging from presence. One enters into a mercurial light state but it is a more intense light experience of the nearly all encompassing trance one is always in.

 

If as volition drops away and a neutral presence emerges the three bodies are all within the same envelope so to speak and a much higher degree of transformation takes place. This is a rabbit vs turtle thing - in the end the turtle wins by a landslide while the rabbit is fascinated by himself and his racy accomplishments. It is more common than not for the rabbit to never cross the finish line - they will be busy writing books and giving lectures.

 

[freeform]

freeform, thanks for that. I guess my point would be that as far as the heart-mind at the tan-tien, no amount of physical relaxation can actually bring the heart-mind to the tan-t'ien, but only the relinquishment of volition.

Yes I agree with you. Sinking qi to LDT is a little different to moving the location of awareness, but it can help make this attentional shift be more 'productive' in a cultivation sense.

 

I do indeed find the experience similar to an embodied form of trance. Although I think trance is a very broad term, and doesn't make a fine enough distinction to explain this. There's ceratinly a feeling of surrender and an experience of spaciousness (feels literally like there is a lot of space inside and out) and inclusiveness - the form of attention achieved includes everything, rather than finding discrete objects to attend to. So you feel your body and not body together as one.

 

I'm also conscious that this experience is likely to change as I develop in practice.

[freeform]

If you lightly focus on your dantien you chest will sink and hollow. If you try the exercise i posted earlier you can experience this.

 

Yes there's certainly a relaxation of the chest muscles, however this line I'm talking about does not automatically relax and unfold without conscious input. It's a further refinement along with what Dwai mentioned - eg spreading the muscles around the ming men.

 

However I've noticed that when people are asked to hollow the chest and round the back etc, they tend to make far too gross a movement and end up directing all their qi into their back... if the teacher does not correct this you can see it in the students - lots of yang energy, red flushed faces and no connection through the body.

[Mark Foote]

Spotless, I think we're talking apples and oranges. I'm trying to use trance in the sense that Erickson used it, I think that's closest to my experience, and he's not talking about a deadening or a street act. He was a psychotherapist who used hypnosis, but he felt that trance heightened the senses, and for that reason (and in order to control his own pain from early polio), he would spend time each day finding trance in himself:

 

 

'I go into trances so that I will be more sensitive to the intonations and inflections of my patients' speech. And to enable me to hear better, see better.'"

(that's from Wikipedia here)

Neither was Gautama talking about a deadening; remember that Gautama's attainment of the arupa jhanas and of the final "meditative state" ("the cessation of (habitiual activity in) perception and sensation") was synonymous with his enlightenment. So I think you are thinking one thing when I say trance, and I am meaning another.

 

The fact that anyone can enter a state of trance with minimal assistance from circumstance or from a talented stage hypnotist only points to the accessibility of these states and to their importance as a fundamental part of human nature. What they have to do with well-being is the question, and I think they have everything to do with well-being, just as the experience of the heart-mind at the tan-t'ien or elsewhere has everything to do with well-being.

 

I will say that I think what goes on in waking up, goes on in falling asleep. It's never been helpful to me to aim at waking up, to the exclusion of falling asleep.

Edited November 8, 2014 by Mark Foote

[Spotless]

Spotless, I think we're talking apples and oranges. I'm trying to use trance in the sense that Erickson used it, I think that's closest to my experience, and he's not talking about a deadening or a street act. He was a psychotherapist who used hypnosis, but he felt that trance heightened the senses, and for that reason (and in order to control his own pain from early polio), he would spend time each day finding trance in himself:

 

 

 

(that's from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson]here[/url])

Neither was Gautama talking about a deadening; remember that Gautama's attainment of the arupa jhanas and of the final "meditative state" ("the cessation of (habitiual activity in) perception and sensation") was synonymous with his enlightenment. So I think you are thinking one thing when I say trance, and I am meaning another.

 

 

The fact that anyone can enter a state of trance with minimal assistance from circumstance or from a talented stage hypnotist only points to the accessibility of these states and to their importance as a fundamental part of human nature. What they have to do with well-being is the question, and I think they have everything to do with well-being, just as the experience of the heart-mind at the tan-t'ien or elsewhere has everything to do with well-being.

 

I will say that I think what goes on in waking up, goes on in falling asleep. It's never been helpful to me to aim at waking up, to the exclusion of falling asleep.

We are not talking apples and oranges - and I do not in any way understand where you derived "deadening" from anything that I have said either in relation to trance or non-trance.

Everything you have stated once again supports what I have said if you do not make assumptions based upon your previous positions regarding trance.

Using trance for pain relief would be a perfectly legitimate use of trance but nothing that I have seen regarding the psychotherapist you mentioned puts him any less close to the street magician stage person. They employ simple off the shelf very real abilities because as I stated Trance is a very real quick way to achieve certain impressive levels on fairly high planes without any real knowledge of what one is doing and far less presence than if achieved from a non-trance state.

Edited November 8, 2014 by Spotless

[Spotless]

I do not want to derail this post by debates on trance. The trance debate with Mark Foote is already well in place in another forum by the name : Trance and the Path

Both points of view are well delved into there.

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/25877-trance-and-the-path/?hl=%2Btrance+%2Band+%2Bthe+%2Bpath

Edited November 8, 2014 by Spotless

[Ya Mu]

"How do you properly drop your Brain into the Lower Dan Tien?"

 

You don't. Give up the mental, reduce brain waves to near zero and put a gentle awareness in Dan Tian. Make every move, every action, every energetic prelude to "thought" come from or centered from this place of awareness.

[Mark Foote]

I was actually thinking of you, Ya Mu, and of your remarks on another thread about being in a lab where they measured you going through states usually associated with sleep in your practice.

 

I agree that a relinquishment of the mental is involved, yet I am now turning on the experience of the senses as such; in particular, the sense of equalibrium, the sense of gravity, and the sense of place associated with muscles, joints, and ligaments (proprioception), along with the sense of the mind. One among many senses, the mind, and I feel better for having come to see that this is so.

 

Spotless, I appreciate your patience. To the extent that the phenomena of the heart-mind that moves, that shifts, and that is a part of action in the absence of volition is a phenomena of trance, I hope that our remarks may be relevant.

 

Ya Mu, when I finally got around to talking about action in the absence of volition in my piece about Fuxi's Poem (finished it last month), I realized that the zazen that gets up and walks around is somehow, at least for me, associated with a practice Gautama put forward in connection the induction of the further meditative states:

 

"[One] dwells, having suffused the first quarter [of the world] with friendliness, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; just so above, below, across; [one] dwells having suffused the whole world everywhere, in every way, with a mind of friendliness that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence. [One] dwells having suffused the first quarter with a mind of compassion… sympathetic joy… equanimity that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence."

(MN I 38, Pali Text Society volume I pg 48)

 

Gautama described the first of the further meditative states as "the excellence" of the heart's release through compassion, the second as "the excellence" of the heart's release through sympathetic joy, and the third as "the excellence" of the heart's release through equanimity (the "excellence" of the heart's release through friendliness he described as "the beautiful")

The place and things is the practice of "shikantaza", as Kobun Chino Otogawa once said, yet as he pointed out the range of the things that enter into the practice easily exceeds the boundaries of the senses.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Mark Foote