Taoist meditation

[wandelaar]

In this topic I want to discuss the following suggestion by rideforever on Taoist meditation:

 

Quote

I notice on your avatar you have a picture of a head.  The meditation practice seems to be an awareness practice, also done in the head.  So it seems most of your focus right now is on head/ awareness type practices.   Other practices open the heart in some traditions, then you would feel the world from the head and heart simultaneously and equally, a big change.  And Taoist practices open up the belly similarly.

 

Edited December 14, 2018 by wandelaar

[wandelaar]

Questions:

 

- Isn't awareness practise enough?

 

- What does it mean experientially to open up the belly? Talk about chi, chakras, etc. doesn't explain anything to me. I want to know what is actually done when opening up the belly without having to buy into (as yet) unfounded esoteric ideas like chi(s) and chakras.

 

Edited December 14, 2018 by wandelaar

[Aetherous]

21 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

- Isn't awareness practise enough?

 

For what?

[wandelaar]

1 minute ago, Aetherous said:

For what?

 

As a form of meditation directed to peace of mind, objective observation, and training of one's ability to stay focused on a task even when it isn't captivating. 

[Aetherous]

1 minute ago, wandelaar said:

As a form of meditation directed to peace of mind, objective observation, and training of one's ability to stay focused on a task even when it isn't captivating. 

 

I saw your description of how you meditate in the other thread...I think it's good for what you just described.

[wandelaar]

Thanks - perhaps my relatively simple goals don't need the esoteric paths that others follow and propose.

[doc benway]

31 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

Questions:

 

- Isn't awareness practise enough?

For some, yes

For others, there may be other paths that are supportive

 

 

31 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

 

- What does it mean experientially to open up the belly?

Bring your attention to your belly.

Let it rest there.

When ever your attention wakes up to noticing it has deviated, come back to the belly and rest there.

Feel what your belly feels like from the inside.

Just rest there.

Start with short practices and increase duration over time.

Feel how the belly is just as important and interesting and legitimate as all the thoughts that come and go.

You can use the breath to bring you back, or not...

Practice, notice when you disconnect, refocus, continue...

Bring awareness of how it reacts in any situation, any time of the day, and connect there, as often as possible.

Use that awareness of the center of your gravity in martial training and qigong...

Feel it as an umbilical connection to here and now.

 

 

 

 

31 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

 

 

Talk about chi, chakras, etc. doesn't explain anything to me. I want to know what is actually done when opening up the belly without having to buy into (as yet) unfounded esoteric ideas like chi(s) and chakras.

 

 

[wandelaar]

1 minute ago, steve said:

Bring your attention to your belly.

Let it rest there.

When ever your attention wakes up to noticing it has deviated, come back to the belly and rest there.

Feel what your belly feels like from the inside.

Just rest there.

Start with short practices and increase duration over time.

Feel how the belly is just as important and interesting and legitimate as all the thoughts that come and go.

You can use the breath to bring you back, or not...

Practice, notice when you disconnect, refocus, continue...

Bring awareness of how it reacts in any situation, any time of the day, and connect there, as often as possible.

Use that awareness of the center of your gravity in martial training and qigong...

Feel it as an umbilical connection to here and now.

 

Thank you - your description is crystal clear. I could do that. But I can't do both, because that would take me too much time. So doing meditation on my belly will mean less attention meditation on my thoughts and feelings. That's the problem: I am happy with my current form of meditation, so why change to other forms of meditation that would mean less practice of my current meditation? One can't try everything anyhow because that would mean never settling for serious practice of one or a few preferred forms of meditation.

[Nintendao]

"Sit down and shut up," always sounded legit enough to me. Sometimes opening to the belly need not be anything further than taking a second to make sure all the various parts of the torso relax enough to not constrict breath and blood flows and so forth.

[Rara]

13 hours ago, wandelaar said:

Questions:

 

- Isn't awareness practise enough?

 

- What does it mean experientially to open up the belly? Talk about chi, chakras, etc. doesn't explain anything to me. I want to know what is actually done when opening up the belly without having to buy into (as yet) unfounded esoteric ideas like chi(s) and chakras.

 

 

The thing is, awareness and thinking should not be confused. Awareness and feeling of the belly is relaxing into a pace where you can "feel" the belly. Feel the process of expansion as you breathe.

 

Taoism teaches to empty the head and fill the belly. I opened a thread on this tooic a few years ago with a similar question. I'll try and find it for you

[rideforever]

Different awareness practices.   

Very good one is samatha at nostrils, keep close contact with bare breath at nostril rings, over time gets more and more subtle until feel very subtle vital force like silk.

At same time integrates fragmented mind, and creates stable space beyond mind, and trains mind also.   Then have solid base in strong mind power from which to do deeper work.

Like Goenka (can find 10 day 1 hour discourses on youtube) or in I.M.C tradition (Burmeses style).

Letting go practice is good start but after all we want to go somewhere, letting go not same thing, imo.

[wandelaar]

@ Rara

 

Thank you. Attention is not thinking, although it can easily develop into thinking. But in attention meditation one tries to keep as close to pure observation as possible (although absolutely objective observation is impossible).

 

Sometimes Bums appear to think that I am just a thinking head with an attached body to carry it around. But that isn't so, I appreciate attention, feeling, observation, acting, sleeping, etc. The crucial role I give to thinking is as a critical faculty. Life is full of experiences and impressions, and to organise those experiences and impressions into some kind of world view one needs (critical) thinking. As a conscious human being one simply cannot go beyond thinking. Those who claim to do so only hide or most often just refuse to recognize the perspectives from which they actually interpret their experiences and impressions. By analysing the way in which they present their case one can make their implicit presuppositions explicit. And that then proves that they didn't actually go beyond thinking. I rather just bring the role of (critical) thinking into the open.

[rideforever]

11 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

As a conscious human being one simply cannot go beyond thinking.

 

This is actually true in a sense.  Thinking is primary it is the primary recognition and intelligence of the entire being and has priority over everything, without thinking then nothing else can be recognized, no dantien or heart can exist without thinking.   So all true.

But ... with further development thinking can be found to originate in the forehead area which can be developed, then the same power of recognition and intelligence there can function but without words in head, it has reached a higher state with no words needed.   Same power same centre, but higher functioning of it.   This can be achieved.

In order to do so, though must take an intermediary step to work on other centres in body which can give space and balance, like tripod, and perspective, before revisiting forehead area for final work there.

All in all a long journey, thousands of hours careful work, interesting if you have time, otherwise another time.

Just my opinion.

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by rideforever

[wandelaar]

Thinking doesn't necessary need words, one can also think in images or even in sounds, etc. I personally like playing around with mathematics, and word-less images play a big role in how I understand mathematical concepts. I didn't need any esoteric practices for that.

[rideforever]

Then you must already have some presence developed in forehead beyond the mind.

[wandelaar]

Then what do you mean by "beyond mind"?

[Rara]

1 hour ago, wandelaar said:

@ Rara

 

Thank you. Attention is not thinking, although it can easily develop into thinking. But in attention meditation one tries to keep as close to pure observation as possible (although absolutely objective observation is impossible).

 

Sometimes Bums appear to think that I am just a thinking head with an attached body to carry it around. But that isn't so, I appreciate attention, feeling, observation, acting, sleeping, etc. The crucial role I give to thinking is as a critical faculty. Life is full of experiences and impressions, and to organise those experiences and impressions into some kind of world view one needs (critical) thinking. As a conscious human being one simply cannot go beyond thinking. Those who claim to do so only hide or most often just refuse to recognize the perspectives from which they actually interpret their experiences and impressions. By analysing the way in which they present their case one can make their implicit presuppositions explicit. And that then proves that they didn't actually go beyond thinking. I rather just bring the role of (critical) thinking into the open.

 

Critical thinking is, well, critical. We are encouraged to do so much of this, but we lack the balance of sensory meditative and creative practice. This is why for a Taoist, it is important to breathe into the belly, because once the mind has shut itself up after 5-10 minutes, you start to feel the benefits from "the other side"

 

Another thread for you to browse

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by Rara

[rideforever]

What I mean is that you seem therefore to have a real presence (part of Real Self) that is outside of the subconscious habitual thinking in the head.

For many people all they have is the subconscious habitual thinking in the head, nothing else.   This is the "mind".

 

But other people use the word mind to mean other things, like entire inner experience of oneself, or of "consciousness".

 

What is conscious or subconscious thinking ?

Sometimes you actively think, you feel yourself to be active and choosing what you think .... for instance taking care with tax return.   But other times there is endless talking in head, then you catch yourself and tell yourself to shut up ... this is subconscious.   And grey areas between   Subconsious thinking is habitually programmed with negativity of society.   But also is negative in itself because one should not let one's faculties function without being present.

 

The thinking that happens is actually also a bridge between conscious and subconscious parts inside.   subconscious is old animal part, very habitual, ancient and reliable.   Conscious part is new, ungrounded but is the future.   Anyway, one way to make this work nicely is you listen out for negative thinking, then you stand up inside the mind consciously and you gently and kindly correct the negative vision, think carefully about the situation and tell the truth.   So if you are moaning or complaining, you stand inside the mind (meaning you become active) and correct negative view and tell the honest truth with compassion.   This way you use conscious mind to correct subconscious habitual negativity, and form strong bond between subconscious animal and higher mind.  

This is essential what is done in such practices like "The Work" of Byron Katie - don't really like her but just to explain.

 

Slowly over time all becomes harmonized clear and true in head, so no bad behaviour, just clarity and truth and depth like a clear lake reflecting the moon n a clearing in the deep forest under the stars.

 

.

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by rideforever

[Rara]

14 hours ago, wandelaar said:

So doing meditation on my belly will mean less attention meditation on my thoughts and feelings.

 

Do you feel this is important to do as much of or can you take time away from this meditation? My meditation focus changes with what I think is required.

 

I actually spent so much time on belly breathing not so long ago, that I realised I got lazy with my thoughts and feelings. I became dismissive and cold, which ended up making some close people to me sad, so I had to correct myself there.

 

As with all things, if you've had enough of one, spend some time on the other. Balance!

[wandelaar]

@ rideforever

 

As I have no reason to think that the mind is somehow independent of the brain (or more properly from the body as a whole), I call the mind the total of psychological processes that go on in a human being.

 

So this is where our presuppositions come into play, and why similar experiences are differently named and interpreted.

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by wandelaar

[wandelaar]

14 minutes ago, Rara said:

Do you feel this is important to do as much of or can you take time away from this meditation? My meditation focus changes with what I think is required.

 

I actually spent so much time on belly breathing not so long ago, that I realised I got lazy with my thoughts and feelings. I became dismissive and cold, which ended up making some close people to me sad, so I had to correct myself there.

 

As with all things, if you've had enough of one, spend some time on the other. Balance!

 

The problem is that there are way too many different forms of practice to try out everything. But what I sometimes do is to deliberately remove my attention from my head to my belly when I have been too busy thinking. That often helps. I may devote a few minutes daily to experimentation along those lines.

[OldDog]

A couple of thoughts crossed my mind.

 

First of all, I don't think meditation is as much a function of time meditating as it is of quality of the time spent. Hopefully, in practice of meditation, as one becomes adept with the mechanics, it takes less time to achieve a quality meditative state. At that point, one is then open to a new level of experience.

 

Also, I think it a good idea to revisit what is meant by thinking. It seems that what one knows or is able to percieve is not limited to mental cognitive processes. In this regard, two things. One, emotions can be seen as a non-cognitive response to external stimulus. Cognitively, one can make use of emotions to provide an more informed understanding of what is happening. Two, what one is able to perceive is to a great extent dependent on one's general state of being. Call it, ability to focus on ... cognitively or otherwise  ...  or being receptive to what is going on.

 

Meditation helps raise awareness for other modes of perception because it starts with quieting mental activity stimulated by the dominante sensory input of eyes and ears and tactile feeling. In my practice, it became helpful to think of heart-mind as a means of perception. The term, heart-mind, is not unknown in Daoist writings and I am not sure that I use the term in the manner it was intended but it does allow me to have a different sense of what it means to think and perceive than a more narrowly define cognitive sense.

 

 

[wandelaar]

24 minutes ago, OldDog said:

One, emotions can be seen as a non-cognitive response to external stimulus.

 

Emotions largely depend on the (maybe unconscious) cognitive evaluations of stimuli. This is the basis of cognitive therapy. Stimuli that are evaluated as neutral don't result in emotions.

[OldDog]

5 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

... cognitive evaluations of stimuli.

 

Would amend that.

 

Emotions ... a reponse to stimuli. Cognitive evaluation of stimuli response is one form or knowledge. This again being a narrow definition.

 

Ultimately, you can reach a point with this where it is difficult to say what is the stimuli and whatis the response.

 

I believe to process is a whole body/being process, parts of which we are not typically conscious of or in contact with. 

 

The point being, one has to be open to the notion of other possible sources of perception and explore to find them and kearn to make use of them. Meditation helps with this process.

 

[Wu Ming Jen]

Sitting meditation and stillness cultivation has three levels in total. The first type is for eliminating illness and for achieving a healthy body, strengthening the physique and improving one’s physical constitution. The second type is for experimentation and for seeking the unusual and strange, as well as for gaining powers. The third kind is for the refinement of the elixir and for cultivating the Dao, gaining an eternally living and immortal body with higher dimensional and vibrational frequencies. Therefore the goals are not the same, and subsequently the requirements are not the same.