Measuring Meditation

[SiliconValley]

Measuring Meditation [William Bodri] seems to be a wonderful book, different from most other such books. I just started reading and it feels good! Anyone else reading it?

 

By the way I received the book from a fellow Tao Bum who graciously decided to share it with me without any expectations! Bodri allows one copy of the book to be legally shared and I got lucky! That someone can decide to share a gift such as this one with someone they don't know much, without any expectations or an agenda, feels overwhelmingly awesome and not enough thanks can be expressed to this Kind Soul and to Sean for having this forum ...

 

And this is the second time he does this, for he did this earlier with Spring Forest Qigong that "literally" was a life-changing experience for a dear friend, who had lost it all! Wishing this great person love and light and also all Tao Bums on this day of Dipavali, which is the Hindu festival of lights and enlightenment.

 

And I have the copy of Anapasati conversations, which I am allowed to share with one person. Please let me know if someone would be interested to have it and I would love to mail you a copy.

Edit: I just gave this book away...

Edited October 28, 2008 by SiliconValley

[dwai]

Measuring Meditation [William Bodri] seems to be a wonderful book, different from most other such books. I just started reading and it feels good! Anyone else reading it?

 

By the way I received the book from a fellow Tao Bum who graciously decided to share it with me without any expectations! Bodri allows one copy of the book to be legally shared and I got lucky! That someone can decide to share a gift such as this one with someone they don't know much, without any expectations or an agenda, feels overwhelmingly awesome and not enough thanks can be expressed to this Kind Soul and to Sean for having this forum ...

 

And this is the second time he does this, for he did this earlier with Spring Forest Qigong that "literally" was a life-changing experience for a dear friend, who had lost it all! Wishing this great person love and light and also all Tao Bums on this day of Dipavali, which is the Hindu festival of lights and enlightenment.

 

And I have the copy of Anapasati conversations, which I am allowed to share with one person. Please let me know if someone would be interested to have it and I would love to mail you a copy.

 

Happy Dipavali to you too SV.

Do you want to share some of the insights you might have gleamed from reading Sri Bodri's book?

[Mal]

[SiliconValley]

Happy Dipavali to you too SV.

Do you want to share some of the insights you might have gleamed from reading Sri Bodri's book?

 

 

Hi dwai,

 

Sure, let me do that once I finish some more chapters in the book.

[SiliconValley]

I posted this on another thread, but I guess this belongs here!

 

Here is what Master Huai-Chin Nan says about Mantras:

 

As stated, to achieve these transformations (including the transformations of jing into chi, chi into shen, and then shen into emptiness), the Tao school, yoga school and Esoteric school practitioners devote themselves to a variety of cultivation techniques including breathing exercises, the ingestion of special herbs, visualization practices, mantras, emptiness meditation, and so on. The purpose of these practices is to help kick off the initiation of these transformations, and set the relevant processes of transmutation into high gear.

 

Some of these practitioners with unflagging resolution use mantras and special dharma techniques to preserve their bodies. When they have perfected this means of cultivation, they are known as immortals of the lesser way.

 

To be precise, the skandha of sensation is related to the impressions you automatically impress upon your mind. In other words, feeling is related to nien, or mindfulness. For example, having a person on your mind may bring you pleasant feelings, even though you are not always thinking about them. This is caused by the operation of the skandha of sensation. Or let us say that you have the thought of scaling a cliff, which causes your feet to tingle or your body to shake. Having that thought will cause these feelings to arise which will affect your body and compel you in a certain way. This is also the sensation skandha in operation. As another instance, if someone continually recites a mantra, then after a long time the mantra will be there without any effort on your part. We can say that this, too, is a result belonging to the sensation aggregate because the impression becomes imprinted on your mind.

 

Many mantras are therefore an outcome of supernatural hearing; Hinduism says they are sound formulae constructed by carefully stringing together selected primordial vibrations (bija) according to a natural cosmological relationship. According to these teachings, a properly activated mantra acts on the universe according to the make-up of its structure. How did various mantras originally develop? Enlightened beings discovered the great mantras in the universe through their own cultivation efforts. Therefore, the mantras of the great Buddhas can be powerful indeed.

 

Another means to free yourself from these situations is to recite the Heart Sutra or Zhunti mantra. For example, Xuan Zang, hero of The Journey to the West, encountered all sorts of demons intent on destroying him when he began crossing the desert to India. To resolve the dangerous situations he often recited the Heart Sutra for personal protection, and which also reminded him that all these threats were empty.

 

When people who meditate feel heat in the area of their tan-tien, they sometimes get very excited and think this is kundalini, but this initial heat phenomenon corresponds to a process of internal friction involving the four elements of the body. The result of this frictional process is like an internal fever, and is often called the phenomenon of "steaming the bones". All you have to do is mantra for several hours, or practice holding your breath for several minutes, and this phenomenon is sure to manifest.

 

Naturally, there are many ways to attain the four dhyana and formless samadhi, and certain of these methods are common to a number of different spiritual schools. Mantra practice is one such method, as are visualization and breathing techniques.

 

Not talking "both internally and externally" also helps us to attain samadhi, although of course, some cultivation methods require us to recite mantras. But even in these cases, your mind should be internally listening to the mantra without adding any extra commentary to the sounds; the only sound experienced within mantra practice should be the sound of the mantra itself rather than any internal talking.

 

The cultivation methods employed in the world may vary considerably from school to school, but we must always remember that the ultimate target of all these methods is the same. As a single example, the various esoteric schools like to practice vajra chanting (where you do not move your lips or teeth) to get rid of all the miscellaneous thoughts of the sixth consciousness. If you practice Hindu japa mantra recitation for a long time, then the chi and the sound will become one, and there will be no more random thoughts either. This is done in Hinduism as well as Islam, Christianity and Judaism. In Christianity, if you lose yourself in reciting the rosary, this accomplishes the same task and achieves the same result.

[Esoteric Scientist]

Dear SiliconValley,

 

Thank you for posting Nan's explanation of Mantra practice. I am interested in studying the Source.

 

Where did this come from?

 

-ES

[Taiji Bum]

I've gone through it several times and the man needs an editor because he repeats himself too much. But the book has info I have found nowhere else like its fasting practice that turns the blood white in the advanced stages of alchemy. The book is invaluable but a bit hard to read especially for those of us less edumacated that Bodri.

 

I have it printed out and that what I suggest others do. Then highlight the hell out it and take notes. Its THAT good!

[forestofsouls]

I have it sitting around in several boxes in the house. Bodri appears to be very knowledgeable, but intuitively, I don't trust him.

[erdweir]

This book is really informative, if somewhat biased in favor of Zen. I have noticed some inconsistencies in their criticisms of Taoism and dont agree with some of their statements, but I think the information in the book is worthy of serious consideration, and I plan to re-read large sections of it.

 

What the book has going for it is a very clear exposition of the stages of spiritual progress that downplays the importance of superpowers and paranormal abilities. It also shows the value of internal alchemy practices even though it says that people capable of just letting go completely dont need them. It talks about how mind based schools like zen and more body oriented schools like taoism are really achieving the same thing by different means, which is interesting, but then it gets a bit tangled up in describing taoists and similar schools as not understanding real spiritual goals (which might be all too often true but is a bit too broad of a criticism for my taste). In that sense it undermines it's goal to be non sectarian, but it's cross cultural comparisons of different cultivation schools is actully really interesting if not perfect.

[thelerner]

Coincidentally he's giving the book away free. (all 705 pages) I just downloaded it off his site.

 

QUOTE(erdweir @ Jun 15 2009, 02:19 PM) *

 

William Bodri at meditationexpert.com has posted s free ebook link on his blog. it is for the title How to Measure and Deepen Your Spiritual Realization ("Measuring Meditation"). it's normally 97$ but he says that someone put up the money to give away 100 copies free. I just downloaded it. You just have to give them your email address and first name. that's all. enjoy

 

link: http://www.meditationexpert.com/blog/

 

 

As of 6/30 it's still available. I find Bodri can be a little 'stiff' in his views (ie his way =only way) and he can be a little commercial in some recommendations. Still he is master and scholar and very generous to give out such volumous books (705 pages!)

 

 

Michael

[Sunya]

I have it sitting around in several boxes in the house. Bodri appears to be very knowledgeable, but intuitively, I don't trust him.

 

Indeed. I agree.

 

I have Measuring Meditation, Worlds Best and Worst Spiritual Paths and some others by Bodri. I read Worlds Best/Worst book and saw Bodri's flagrant bias towards Tibetan Buddhism. he basically says that Tibetans have no clue what they are doing and do not reach enlightenment because of their attachment to form.

 

he doesn't seem to understand why siddhis are developed in Vajrayana and holds many assumptions about Tantric practices and jumps to conclusions very easily. Not really understanding that samadhi is not the goal of Tantric Buddhism but rather developing samadhi is necessary before the higher teachings of Mahamudra/Dzogchen are practiced. and none of Vajrayana is taken from Taoism! it's all Indian!

 

he says

Ironically, Westerners have tended to overlook the original source of the

Zen teachings and typically credit Zen as being a purely Japanese invention. They

also credit Esoteric Buddhism as a purely Tibetan invention whereas the source of

both these schools can be traced back to China, and from there to India.

 

Esoteric Buddhism came from India not China! lol. anyone with wikipedia will know this simple fact. and he constantly insults Tibetan Buddhism saying that its full of sexually obsessed monks doing tantric sex practices, when monks don't have an actual physical consort but rather visualized. this is only at a very high level and the consort is a symbol of the union of form and emptiness. lay people sometimes (very rarely) receive permission to have tantric sex with another practitioner but only at a very high level of cultivation. he doesn't understand what the Yidam (diety) represents and why its used.

 

I really can't trust much of what this guy says since it's very easy to learn about Tibetan Buddhism these days, maybe he is using books written in the 1920s, and due to his bad research I wonder how much more disinformation he is spreading in other topics which I don't have much awareness of.

 

furthermore he doesn't even know what Emptiness means and calls himself a Buddhist:

 

The subsequent nine years of practice are called facing the wall. This is a stage of mastering

no-thought, which means cultivating emptiness such that even emptiness becomes emptied and

you do not even have any subtle notions of emptiness anymore. When you can reach the stage

where emptiness becomes empty, where emptiness is no longer known and there is just free

functioning without restraint, then we can say you are returning to the Tao.

 

Modern psychology and psychiatry study thoughts, but neither studies the gap between thoughts.

Yet it is this gap, this emptiness which is initially the core focus on the path of spiritual

development...,the principle of emptiness, attaining a state absent or empty of

discriminative thought by just letting everything go without mentally attaching to it.

 

Emptiness is not no-thought!

 

Beware my friends. This guys research is very poor, and he doesn't understand Buddhist meditation. maybe for Taoists he's alright, but if his knowledge of Taoism is as poor as his awareness of Buddhism than i'd stay away.

Edited July 1, 2009 by mikaelz

[Guest sykkelpump]

Indeed. I agree.

 

I have Measuring Meditation, Worlds Best and Worst Spiritual Paths and some others by Bodri. I read Worlds Best/Worst book and saw Bodri's flagrant bias towards Tibetan Buddhism. he basically says that Tibetans have no clue what they are doing and do not reach enlightenment because of their attachment to form.

 

he doesn't seem to understand why siddhis are developed in Vajrayana and holds many assumptions about Tantric practices and jumps to conclusions very easily. Not really understanding that samadhi is not the goal of Tantric Buddhism but rather developing samadhi is necessary before the higher teachings of Mahamudra/Dzogchen are practiced. and none of Vajrayana is taken from Taoism! it's all Indian!

 

he says

 

Esoteric Buddhism came from India not China! lol. anyone with wikipedia will know this simple fact. and he constantly insults Tibetan Buddhism saying that its full of sexually obsessed monks doing tantric sex practices, when monks don't have an actual physical consort but rather visualized. this is only at a very high level and the consort is a symbol of the union of bliss and emptiness. lay people sometimes (very rarely) receive permission to have tantric sex with another practitioner but only at a very high level of cultivation. he doesn't understand what the Yidam (diety) represents and why its used.

 

I really can't trust much of what this guy says since it's very easy to learn about Tibetan Buddhism these days, maybe he is using books written in the 1920s, and due to his bad research I wonder how much more disinformation he is spreading in other topics which I don't have much awareness of.

 

furthermore he doesn't even know what Emptiness means and calls himself a Buddhist:

Emptiness is not no-thought!

 

Beware my friends. This guys research is very poor, and he doesn't understand Buddhist meditation. maybe for Taoists he's alright, but if his knowledge of Taoism is as poor as his awareness of Buddhism than i'd stay away.

 

Bodri is the best source I have found on internett.I have learned deep meditation from his sites.Especially have had great sucess with the white skeleton meditation.Everything he says seems to bo true as far as my experience can tell me.And to say he dont know what emptiness means just makes you look like a clown

[erdweir]

 

furthermore he doesn't even know what Emptiness means and calls himself a Buddhist:

Emptiness is not no-thought!

 

 

Bodri and Nan actually parce out various different levels of emptiness in this book and i think the discussion is valuable. they actually warn repeatedly against practitioners thinking they have attained emptiness when really they are just feeling groovy from inner wind or some fake bliss and such..

 

But i agree with you that his descriptions of tibetan buddhism and taoism are biased. actually, the criticisms of there schools has a point, it is just overstated. How many times have we heard people get distracted by the pursuit of supernormal abilities and think they are the true goal? all too often. This is the main point he makes about what he calls esoteric or form based schools, that they get stuck in minor attainments and think that is all their is. one could make another criticism of Zen which would stress opposite weaknesses for that method. Here Bodri and Nan to their credit mention that it is better sometimes for people to enter "form based schools" becuse they cannot "let go of everything at once", but they dont constaly hammer away it like they do at the so called esoteric or form based schools. I think this is really a problem of over emphasis, they ruin a perfectly good point by overstating it.

Edited July 1, 2009 by erdweir

[Sunya]

Bodri seems to mix religious terms like its his hobby and this becomes a problem because the terms do not equate. Emptiness is not something you cultivate. Emptiness is not something you 'attain' in different levels, or attain at all for that matter. This is Buddhist emptiness we are talking about. Emptiness is the insight, or realization, that all phenomena, form, lack self-nature and essence and are interdependent. I don't know what emptiness means in Taoism but that's how it is in Buddhism. I'm sure Master Nan knows what Emptiness means so I doubt he had anything to do with these books, personally.

 

Erdweir, there are many pitfalls on the Tantric path. It is called the Swift path, the Lightning path, for a reason. Since its so fast, there are many pitfalls. this is why its sooo important to have a real guide to help you not get stuck the reason Siddhis, superpowers, are developed is to help sentient beings. the goal of Tibetan Buddhism isn't just to realize Emptiness...it's to attain complete Omniscience and other powerful Siddhis, to become a completely realized super-hero basically

Edited July 1, 2009 by mikaelz

[erdweir]

 

Erdweir, there are many pitfalls on the Tantric path. It is called the Swift path, the Lightning path, for a reason. Since its so fast, there are many pitfalls. this is why its sooo important to have a real guide to help you not get stuck the reason Siddhis, superpowers, are developed is to help sentient beings. the goal of Tibetan Buddhism isn't just to realize Emptiness...it's to attain complete Omniscience and other powerful Siddhis, to become a completely realized super-hero basically

 

 

Yeah I dont know enough about tantra or buddhism to agree or disagree with you, but I found a similar problem when he was discussing taoism. He said at one point that the goal of "the Taoist school" (excuse me, is there just one Taoist school?) was physical immortality, which is just nonsense. Just to make it more confusing, he constantly says that attainments like immortality are "not the Tao", and then goes back to saying that Taoists have no high level culitvation and no understanding of emptiness, which is highly inconsistent and more nonsense. So "the Tao" is both the ultimate thing that lesser attainments are to be measured against, and Taoism is just a lower level "esoteric" or "form based" school? Like Darin says above, the man needs an editor. His rhetoric is confused to say the least. Underneath that, i feel there is a good understanding of some things, but I cant imagine buying one of his books (I am glad i got the free download), except maybe the 25 doors to meditation, which is mostly practical. the theory is a bit garbled to say the least, but I am interested in finishing it (on page 328 at the moment). Incidentally, I think his telephone course must have thousands of pages of reading homework in it, because the free sample he gives is a few hundred pages and it is just part of one lesson, and there are at least 8 lessons. can you imagine reading all of that crap?

[Sunya]

Yeah I dont know enough about tantra or buddhism to agree or disagree with you, but I found a similar problem when he was discussing taoism. He said at one point that the goal of "the Taoist school" (excuse me, is there just one Taoist school?) was physical immortality, which is just nonsense. Just to make it more confusing, he constantly says that attainments like immortality are "not the Tao", and then goes back to saying that Taoists have no high level culitvation and no understanding of emptiness, which is highly inconsistent and more nonsense. So "the Tao" is both the ultimate thing that lesser attainments are to be measured against, and Taoism is just a lower level "esoteric" or "form based" school? Like Darin says above, the man needs an editor. His rhetoric is confused to say the least. Underneath that, i feel there is a good understanding of some things, but I cant imagine buying one of his books (I am glad i got the free download), except maybe the 25 doors to meditation, which is mostly practical. the theory is a bit garbled to say the least, but I am interested in finishing it (on page 328 at the moment). Incidentally, I think his telephone course must have thousands of pages of reading homework in it, because the free sample he gives is a few hundred pages and it is just part of one lesson, and there are at least 8 lessons. can you imagine reading all of that crap?

 

 

 

yeah.. I know what you mean. I skimmed through Measuring Meditation last night, and some parts were really interesting, but theres so much! he gets off into these random tangents that are completely off topic, spends 3 pages talking about some Emperor or some other trivial historical anecdote. i'm not being completely negative here, some parts are indeed interesting, but I, like you, am very glad I did not pay money for this.

[JustARandomPanda]

Woops. Looks like it's still there. Yay! Thanks for the link!

Edited July 5, 2009 by SereneBlue

[Smile]

Bodri seems to mix religious terms like its his hobby and this becomes a problem because the terms do not equate. Emptiness is not something you cultivate. Emptiness is not something you 'attain' in different levels, or attain at all for that matter. This is Buddhist emptiness we are talking about. Emptiness is the insight, or realization, that all phenomena, form, lack self-nature and essence and are interdependent. I don't know what emptiness means in Taoism but that's how it is in Buddhism. I'm sure Master Nan knows what Emptiness means so I doubt he had anything to do with these books, personally.

Bill's understanding of emptiness is the same as master Nan's. Where are you getting yours from?

[JustARandomPanda]

I downloaded the ebook a while ago but have now just begun reading the ebook.

 

I wanted to add 2 links here to this thread because it seems to tie in with the debate going on.

 

 

 

 

Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath students asking him about Tolle's take on Enlightenment

Edited July 17, 2009 by SereneBlue

[findley]

erdweir-- you mentioned 'fake bliss' as some sort of pit-fall on-the-way.

 

what is 'fake bliss'.... I must know, I may be guilty !

[Sunya]

Bill's understanding of emptiness is the same as master Nan's. Where are you getting yours from?

 

Buddha

Edited July 18, 2009 by mikaelz

[Smile]

 

Buddha

Cool.

Have you attended any VIpassana retreat?

[Sunya]

I want to someday. atm healing my bodies energetic imbalances through herbal formulas. need to get that in check before I can do 10hrs a day of meditation. you live closeby in NYC, is there a retreat there?

[Smile]

Yeah, i went to the Shelburne, Massachusetts center, and I thought I was ready but as everyone found out very soon we weren't. But at the end of 10 days I could sit for 3 hours straight. I was lucky to get poison Ivy from their blanket on the second day so there were no problems finding sensations to observe.

 

I would say don't wait and go for it.

[erdweir]

erdweir-- you mentioned 'fake bliss' as some sort of pit-fall on-the-way.

 

what is 'fake bliss'.... I must know, I may be guilty !

 

Oh Bodri and Nan just make a point of trying to straighten people out who get a groovy peaceful feeling while meditating and erroneously think they entered samahdi or something. Usually they are just relaxing and that's ok, but different from the real thing.

 

They make the same point about Chi and Kundalini, which according to them people often think they are experiencing when they are just amplifying internal sensations or experiencing internal wind. I think their definition of Chi may have more to do with what is sometimes called "original chi" or "pre-natal chi", whereas internal wind would just be one of the five elements.

 

------------------------------------------------------------

 

on another topic, i keep slogging my way through this book, and I have a clearer idea of what they are talking about. There is allot of confusion of terminology, but their ideas arent as confused as their book, it just needs more editing work.

 

Although their criticism of taosim and tibetan buddhism seems a bit biased at times, they admit in clear language in several places that the different schools exist for different types of people who need different methods. In other words, the same thing dosent work for everybody.

 

Their criticisms of taoism are based on their perception that taoists get caught up in superpower achievements and the like, which certainly does happen. But then they also go the other way and talk about the true Tao. It's obvious that that are criticising lots of Taoist concepts and taking a differen stance about it, but only if you read carefully and also read between the lines sometimes.

Edited August 3, 2009 by erdweir