Meditation and its results

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not lately, but yes.

for anyone interested:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest

What did you think of it? Did you understand the new words, in context?

Someone asked me by PM about spirituality and meditation and where to start. I thought I'd share my reply here too in case anyone else in interested:

Where you begin should really depend on your motives. Ask yourself what do you want? What are you looking for? What drives you? Personally it was the desire to understand myself, to understand the universe and to understand my place in it. Why am I alive? What does it mean to be alive? Who or what is alive? Who or what is asking these questions and why?

Some people dive into science for the answers and some dive into religion. I dived into both. I learned that science can tell me about objective reality and the physical nature of the universe but it can't tell me anything about this sense of "I" inside this mind - this consciousness. The closest science can come up with is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain; but that does not satisfy my need to know more. For me Buddhism and also Hindu Advaita Vedanta provided a philosophical basis for further inward exploration. Zen in particular helps this inward search. It does not provide a rigid dogma or tell you to believe anything, instead it tells you to look for yourself, dig deep within yourself and investigate... who is doing this digging? Investigate your own sense of being, cast your awareness on where your thoughts and emotions come from; what is happening inside your own brain?

To me this isn't religion, it is spirituality. The quest for the truth. Look deep inside yourself and see how deep the rabbit hole is. You can use meditation as a tool to help you to do this investigation. The meditation as outlined by Krishnamurti in one of my posts in the meditation thread is as good a place as any to start. Try setting some time aside where you will be free from distractions or interruptions or noise where you can sit quietly and slowly and gently allow all the noise in your mind to subside and see where it takes you. Who is watching your thoughts arise? Try to shift your focus of attention backwards. In daily life it is almost like we are looking through dark glasses at the world and we almost believe we are those dark glasses. Become aware of this and step your consciousness back, behind those dark glasses. Trace your consciousness back inside your mind... This is a very good place to start.

It was pretty easy to follow by the time she began discussing the jhanas in less proprietary terms (ie. descriptive English).

Plenty of useful information and it sounds like the tracing of a certain neural chain. I'm still at a point in my study of esotericism where overall however I'm still trying to get a clearer understanding of the differences between East and West and what my particular viewpoints are on either what disagrees with or what fits me. Seems like at this level a lot of our decisions on what kind of esotericism we go with as our mainstay has a lot to do with how our internal realities and processing work. A lot of things in me for example, starting with growing up and being confirmed Roman Catholic and having a rich inner fantasy world most of my life, really lends itself toward Hermeticism - ie. at this point at least I'd prefer to think that there's a way toward higher living and higher consciousness that doesn't take dismantling the 'I' to find peace, happiness, or forward progress (and from what I understand the Golden Dawn and diaspora outlook tends more toward the gradual replacement of lower will with will of the higher self or holy guardian angel which in and of itself like keeping the ego but bringing it ever and ever more on target).

One of the best general all-around western esoteric books I've read (it doesn't go into crazy levels of depth but it's a wonderful perspective and includes a great analysis of the whose who and different western ideologies) is 'Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism' by Unknown Author (aka. Valentin Tomberg) written to be a post-mortem released memoir which was translated from French (lol, originally written by a Russian Brit if I'm not mistaken). He went anonymous for possibly a couple different reasons - one is that the book has a distinctively Martinist pitch of which Saint-Martin and de Pasqually were the 'Unknown Philosophers', the other reason is that he was deep in Anthroposophy in the 1930's so his writing from then is very different from the letters on each tarot card for the book in question which were drafted through the 1960's. It's one of those books where you have to either re-read it several times throughout your life or you need to read it after you've already gotten the whose who of western esotericism as well as some eastern to see what you agree with, what you disagree with, etc.. His book is available online in pdf, the only downside is like a lot of translated e-books the r's and t's got mutilated so a lot of strange typos crept their way in to the internet version that weren't in the original.

Unless I'm mistaking a letter from his book from something in Philosophy of Spiritual Activity by Rudolph Steiner, I believe Valentin has a tarot key where he talks about the different outlooks and spiritual goals between Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism/Manichaeism, and Hermetic Christianity - the last of which is his mainstay. One of the things I'm still trying to understand is whether Martinism falls more under material optimism or pessimism, Valentin seems to vastly prefer Hermeticism and Christianity in his words based on material optimism and somewhat brow-beats Manichaeism and Catharism but at the same time in reading Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin I'm still not sure what the core Martinist stance is, ie. it seems in certain ways dualist in the good-evil sense and LCdSM claims at least in his Man His True Nature and Ministry that the world is a physical composite of good and evil and thus nature can't be trusted for reflecting the true nature of God (which is the one thing that worries me about it and makes me wonder if Martinism might have only one foot inside the Hermetic tradition).

This is a very interesting thread. I don't have much to say, except that it's making me seriously consider trying meditation. Thanks especially to TallyMan and wornlight.

agreement with many that this discussion on meditation is truly wonderful! thanks all!

it's become a habit with me .. keeping me from falling apart too bad .. somehow for me also connected to stimming .. stopping time was mentioned .. thats how i used to think about it too! ..

what little ive seen in books of vipassana meditation seems maybe a little bit similar to what ive tried to do .. allowing consciousness free reign basically .. and to me it is important to relax to the degree the mind goes silent .. then stay there awhile .. watch thoughts arise and fade .. then back to the real world ..

I fell asleep in work, if that counts.

No, that doesn't count, but it sometimes happens. Don't worry about it. Best to meditate when you are feeling fully alert and wide awake, preferably not after eating a meal or you'll feel drowsy and you'll have difficulty remaining alert during the meditation. Unless you are feeling alert there is more chance of drifting off into daydreaming or simply drifting off to sleep.

Yeah, that's what happened. I was starving hungry and everyone was busy around me, playing hangman or some kind of parlour game and I just thought I'd switch off to them for a minute.

it was a bit longer than a minute. I was dribbling on my desk. I don't know if anyone noticed.

Thank you..this is a very beautiful way you do here.. to describe spirituality..that is free for everyone..:)

This is such a pleasurable thread ....2...Thanks to the OP3.....

I've been lazy about it lately,I need to start back sitting.My teacher recommended starting out slow,just sitting for twenty breathes and slowly increasing.Some meditate with eyes closed, but I learned to do it with eyes barely open.The worst trouble I have is my leg goes to sleep and if I stand up to soon,I'll fall over.I use an incense stick for a timer.When you are in a deep meditative state it is considered one of the Bardos.

I heard somewhere that you can do it whilst doing a headstand.

I think they call it the kamasutra.

I forgot a few times to say this, but I also recomend wornlight's suggestion of "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha", by Daniel Ingraim.

And now that I'm at it, wornlight, I don't know exactly what is Ingraim's view of how path and fruit occur, ie, if they necessarily occur simultaneously (the commentarial view) or if they can occur separately (the scriptue's view). Bhante Gunaratana and Ayya Khema are of the opinion (and probably of the experience) that they can occur at different times. What you describe seems like a path moment, but not a fruit moment. A path moment, if I understood Ayya Khema well, consists of a sort of black out. A fruit moment is much more like the descriptions of nirvana which are common: a beyond measure bright peace and liberation as the experience is occuring.

Listen to the dhamma talk I posted previously and see what you think of it.

Metta

I think you'll find that the kamasutra isn't related to meditation. Not sure if one of the kamasutra positions involves standing on your head, but it wouldn't surprise me. Kamasutra positions tend to require two or more participants, usually one male and one female.

^^Oh, I must be getting confused between meditation and copulation.

It's all those funny films I've been exposed to in my life.

Bliss and Emptiness does sort of look like something from the Kamasutra.