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TensorTympani
USA
81 Posts |
 Posted - Jul 08 2024 : 2:30:47 PM
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Hi all,
I have read this lesson http://www.aypsite.org/355.html early on when I started with AYP, in an attempt to know everything there is to know about DM, right away. This part fascinated and puzzled me:
quote:
In deep meditation practice, disappearing mantra is good. Then when we realize we have gone off the mantra, we ease back to it. We may be experiencing thoughts very clearly in the mind. In that case, the mantra will be a clear pronunciation. Or we may be very floaty and fuzzy. In that case, we ease back to the mantra in that mode of floaty fuzziness. Or we may be in stillness, barely aware we have gone off the mantra. In that case we favor the mantra as stillness itself. That last one may seem to be a paradox -- favoring something in nothing. But that is what it is. This is all we have to do come back to the mantra wherever we are, rather than forcing pronunciation to be somewhere else, either clearer or fuzzier. Letting it go will usually lead to more fuzziness, but not always. Purification occurring in the nervous system can lead anywhere. We just allow whatever happens, and ride it wherever it goes, easing back to the mantra wherever we find ourselves. Nothing more for us to do.
Everything said in the paragraph made perfect sense to me, except for the part where it is said that a correct DM practice can mean to "favor the mantra as stillness itself".
Back then I also found this quote by Yogani:
https://www.aypsite.com/plus/79.html#79.3
quote:
It is not correct to choose to not to pick up the mantra when we notice we are off it, even if we are deep in stillness, having blissful sensations, etc. Noticing we are off the mantra is the resumption of mental activity and what we do then is pick up the mantra and dive back in. Choosing to rest in stillness or sensations rather than picking up the mantra is a departure from correct practice and will lead to less results from our practice.
I thus interpreted to "favor the mantra as stillness itself" to only apply to the case where the mantra has refined to point of stillness in a more or less continuous way, meaning that for the practioner there is no clearly perceivable distinction between being on the mantra and being in stillness ("we may be in stillness, barely aware we have gone off the mantra").
When silence can be distinguished from the mantra one should favor the mantra and not the stillness if one has a choice.
So, I mentally labeled the possibility to "favor the mantra as stillness itself" as something very advanced which I don't need to pay attention to until further down the path.
I think my mantra might have baked in sufficiently that I might be able to "favor the mantra as stillness itself" but I'm quite hesitant to do so, because the last thing I want to do to is to make my DM less effective.
A few months ago, Christi made me aware of this quote by Yogani:
quote:
All we do is favor easily the mantra whenever we realize we are off it, whatever it is in the mind. We don't try to make the mantra clear or fuzzy. Just the intention to favor the mantra is the mantra. That's all. Nothing more to do.
https://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic...=11091#95352
After vaguely understanding that comment I was able to naturally pick up the mantra at that level. Surely the mantra must have unconsciously refined to that level many times before in my DM practice, but only the combination of some vague conceptual understanding ("intention to favor the mantra is the mantra") with the subconscious "muscle memory" of a feeling of the mantra matching that description allowed me to return to the mantra in this more refined state, rather than always coming back to an unnecessary gross level.
For me it seems to be case that going from "favoring the mantra" to "favoring the intention of the mantra" is a continuous process, and so I'm quite confident that this is indeed a refinement of the mantra rather than something else, and thus correct practice.
Now I come to my current situation and related question.
I noticed recently that the mere intention to think the mantra can continuously refine to the mere intention to maintain stillness. It is still a doing. I'm not resting in stillness. I'm favoring the intention to maintain stillness. But I'm reluctant to allow myself to call this correct DM practice. After all, when I notice I'm at that level, I could chose to go back to favoring the intention of the mantra.
So I'm unsure which of these applies:
"[I]t is not correct to choose to not to pick up the mantra when we notice we are off it, even if we are deep in stillness"
or
"[W]e may be in stillness, barely aware we have gone off the mantra. In that case we favor the mantra as stillness itself."
I'm sure eventually I will naturally realise if that really is a refinement of the mantra, or not. But hearing your opinion might speed up the process again 
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Christi
United Kingdom
4444 Posts |
Posted - Jul 08 2024 : 5:07:06 PM
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Hi Tensor.
Both of those statements apply.
So this is the case:
"[I]t is not correct to choose to not to pick up the mantra when we notice we are off it, even if we are deep in stillness."
And at the same time this is the case:
"[W]e may be in stillness, barely aware we have gone off the mantra. In that case we favor the mantra as stillness itself."
So, we are always favouring the mantra whenever we realise we are off it. But the mantra can refine to the level of a mere intention to favour the mantra, without any actual thought, in which case we are favouring the mantra as stillness.
If you find yourself favouring the mere intention to maintain stillness, then come back to easily favouring the mantra, even if it is so refined that you are easily favouring the mantra as stillness. This means there is only one process for the meditation going all the way in, and never a switching of the meditation object.
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TensorTympani
USA
81 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2024 : 12:03:15 AM
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Hi Christi,
Thanks for your quick help! I think I have a better idea now what's going on. It's quite tricky to describe in words what happens at such a refined level of meditation, and I omitted some important detail in my description, which I only became aware of because of the second part of your sentence:
"But the mantra can refine to the level of a mere intention to favour the mantra, without any actual thought, in which case we are favouring the mantra as stillness."
When I said above that I got used to picking up the mantra as the mere intention of thinking the mantra, I should have also said that until recently this was always accompanied by the mantra still being present "on autopilot". That's why I felt it was a continuous refinement to go from favoring the mantra to just favoring the intention to think the mantra. In both cases the mantra was there. But now what seems to have happened is that favoring the intention to think the mantra can also exist while the mantra on autopilot fades away. This would match your description I quoted above.
So on the one hand it is the same intention refined (as the mantra on autopilot has given way to silence) but on the other hand the state it leads does not contain the mantra in any recognizable form (so there is a possibility to confuse that intention with an intention to be in silence). That's why I described this intention differently in my post above because it is accompanied by silence rather than the mantra, even though it is the same intention as far as I can tell. The perceived result of that intention was to maintain silence even though it might have been a refined intention to think the mantra.
Since I'm not really sure about that (it seems quite impossible to be sure about this...), I will do what you suggest, and what I already thought to be safest, which is to simply return to a favoring of the mantra that is intense enough to conjure up the mantra again whenever I notice I'm in that silence with my detached intention.
I think with time I will learn whether that detached intention is the refined mantra or not, and won't risk imposing any structure on the mantra refinement procedure. |
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Dogboy
USA
2245 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2024 : 03:42:51 AM
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| Yeah, AYP is so simple it spurs a lot of can this be right?. When off get on. |
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SeySorciere
Seychelles
1555 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2024 : 07:17:25 AM
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Dear Tensor,
A better way of understanding if your DM technique is "right" (I prefer effective) is to look for the results it is supposed to bring to your life. DM is for:
- Introversion of the senses
- Cultivation the Witness aka Inner Silence
- Purification of the mind /subtle body
From your detailed analysis of how the mantra is behaving, it sounds like you are doing just fine. You are introverting the senses, witnessing absorption of the mantra in inner silence - the two becomes one.
Now notice its effect on the flow of your life.
Sey 
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Edited by - SeySorciere on Jul 09 2024 07:19:17 AM |
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TensorTympani
USA
81 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2024 : 12:57:29 PM
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Hi Sey,
Thanks for your reminders and assessment!
I'm quite sure my technique is right most of the time during a DM session. And my question concerns only those moments when I realise I'm off the mantra in that particular way (I tried to explain somewhat clumsily). And so it would be very difficult to judge from daily life whether what I'm doing in these moments is "right" or not.
I do notice the effects of DM and Samyama in my daily life. So there is no real problem here and good things are happening 
Hi Dogboy,
"When off get on" is the correct process. My question concerns certain moments during DM where I'm currently uncertain whether I'm off or not.
If I'm off (in those special situations) then this has more relevance:
"[I]t is not correct to choose to not to pick up the mantra when we notice we are off it, even if we are deep in stillness."
If I'm on (in those special situations) then this has more relevance:
"[W]e may be in stillness, barely aware we have gone off the mantra. In that case we favor the mantra as stillness itself."
[Of course, as Christi said, both instructions apply in general. The question here is about which of these has more relevance in those special situations.]
If I'm off and mistake it for being on, then I deviate from the DM process.
If I'm on and mistake it for being off, then I return to an unnecessary gross form of the mantra (which would be a form of "holding on to a clear pronunciation" as described here https://www.aypsite.org/366.html ).
In both these cases I would likely reduce the effectiveness of my DM practice if I keep doing that over a long time. Obviously the 2nd type of mistake is less of a problem and should fix itself over time. |
Edited by - TensorTympani on Jul 09 2024 1:13:02 PM |
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Christi
United Kingdom
4444 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2024 : 1:10:36 PM
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quote:
So on the one hand it is the same intention refined (as the mantra on autopilot has given way to silence) but on the other hand the state it leads does not contain the mantra in any recognizable form (so there is a possibility to confuse that intention with an intention to be in silence).
Hi Tensor,
Yes, the two are very similar in their effect, so can be easily confused. When "favouring the mantra as silence", there is silence with a mere intention (to favour the mantra). When "favouring the intention to remain in silence" there is silence, with a mere intention (to favour silence).
So, if they seem so apparently similar on the surface, then someone may ask, why would one be correct procedure and the other not? One easy way to think about it is to ask the question: "What happens if the mind begins to come out of samadhi into thoughts and memories and attachments?" If someone has switched to favouring the intention to be in silence, then they will have a problem. The mind will be turbulent with a lot of distractions and they will no longer have a mantra to come back to as an anchor. Having the intention to favour silence is not so easy to do when there is no silence in the mind. Of course they could switch back to favouring the mantra, but they they would need to decide at some point that there is not enough silence in their mind to be favouring silence any more, and then make the switch. So, they would need to be engaging in mental analytics to the degree of deciding if sufficient silence is present in the mind, or not.
In this scenario, someone would go from easily favouring the mantra, to easily favouring the mere intention of the mantra as silence, to easily favouring the mere intention of resting in stillness, to mental analytics (asking the question: "Is there sufficient stillness in the mind or not?"), to favouring the mantra again. So, the simple procedure of Deep Meditation would be gone, and replaced with a potentially complicated procedure involving making decisions about the level of silence and stillness present in the mind during meditation.
So, this is why we always favour the mantra, even if the mantra has refined to stillness. It means there is always only one thing to do, and never any need to be analysing the depth of silence, which would divide the mind. Favouring the mantra with our attention over anything else that is going on, includes favouring the mantra with our attention over having the intention to abide in stillness.
As for working out if you are "off" the mantra, or "on" the mantra, that is easy. If you are not easily favouring the mantra with your attention then you are off it, and need to come back to it. If you are easily favouring the mantra with your attention then you are "on" it. If the mantra refines to stillness and you have the mere intention to favour the mantra as stillness, then you are "on" it. The "mere intention" to favour the mantra counts as being "on" the mantra.
It is useful to remember that the goal of meditation is not to rest in stillness and silence. The goal of meditation is liberation (moksha), unity (kaivalya) and Divine love. And as Sey mentioned, that has to do with the cultivation of the witness. The witness is cultivated more effectively with a simple meditation procedure than with a complex one. This is because the witness involves a "stepping back" from the mind, not more involvement with it. Cultivating the witness also involves letting go of attachments. This includes attachments to bliss states and attachments to states where the mind is silent. Attachments can arise in very subtle ways, and the mind can be very clever about how it allows subtle states of attachment to arise, and be maintained. Sticking to the simple procedure of always easily favouring the mantra ensures that these subtle and more refined attachments will also fall away if they arise. Ultimately yoga is about being at peace regardless of what is happening in the body and mind.
I recently wrote a blog on the difference between states of consciousness, such as the mind being silent (samadhi), and the process of liberation. That is here:
Is enlightenment a state of consciousness?
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TensorTympani
USA
81 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2024 : 1:44:08 PM
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Hi Christi,
Thanks again for taking the time and further clarification. I feel it sinking in
quote:
Attachments can arise in very subtle ways, and the mind can be very clever about how it allows subtle states of attachment to arise, and be maintained. Sticking to the simple procedure of always easily favouring the mantra ensures that these subtle and more refined attachments will also fall away if they arise.
I'm sure that has been part of my wanting to figure out whether what I'm doing is correct practice or not... |
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Favor the mantra as stillness itself
