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Scott
USA
969 Posts |
 Posted - Jul 19 2006 : 11:14:18 AM
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I had quite the experience with shikantaza, where my ego died and the whole world seemed to flip inside out. You gotta be pretty determined to reach enlightenment to practice this. I think the two most important parts of that practice are 1) keeping your body still and 2) staying alert. If you stop doing one of these all of your efforts for that session are worthless. It takes a very strong drive to actually hold to these two rules. You literally end up facing your fears of death...you face everything.
Vipassana meditation is the same as this. So is Insight meditation, prescribed by the Buddha.
After a session, a person should probably rest. It took a lot out of me when I reached that ego death. For probably two weeks I was mentally and spiritually beat up, because I had faced my own death and surrendered to it.
So the difference...Mantra meditation is bringing your mind back to an object when it drifts. This does bring about samadhi states, but you come out of them because of existing habitual tendencies. If you never get rid of these latent impressions, you'll never reach enlightenment...but no need to worry, because mantra meditation does slowly burn up these tendencies and impressions.
The difference is that with shikantaza you are fully aware of the burning up. You watch as your habitual tendencies arise, and you just observe and surrender to the fact that they're happening, and eventually they just disappear. It's a horrible practice...before I found out that it was real I just called it "death yoga", because that's what it really is. You make your body dead by not moving it at all, and your mind ends up dying as well.
Anyway, if this doesn't make sense to someone and they want to understand, then I encourage them to sit down and not move a single muscle for three hours. Allow yourself to breathe, because that's natural of course, but beyond that just observe whatever feelings come up in the body. Surrender to whatever comes to your mind. Let go of everything and just do the two things: stay still and stay alert. By three hours, you should understand what I'm talking about. |
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Anthem
1608 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2006 : 11:32:09 AM
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quote:
The only times I have ever truly felt much "bliss" from meditating is when I simply "intended" to take in prana on the inhale and let it radiate outward to my "body mind" and beyond on the exhale. That involves a balancing act, you can't give it too much attention, its more a matter of surrendering to it.
Not saying this is necessarily what you are trying to do LittleDragon, but from my perspective, it is not the right approach to try to elicit a "bliss response" in our practices or to measure their effectiveness by how much bliss one feels while doing them.
There are way too many variables to get an accurate picture this way. Sometimes meditating can clear a momentary path in the nervous system to feelings of bliss but it is fleeting and temporary until almost all the debris has been cleared away. We can have temporary moments of all kinds of things: bliss, ecstasy, anger, frustration, images, visions etc, these are all things that come and go during sitting practice and are just symptoms of purification. These "symptoms of purification" do help us know that something is in fact happening.
Bliss and ecstasy will come over time into our daily lives from doing the meditative practices and can take many years to manifest. It is how you feel after and outside of practices that is the measure not during. Bliss is also just one benefit that comes, other benefits like calmness, compassion, better relationships with others, increasing inner silence etc. come sooner. Also comparing how you feel after 6 months of practice to when you started is a much better way to gauge progress than measuring it day to day which will have all kinds of unpredictable variability.
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Edited by - Anthem on Jul 19 2006 11:34:52 AM |
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snake
United Kingdom
277 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2006 : 4:02:47 PM
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Mantra seems to give deep rest and swoon almost whilst from my little practice,shikantaza keeps you very much awake and aware of the here and now,but which of the 2 is worth to give more time to im unsure and maybe it isnt important but am interested in others views.
thankyou very much |
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ranger
USA
45 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2006 : 10:36:56 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by snake
Mantra seems to give deep rest and swoon almost whilst from my little practice,shikantaza keeps you very much awake and aware of the here and now,but which of the 2 is worth to give more time to im unsure and maybe it isnt important but am interested in others views.
thankyou very much
I've been wrestling with this question for awhile. What I'm pretty certain of after more than a quarter century of focusing on concentrative meditation practices is that I'm not especially good at them. Not too long ago I discovered that in contrast, I take to shikantaza like the proverbial duck to water. For my particular body/mind makeup at this time it's the closest thing I know of to a "natural" type of meditation.
One other thing that has worked for me for a long time is using a mantra "phrase," as in Way of a Pilgrim, in activity. Especially during periods of trouble, it's been kind of a center of stability. |
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LittleDragon
29 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2006 : 11:24:06 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Anthem11
quote:
The only times I have ever truly felt much "bliss" from meditating is when I simply "intended" to take in prana on the inhale and let it radiate outward to my "body mind" and beyond on the exhale. That involves a balancing act, you can't give it too much attention, its more a matter of surrendering to it.
Not saying this is necessarily what you are trying to do LittleDragon, but from my perspective, it is not the right approach to try to elicit a "bliss response" in our practices or to measure their effectiveness by how much bliss one feels while doing them.
Bliss and ecstasy will come over time into our daily lives from doing the meditative practices and can take many years to manifest. It is how you feel after and outside of practices that is the measure not during. Bliss is also just one benefit that comes, other benefits like calmness, compassion, better relationships with others, increasing inner silence etc. come sooner. Also comparing how you feel after 6 months of practice to when you started is a much better way to gauge progress than measuring it day to day which will have all kinds of unpredictable variability.
Agreed, more or less. I know its not helpful to get attached to the experiences. However, from what I've read this seems to be one of the factors that at least some branches of Buddism use to gauge one's state of concentration (Samatha Jhanas). I think the term "Ecstatic Condutivity" is probably used pretty much the same way with AYP but without the gradations that Buddism has developed. Aren't the advanced practices meant to increase it? Don't most of you if fact strive for it? Don't most of you try to achieve and expand it? |
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Anthem
1608 Posts |
Posted - Jul 20 2006 : 12:00:16 AM
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Aren't the advanced practices meant to increase it? Don't most of you if fact strive for it? Don't most of you try to achieve and expand it?
Hi LittleDragon,
Yes, for sure, the practices are designed to expand and increase ecstatic conductivity and to me this is a result of practice rather than a goal of it. The goal of practice is to focus on the practice at hand, be it pranayama or meditation etc. which I think we both agree with.
The expansion of ecstasy and bliss is a by-product of this process, just like water is the by-product of pumping a well handle. The effort and concentration of pumping is what yields the water. If we stop and look at how much water we have pumped up, talk about the nature of it and wonder about how much we can get etc, we're not pumping the water or increasing the amount that we have.
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Edited by - Anthem on Jul 20 2006 12:10:39 AM |
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LittleDragon
29 Posts |
Posted - Jul 23 2006 : 02:01:07 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by david_obsidian
LittleDragon said:
1. It seems to me that Buddism produces fewer of the "Gurus gone bad" than Yoga. Am I wrong? I seem to be more attuned to the metaphysics of Yoga than Buddism, but sometimes I wonder if that's an ego reaction.
Yes, I think that's true. I think part of the reason is the mythologization of 'enlightenment' and 'enlightened' persons is way out of bounds in yoga. The expectations on a realized person, and the whole guru system, and all that goes with it in Yoga, is not really there in the bulk of the Buddhist traditions. And this mythologization feeds heavily into the 'gurus gone bad' phenomenon.
Put another way in a quote I found at http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Yworship.htm
People look to gurus as a way to get self acceptance. If they can get acceptance from the guru, then of course they must be ok. The more powerful and magical and mystical the guru is, the more valuable his/her acceptance is. Therefore, the tendency is to elevate the guru to superhuman mythical Godman status.
Any self-respecting guru would understand this and make every effort to show his students that s/he poops on the same pot as they do. People need to understand that Self realization doesn't automatically render one a saint. People need to see examples of realization in everyday life. When a bigtime guru stands as the example of realization, people acquire all kinds of incorrect expectations about realization, effectively hindering their own self discovery as it has become templated by their bigtime guru's image.
It's not the guru's fault if s/he gets elevated by his/her students, but it's always his/her fault if s/he gets comfortable there.
– Jody Radzik
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yogaguy
USA
7 Posts |
Posted - Jul 28 2006 : 10:08:12 PM
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Skillful meditation is ones ability through what ever form of practice to still the mind thus allowing one to observe or mingle with that which is spiritual in nature. What ever the technique, school or practice used they all will have much in common once the practitioners observe that which is spiritual in nature in and around them. What ever practice allows one to control and bring their complete focus and attention to the point of "in a sense" becomming one with the object of attention then could be considered a good practice for them. When the mind is stilled enough then spiritual sensations can occur. Determined by the intesity of the spiritual sensation is ones spiritual understanding "spiritual enlightenment".
Spiritual understanding thus then effecting ones life :)
Sincerely, Yogaguy.
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comparing different forms of meditations
