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I also respectfully disagree with Christi that investigation into impermanent nature of body-mind phenonmena is not meditation.

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Christi has his own bias toward Christianity, Yoga, bliss consciousness and Self. My bias is toward the dharma, which is no bias, no opinion and no reliance on any state of being as a so-called "ultimate truth."

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The worry about "premature crown chakra opening" is something dear Christi and I must respectfully disagree about. Look, the crown chakra is a worry if you have wrong view about impermanence. And again, shamatha will balance that the uncomfortable feelings that arise. Besides, the crown chakra is your friend. That is our connection to pure wisdom. When that opens, it is wisdom and insight. Other than that, one can proceed to the final goal without ever once doing anything with any channel or chakra.

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Originally posted by markern

For vipassana read Daniel Ingrams masterpiece mastering the core teachings of the buddha. It can be read for free at his website and most who read it progress a lot faster after reading it.

Any grounding problem with Vipassana can easily be mitigated by doing embracing the tree or something like that for 10-15 minutes a day. That in itself is a great meditation and energy practice.

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Originally posted by adamantclearlight

Hi Christi, That all seems fine. But the body sweeping is just a preliminary exercise. It is described as a practice to accomplish full body mindfulness, which is the real practice. I don't think that is a pratyahara. Pratyahara is part of shamatha. Rather, it is vipassana, because one is aware of the arising and passing away of impermanent gross and subtle sensations that precede or accompany mental events. If you combine with anapasati, one has a complete path to purify active and latent habits. It is really very concise and simple.

I don't know what the Goenka culture is like in terms of sectarian. Goenka repeats often that breath yoga and body mindfulness is non-sectarian. That is true. However, Goenka does say things like mantras and visualizations are sectarian. That also might be true in a sense, but is also sectarian to say that. On the other hand, his comments that mantra and visualizations create a comforter cover for one's "stuff" stored in the unconscious is also true. Vipassana is about stirring up the stuff and resolving each bit on the spot, pleasant or painful. The Goenka method is a sharp scalpel. His students might be a little dull, I don't know. In a retreat, one practices a method not a community. If I was Ruben, I would just keep my personal daily practice to myself and take advantage of a great method and opportunity to practice in a nice retreat place.

I didn't read anything about a crown practice. That would be weird, because the Buddha never mentioned chakras even once and Goenka's methods correspond to the suttas. That may have to do with dwelling too long at the top of the head during "sweeping." One should only be sweeping for a day or two to get the hang of body mindfulness. I certainly don't think anyone needs to be scared of vipassana. The Buddha's methods are wonderfully blessed.

I would revise the "noting" practice of Daniel Ingram's style to just noticing. Noting is too much work. When doing AYP, one basically accomplishes full body mindfulness, so sweeping is unnecessary.

Adamant

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Originally posted by Ruben

Dear YogaIsLife, Christi and Adamant,

Thank all of you for continuing posting, reacting and sharing insightful advice. The profound understanding that sparkles from your words continues to inspire.

Meditation practices bring peace, no-reason happiness and joy in daily life, and, maybe best of all: a feeling of connectedness with friends, family and surroundings. Feeling blessed for that.

Ruben

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Originally posted by Ruben

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Originally posted by markern

For vipassana read Daniel Ingrams masterpiece mastering the core teachings of the buddha. It can be read for free at his website and most who read it progress a lot faster after reading it.

Any grounding problem with Vipassana can easily be mitigated by doing embracing the tree or something like that for 10-15 minutes a day. That in itself is a great meditation and energy practice.

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Hi Markern,

Thanks for suggestions! I downloaded Ingram's ebook already and started reading. Find it very interesting indeed! (Thanks to Adamant also for recommending this ebook!)
Haven't heard of "embracing the tree" before. Found a previous post of yours where you mentioned it too. Is this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fBs...ture=related) what you mean? This actually reminds me of a girl who once spontaneously literally embraced a tree in high school. At that time this seemed a bit weird to most of the people seeing this (including me, admittedly). Now, I think she is someone very spiritually gifted with a deep sense of intuition and compassion.

Ruben

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Originally posted by markern

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Originally posted by Ruben

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Originally posted by markern

For vipassana read Daniel Ingrams masterpiece mastering the core teachings of the buddha. It can be read for free at his website and most who read it progress a lot faster after reading it.

Any grounding problem with Vipassana can easily be mitigated by doing embracing the tree or something like that for 10-15 minutes a day. That in itself is a great meditation and energy practice.

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Hi Markern,

Thanks for suggestions! I downloaded Ingram's ebook already and started reading. Find it very interesting indeed! (Thanks to Adamant also for recommending this ebook!)
Haven't heard of "embracing the tree" before. Found a previous post of yours where you mentioned it too. Is this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fBs...ture=related) what you mean? This actually reminds me of a girl who once spontaneously literally embraced a tree in high school. At that time this seemed a bit weird to most of the people seeing this (including me, admittedly). Now, I think she is someone very spiritually gifted with a deep sense of intuition and compassion.

Ruben

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I think it is but I will have to listen to what she says first and see the whole video and now I only have a minute but I will get back to you on it. Various qigong stances, and martial stances, deep horse stance for example and Chias Iron Shirt poses in addition to embracing the tree will root energy in a powerfull way I have never found any asana to come close to doing. If you do this enough it acts as a counterforce making it quite easy to balance out excess crown activity. I think AYP, despite being a really superb system in most ways taht I recomend people to try, lacks a serious grounding practice and this is why avoidance of the crown is so important in AYP but not necesarilly in all other systems. In KAP for example there is a lot of direct crown work only some weeks into the beginners course but I have not seen one person have problems with it. This is because KAP has several very powerfull grounding and rooting practices to counterbalance. It is probably THE most grounded system I have read feedback about. So I think the often reapeated advice from AYP people to stay away from the crown, although correct in the case of AYP and several other systems, is not generally correct.

I think what should be the next development in AYP should be proper grounding techniques. At present it does not have them. People in AYP seem to stay within the safety zone, which is the most important, but still to be struggling quite a lot with being too ungrounded. Being somwhat ungrounded is both hihgly uncomfortable and psychologically highly unbalancing and so important to avoid. Just aiming for basic safety is not enough IMO. Also a lot of people do not really understand that they are ungrounded before they have done some powerfull grounding techniques for a good amount of time. They are just so used to being fluffy without having a contrast they don`t see that they are ungrounded as long as they are only moderately so.

Which techniques would fit best into AYP I don`t know but as far as I have seen from others and my own experience various qigong stances for grounding works well along side practices from other traditions in grounding energy. Precisely done belly breathing also gets energy down quite well. But this is not just focusing on the breath but conciously breathing exactly correct deep down in the belly.

As long as you do grounding work enough to feel very grounded and that you have developed the ability to within a few minutes push/sink your energy deep into the earth and hold it there, you can do a lot of work high up without much risk because you can get the energy down within minutes instead of weeks or months which is what often happens without a powerfull grounding technique. If you early on develop this abiltiy you do not have to do much maintanance to keep it alive. You want to get to where you can voluntary move energy down or up and keep it at the prefered location quickly. Starting out it takes a loooong time to get energy down and develop real root but once you have it not much needs to be done to get solidly earthy any time one is tipped of balance. All the advice on walking in the woods and physcial labour etc. is good enough but takes about 30 times as long as a proper energetic technique.

I would also think that Mahasi style Vipassana avoids these problems better as they usually focus on the breath in the abdomen not sweeping and they also include walking meditation with awareness at the bottom of the feet.

If you want to do Vipassana I highly advice you to try out the secret smile as a warm up or finishing part of meditation as it smooths things out a lot and balances your mind in a very good way and helps a lot in awakening kundalini and will help depth in meditation as well. If you deceide to do AYP it might be better not to use it as it can add up to be too much.

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Originally posted by adamantclearlight

Hi Ruben, Retraction alert! You sparked my interest in Goenka and I bought "The Discourse Summaries" which are the lectures given each day of the 10-day retreat. This guy is great. His exposition of the dharma is par excellence. He recommends one 10-day retreat per year and two one hour sessions per day. His rule about not practicing any other technique between sessions is advisory, just like Yogani's. The purpose is so that one will not get involved in too many practices and get no where. All gurus tell you that progress cannot be made, unless you dedicate to one practice. It's just common sense. Obviously, there's no limitation on you to explore. His view is strict non-sectarianism, which means he's not asking for devotion. But if you begin the practice, he is recommending diligence and consistency. Any sports trainer will tell you that.

I want to emphasize that Goenka's teaching is very profound. It doesn't get better than that. I have enormous respect for him. All his comments are spot on. His shamatha technique of breath awareness is very clearly described and put into perspective of insight into the nature of the mind-body compound. His vipassana practice of "body sweeping," as Christi described it, is great. I have practiced that for years (that's what my granddaddy taught me). The "dark night" woes I described and shared with Daniel Ingram would not happen here, because there is balanced use of shamatha with breath awareness.

Ruben, if you are interested in this practice, then do the 10-day retreat. Follow it up with six-months of sustained two sessions per day in your work-life as that system describes. That should be sufficient time for you to evaluate the path. If you have problems then reconsider. But (being the dharma devotee that I am), I wish I had found these teachings earlier.

IMHO, this is THE BEST Theravada exposition of the Dharma I have ever seen.

Remember, the Buddha says in the Satipathana Sutta, that one can obtain realization in one week. The Buddha was not worried about premature crown openings, and neither should you.

Thank you for sharing this teacher with me, Ruben. I'm sold.

Adamant

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Originally posted by YogaIsLife

Of course, to get to this state you may need a concentrative mind, and that is why mantra meditation (AYP style for example) or breath mindfullness can come up handy in the beggining, otherwise you will just be sitting there restless and not much gain can be made. Buddhists for example advice this 2 steps to meditation.

All the best!

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Originally posted by Ruben
Dear Adamant,

I've been reading "The Discourse Summaries" myself now. Deep wisdom. Reading the book itself calms the mind profoundly. Thank you for recommending and praising these teachings. More than ever calm feeling that going for a Vipassana retreat is highly valuable.

"May all beings be happy",
Ruben

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Originally posted by markern

[quote]Originally posted by Ruben

Hi markern,

Thanks for your suggestions. I have tried embracing the tree; it makes me feel quiet but I also get some sensations between the ears, as with meditation.

This is the first time I hear about KAP. Are you combining AYP and KAP?

Ruben

[quote]Originally posted by markern

No I am doing neither at the moment but I plan on doing KAP and combining it with Vipassana in the future. I have just done some secret smile and a few other things Santiago (one of the teachers) told me to try. KAPs founder Dr. Glenn Morris did Zazen alongside of it. The way I see it KAP raises your kundalini fast and in a balanced way and thus gets you alot closer to enlightenment but you will then progress a lot faster to actual enlightnment if you add an insight meditation to KAP like Zen, Vipassana, Dzogchen, Advaita, Self Inquiry etc. KAP does not take that much time so I can do both. My motivation is partly to spead things up and partly to use it for balancing things out and partly to have a way of working directly with energy because I think it is fun and because there are health benefits to gain from more active energetic meditations not found in pure stilness meditation like VIpassana. If I have a chakra imbalance or if my spleen is messed up or a channel is closed KAP gives me means to work directly on it. At the same time the essential enlightenment work and the most of my practice time eventually will be just sitting and observing VIpassana style. So in a way this combo is not unlike AYP in that it combines a just let it happen part in meditation but also more active and specific work like the AYP pranayama but the energywork is more specific and concerned with energetic anatomy. This combo suits my temperament well as I would always choose something like Vipassana or Zen over a pure energy manipulation ystem like Chias but I am also realy drawn to such systems.

KAP is basicly some yogic techniques like chakra meditations etc. combined with some shamanic stuff and a little sufi stuff with safetys added from Taoism. The focus a lot on orbiting and running cool energy and on grounding and on doing the secret smile to keep things smooth. They also work with the three dan tiens. The also teach Tummo and something called five point breathing. The whole sylabus is based arround the five elements of yoga starting with earth and moving up. So Tummo is part of the fire element, there are chi kung walks for each element etc. There are A LOT of practices in it but those who do it say that the practices fit really well togheter and that after a while you learn to combine them so that 2 or 3 practices either become one new practice or that they can be done simultaniously. A ot of the practices are also just there as options you can choose from acording to your taste but are not necesarry. So there are stuff that helps with healing or martial arts or siddhis but that you don`t need and in some instances you can choose between to practices but you have to do one of them to make it work. For example you can either do Tummo or you can do a Kan and Li version to fulfill the same basic function.

The KAP people also has Umaa Tantra which is a much more yogic version of KAP. The still incorporate some Taoist stuff for safety with grounding and orbiting etc. but it is very yogic with use of Yantras and mantras and asanas etc. So the know very well how to add a few safeties from taoism to make yogic practices more safe and balanced.

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Originally posted by adamantclearlight

Eckhart Tolle teaches keeping attention at the abdomen.

Adamant

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Originally posted by Tibetan_Ice

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Originally posted by adamantclearlight

Eckhart Tolle teaches keeping attention at the abdomen.

Adamant

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Where exactly did you find that he teaches to keep the attention at the abdomen?
:)
TI

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Originally posted by Tibetan_Ice

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Originally posted by adamantclearlight

Eckhart Tolle teaches keeping attention at the abdomen.

Adamant

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Hi Adamant, :)
I have over 10 of Eckhart's CD's and DVD's, several of his books and have studied his lessons intensely. In no place did I ever see that he recommends 'keeping attention at the abdomen'.

The goal of 'sensing the inner body' is to feel the life force/prescence within the whole body as one cohesive unit. In "Practicing the Power of Now" he starts his instruction out by focusing on the feeling of one hand, then the other hand and then both at the same time. Gradually you expand this 'sense of aliveness within the body part' to encompass the entire body, which is the main goal. He also says that by placing consciousness in the body, it helps to slow down the mind and reduce the frequency of thoughts.

Where exactly did you find that he teaches to keep the attention at the abdomen?

:)
TI

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