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Mats
Germany
43 Posts |
 Posted - Jan 03 2024 : 10:41:31 PM
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| The act of gently favoring the mantra is stressed throughout the lessons. Is this gentle attitude central to bring up calmness? Or: Can a more controlling and strict way of returning to the mantra contribute to irritation in the day or even overload in the long run? |
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interpaul
USA
525 Posts |
Posted - Jan 04 2024 : 03:46:07 AM
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| Mats, My take on this is the goal of mantra based meditation is to gradually train the mind to let go of its attachment to thinking. Being too strict in your efforts defeats the goal of a gentle movement towards letting go of control. Ultimately we surrender to the process. When I first started deep meditation 5 years ago I found it hard as I felt like I had attached a mental straight jacket on myself restricting my thoughts. I gradually accepted it was just a technique to give my mind something to do while I went deeper into silence. Gradually over the years I've found the mantra very gentle and my mind surrenders to the process quickly allowing the inner silence to grow. |
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Mats
Germany
43 Posts |
Posted - Jan 04 2024 : 5:17:54 PM
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Thanks interpaul for your insights. It is a nice view.
I sometimes find more irritation after practice and sometimes I find more calmness after practice. I believe to have found more calmness after "more actively" gently favoring the mantra. (When not focusing on gently favoring, I tend to return to the mantra in a more strict way.)
My conclusion is, that a gentle and loving attitude during the meditation process is a central and important part. Gentle favoring brings calmness, a more strict return to the mantra can bring irritation. Does this make sense?
Perhaps, the described experiences go for sensitive meditators only. |
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interpaul
USA
525 Posts |
Posted - Jan 04 2024 : 10:12:51 PM
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| Mats, Surrender to the process is what ultimately works, that is, releasing into the process rather than forcing it. This is similar to the practice of samayama in which one releases the sutra, letting it go into silence without any attachment to it once released. With meditation we gentle cycle through the mantra, acknowledging when our attention wanders and simply returning to the mantra without any strain. |
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Dogboy
USA
2202 Posts |
Posted - Jan 05 2024 : 01:47:54 AM
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Gentle favoring the mantra is so simple yet so effective at quieting the mind. If in DM I am 'doing', then I gently favor not doing.  |
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Christi
United Kingdom
4380 Posts |
Posted - Jan 05 2024 : 06:31:44 AM
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Hi all,
The instructions in lesson 13 are to gently favour the mantra over anything else that is going on. It is here:
"Once you have gotten comfortable, slowly close your eyes. You will notice thoughts, streams of thoughts. That is fine. Just observe them without minding them. After about a minute, gently introduce the thought ...I AM... and begin to repeat it easily and effortlessly in your mind. If your mind wanders off into other thoughts, you will eventually realize this has happened. Don't be concerned about it. It is natural. When you realize you are not repeating the mantra, gently go back to it. This is all you have to do. Easily repeat the mantra silently inside. When you realize you are not thinking it, then easily come back to it. The goal is not to stay on it. The goal is to follow the simple procedure of thinking the mantra, losing it, and coming back to it when you find you have lost it." [Yogani]
This is also explained in lesson 195:
Lesson 195 - Mantra, Thoughts and Attention
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Mats
Germany
43 Posts |
Posted - Jan 05 2024 : 10:35:58 AM
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| My friends, thanks for your replies. The question that still makes me thinking is this: Can there be some correlation between irritation and "forcing" the mantra? This might be important for sensitive meditators. |
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Jack
United Kingdom
305 Posts |
Posted - Jan 06 2024 : 7:29:41 PM
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Yes, forcing the mantra can lead to irritation. 
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Blanche
USA
859 Posts |
Posted - Jan 07 2024 : 1:12:25 PM
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Interpaul mentioned that meditation is a way to train the mind. You could make an analogy to training a puppy. Acting forcefully is contra productive when one tries to train a puppy. It works even less with an older dog. The same is true when we try to educate children or teenagers or adults. Acting forcefully might give a temporary result, but it only creates problems in long term. The why would we do that to ourselves by forcing the mantra?
It is not a one-time result we are looking for, but a long term, stable, effortless way of settling the mind. It is like bringing the water in a glass to stillness. Pushing on the water or shaking the glass will not work. Only learning to let go will naturally allow the water to come to stillness. It is the same with the mind. |
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TensorTympani
USA
69 Posts |
Posted - Jan 07 2024 : 11:43:08 PM
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Actively changing the level of attention on the meditation object was something I naturally did while I was doing a form of Tibetan Buddhist "shamata" practice before switching to AYP. In this shamata practice one was encouraged to actively vary the "level of favoring" (of the attention on the breath or some other object of meditation) from very intense to as mild as possible without getting distracted to find some kind of sweet spot.
In my earlier AYP days I did quite a lot of experimentation in "rogue" sessions where I altered the AYP instructions deliberately to see what happens (I still very rarely do these rogue sessions because they can be illuminating and reassuring for me personally). There I noticed that the level of favoring has a huge impact on what the mantra is capable of doing, or not doing.
Trying to give the mantra 100% favoring definitely leads to headache for me and it doesn't seem to be useful for anything. But I also haven't tried it more than a few times.
Too little favoring, and the mantra rattles in the background while I daydream in the foreground without realising I'm not favoring the mantra for a long time. Although less effective in stilling the mind, it still seems to work somewhat. But it's no comparison to hitting the "sweet spot" level of favoring.
In this sweet spot range of the level of favoring the mantra I get to stillness very quickly now (after having practiced DM for about 15 month now). In my regular practice session I simply hope I'm doing that kind of favoring although I'm not trying to manage it. I just trust that I do it right, even if it sometimes might not be perfect. With this attitude of trusting that the right level of favoring will find itself my mind seems to go to stillness quite quickly and reliably. Once the mantra becomes fuzzy during a session there is a sense that mantra is now threading or enveloping that stillness. Loosing the mantra then leaves me in stillness until I notice I'm not thinking the mantra (which either happens directly noticing the stillness or some thoughts have already moved me away from there). Or, if I don't lose the mantra and observe what I'm doing (which is a thought after which I return to simply favoring the mantra again) I notice that the mantra has nearly become the stillness itself but is still distinct, "protecting" the stillness against other thoughts with minimal effort and without any sense of me trying to achieve that. It it is doing this by itself. My job is only to gently favor it.
So I think the phrase "gently favoring", although super condensed, is a very effective and intuitive instruction.
As an interesting aside from my rogue experiments:
I noticed that if I give the mantra and other thoughts an equal 50% favoring, I can use the mantra to have a surprisingly deep, creative and thorough thought process. Meaning, I am not riding the mantra to stillness but instead wrap the thought process (that I want to think) into the mantra. Thereby the thought process can be very subtle, matching the fuzziness of the mantra. The mantra spins like a protective thread around the thought process. This is clearly not AYP Deep Meditation or any other AYP practice. Just something fun I discovered that isn't a proper favoring of the mantra but still has an interesting short term effect. It's not something I'm practicing because I don't want to alter or spoil the baked-in main functionality of the mantra. Maybe using an entirely different mantra for that purpose might be an experiment I could do in the future... |
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SeySorciere
Seychelles
1532 Posts |
Posted - Jan 08 2024 : 11:33:46 AM
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I would just throw in the reminder that the effectiveness of a sitting is not found in what is going on during the sitting time but in the smoothness of your daily life.
Sey |
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Mats
Germany
43 Posts |
Posted - Jan 15 2024 : 9:31:13 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Jack
Yes, forcing the mantra can lead to irritation.
Just to be sure, what exactly do we mean when we talk about "forcing the mantra"? |
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SeySorciere
Seychelles
1532 Posts |
Posted - Jan 16 2024 : 05:45:33 AM
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Forcing the mantra is when you are overly concentrating on it that it sounds loud in your head and it is a feeling of denseness and not openness. Favouring the mantra, relaxed and alert, is more a listening for it rather than a mechanical repetition in your head.
Hope that is helpful.
Sey |
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Christi
United Kingdom
4380 Posts |
Posted - Jan 16 2024 : 06:45:09 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Mats
quote:
Originally posted by Jack
Yes, forcing the mantra can lead to irritation.
Just to be sure, what exactly do we mean when we talk about "forcing the mantra"?
Hi Mats,
It simply means that during the practice of Deep Meditation we are repeating the mantra easily and effortlessly. This can be happening deliberately, or it can be happening automatically. However it is happening, we simply follow the basic procedure of easily favouring the mantra over anything else that is going on, whenever we realise that we are off it. |
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Gently favoring
