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-   -   The best meditation method (https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=138447)

Andy75 25-12-2020 06:55 PM

The best meditation method
 
I have tried many meditation methods over the years.
Some one is great, others less.
However I believe, stating Osho, "if you are following a meditation method, you are not meditating".
Namely I believe that blanking the mind is the true meditation.
It's so difficult though.
I have done several Vipassana retreatments in South East Asia, I still fight with holding my mind blank. From 30 seconds to 4 minutes, then thoughts come.
Only twice it happened something extraordinary: I sat, blanked the mind and then people in the meditation hall were stood up... I thought "what is happening?" , I checked my watch and one hours was gone in a blink of eye.
When you sit and you follow asleep , you realize that in the moment you wake up (most of the time when you are about losing balance). But those two times, it was different, I didn't fall asleep.

Who has experienced that?
What meditation practice do you prefer?
What would you suggest me to improve my blanking mind lasting?

JustASimpleGuy 25-12-2020 08:23 PM

Just my personal experience but here goes.

It can't be forced or chased. It has to be effortless. There's the practice and then there's the state of being. First technique is needed. Call it training wheels. For me it was the Vipassana practice of calm abiding. At some point I came across what Jon Kabat-Zinn called resting in awareness where technique is dropped, the object of attending is dropped.

It is a difficult practice and at first I would start with calm abiding, and when breath and its sensations were almost unnoticeable I would drop the attending and rest in awareness. At first it would be for very brief periods. Fifteen seconds, half a minute, maybe a minute and then I'd switch back to attending sensations of breath. Eventually and with practice it increased to minutes, a couple at first then longer and longer. Now it's an effortless practice that doesn't require starting with calm abiding and in truth it doesn't require formal sitting though I do still sit.

I later found different labels for it. Choiceless awareness, do nothing meditation, just sitting. All the same thing. Effortless and no technique. Just being and in the deepest sense. It's an advanced technique and does require some amount of concentration and clarity of mind brought about by meditation with technique, be if mindfulness, mantra, image of a deity, candle gazing or other external object, etc...

https://deconstructingyourself.com/d...editation.html

The full instructions for the Do Nothing meditation technique are: sit down and do nothing. That’s it. Sit down and quite intentionally do nothing at all. Now keep on doing it.

...

The Do Nothing Meditation is both easier and harder than it sounds. If you practice it often, you’ll find something very deep within you relaxing and opening to the natural flow of experience. And that’s how you find awakening by doing absolutely nothing.

snowyowl 29-12-2020 06:37 PM

I agree JASG on this, and I've heard it elsewhere that it's helpful to build up your concentration first with a mindfulness technique, such as mindfulness of breathing, before moving on to Vipassana/Insight or other 'awareness' method. Having done it in that order myself, I now find 'do nothing' the most effortless. Not that it's the only training I need!

So, where to learn it? I've also tried various teachings, and it's hard to recommend any without knowing you very well, but my project for 2021 is working through The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa, a 10 step meditation course which covers different techniques (and it's available free).

I also benefited from Diana Winston's The Little Book Of Being, which covers a 3 stage spectrum of awareness: focussed awareness (one pointed concentration); choiceless awareness (mid range); and natural awareness (simply being, resting in awareness). I like that her approach doesn't try to make your mind fit a particular pattern, but rather, it flows into whichever meditation technique suits your state of mind at the time.

Also, the terminology can be a little confusing because there's inconsistency between teachers; for example I've come across different uses for 'choiceless awareness' so it's not an exact science!

JustASimpleGuy 29-12-2020 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snowyowl
I agree JASG on this, and I've heard it elsewhere that it's helpful to build up your concentration first with a mindfulness technique, such as mindfulness of breathing, before moving on to Vipassana/Insight or other 'awareness' method. Having done it in that order myself, I now find 'do nothing' the most effortless. Not that it's the only training I need!

So, where to learn it? I've also tried various teachings, and it's hard to recommend any without knowing you very well, but my project for 2021 is working through The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa, a 10 step meditation course which covers different techniques (and it's available free).

I also benefited from Diana Winston's The Little Book Of Being, which covers a 3 stage spectrum of awareness: focussed awareness (one pointed concentration); choiceless awareness (mid range); and natural awareness (simply being, resting in awareness). I like that her approach doesn't try to make your mind fit a particular pattern, but rather, it flows into whichever meditation technique suits your state of mind at the time.

Also, the terminology can be a little confusing because there's inconsistency between teachers; for example I've come across different uses for 'choiceless awareness' so it's not an exact science!


It's literally doing nothing. https://deconstructingyourself.com/d...editation.html

Gem 30-12-2020 01:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy


In the Buddhist theory 'do nothing' would relate to the cessation of volition, volition being the essence of kamma. We can think of volition as any urge to make something the way you want it to be (or not be the way you don;t want it). For example, when uncomfortable you want to feel comfortable so you 'do something' to make it feel the way you want it to. 'Do nothing' is more like the cessation of the underlying volition to make things 'other than this' or 'as you want them to be'.

Hence-why breath meditation is a sensible technique, and we might notice that although we do breathe, we don't have to try to do it. We could control it, breath faster, deeper, hold the breath but that is intentional, or volitional. In this way there is a difference between the non-volitional observation of your breathing as it 'already is' and the volitional action of controlled breathing methods.

That said, do nothing probably pertains to the volition, and you can pay non-volitional attention to your breathing just as you would watch the waves roll in on the beach. Hence 'do nothing' meditation does not preclude breath awareness. On the contrary, breath awareness is an excellent way to practice 'do nothing'.

AbodhiSky 30-12-2020 03:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy75
I have tried many meditation methods over the years.
Some one is great, others less.
However I believe, stating Osho, "if you are following a meditation method, you are not meditating".
Namely I believe that blanking the mind is the true meditation.
It's so difficult though.
I have done several Vipassana retreatments in South East Asia, I still fight with holding my mind blank. From 30 seconds to 4 minutes, then thoughts come.
Only twice it happened something extraordinary: I sat, blanked the mind and then people in the meditation hall were stood up... I thought "what is happening?" , I checked my watch and one hours was gone in a blink of eye.
When you sit and you follow asleep , you realize that in the moment you wake up (most of the time when you are about losing balance). But those two times, it was different, I didn't fall asleep.

Who has experienced that?
What meditation practice do you prefer?
What would you suggest me to improve my blanking mind lasting?


just focus on your senses like sight and hearing and feeling and ignore the self talking in your head

AbodhiSky 30-12-2020 03:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy75
However I believe, stating Osho, "if you are following a meditation method, you are not meditating".


i agree with osho if you are meditating with a method you are not meditating you are thinking, let go of all ideas even ones about meditation. its just being empty, not paying attention to your inner talking like you said, there is no method if there is like Osho said, that means you are in your thoughts. be truly blank with no ideas at all even the spiritual ones because life is spiritual in itself and we are too.

JustASimpleGuy 30-12-2020 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gem
In the Buddhist theory 'do nothing' would relate to the cessation of volition, volition being the essence of kamma. We can think of volition as any urge to make something the way you want it to be (or not be the way you don;t want it). For example, when uncomfortable you want to feel comfortable so you 'do something' to make it feel the way you want it to. 'Do nothing' is more like the cessation of the underlying volition to make things 'other than this' or 'as you want them to be'.

Hence-why breath meditation is a sensible technique, and we might notice that although we do breathe, we don't have to try to do it. We could control it, breath faster, deeper, hold the breath but that is intentional, or volitional. In this way there is a difference between the non-volitional observation of your breathing as it 'already is' and the volitional action of controlled breathing methods.

That said, do nothing probably pertains to the volition, and you can pay non-volitional attention to your breathing just as you would watch the waves roll in on the beach. Hence 'do nothing' meditation does not preclude breath awareness. On the contrary, breath awareness is an excellent way to practice 'do nothing'.


It's not the breathing that's the doing but the attending.

JustASimpleGuy 30-12-2020 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
It's not the breathing that's the doing but the attending.


That being said I do find breath an excellent object to attend and precisely because it (object of attending) requires no volition if properly practiced (read not attempting to change breathing) as it's a function of the body's autonomic nervous system. I also like mindfulness of sound and smell for similar reasoning. It's somewhat different than attending a mantra or internally generated image and suits my personality best, and wholly different than loving-kindness or compassion meditations.

Whether it's mindfulness, mantra, external object or internal image it's basically all the same end, that being attaining greater concentration and clarity of mind.

snowyowl 30-12-2020 09:17 PM

This relationship between doing and being is a central focus of my contemplation at the moment. Breathing bridges across them both, and allows us to experience the transition between intentional activity (me doing it), and merging into the breath to lose the separate self.

There's also a distinction between narrow focus, like a spotlight on a small chosen activity, eg breathing, a mantra, a chakra; and wide-angle attention, taking in the whole of awareness. What I practice depends on how active is the monkey in my mind ha ha :smile:


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