Why is equanimity the 4th Jhana?

[Gem]

If there are a lot of different things it gets chaotic.

From the mindful perspective you know what's whats going on with yourself and are already behind yourself as the one aware...

I can't talk about 1001 things and I'm not interested in any of them. I have heard in Yoga books there are hundreds of things. I'm more like. No. Do one thing, and do it a lot. In my school there is a story about 2 men looking for water. The first digs one hole for a bit, no water, so he starts digging a bit somewhere else, no water, and he ends up with 1001 holes - all dry. The second guy chooses a good spot, and just keeps digging. He ends up with only one hole, but lots of water.

I'm just pounding the table about this because 'different things work for different people' is the myth that prevails, whereas "Nature works in nature's way" is a true statement.

The key, I guess is knowing were to start digging. Like an explorer looking for gold understands the geology - this formation with a certain fissure is a typical site for mineralisation, so I will drill here - and not over there. It's not rando, and good explorers are as rare as hens teeth. Like Mark Twain said, "A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it". Similarly, in the landscape of spiritual teachers, there's 1000 ducks quacking and only 1 who isn't. That one will say, 'this is how it works'.

It's not simple. It's complicated and even after a lifetime of introspection you can't know it fully, no one does, but you can know it deeply. Not an intellectual study relying on accrual of knowledge, but a way of enabling insight into the nature of things. For example, an experience does not last is true. We know that's universal. Not the objective truth, but the universal truth. With investigation we get insight, and like old Krishnamurti used to say, "It's the truth that liberates; not your efforts to be free".

I hope I have bypassed false hopes that comes from a lot of superfluous things and started a focus inquiry more like, 'Hmmmm, what's natures way?', and instead of reaching reaching for 'something that works', look to 'find out what's true'.

er... something like that.

[JustBe]

@Gem
That’s true what you say about too much and it gets chaotic.

I think a lot of the complexity is breathed into us over a lifetime and as I witnessed in my own process, it was all that commotion installed in my head that made the letting go process so much harder. It’s like your in competition with ideas, beliefs and programming and it’s not till you dropping into the body beyond that commotion, that the letting go process is seen In such a way, it doesn’t have to be hard or a struggle.

In saying that, it’s often very hard if your deeply programmed in this way. It can corner you at those deeper levels where by, you become encased in a fight with yourself. The problem often being, you don’t realize your fighting yourself at this level where other stuff has taken over you. If you’ve been programmed in such a way, that something outside of you is to blame, will save you, beliefs that hold you to something, you’ll continue to run towards that, cling to those things. It can become so chaotic and incredibly difficult in this way. When you don’t know yourself deeper beyond all these things, it’s all unknown and you might think your going crazy, that somethings infiltrating you, taking over you. Your constantly looking for external markers to help you hold onto stuff you thought you knew and believed. But it won’t sustain the undoing, especially st the core of self. The conflict can be very unsettling and harrowing as I found out.

So yes, a lot of different things doesn’t serve, if you want to move through things easier. I learnt the hard way.

So I’d take heed of your advice Gem, in hindsight it would have helped immensely-Nature works in nature’s way-not my way, the way my mind decides, but the way my true nature decides.

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by Gem

If there are a lot of different things it gets chaotic.
"It's the truth that liberates; not your efforts to be free".

What if everything in your mind is the false self? Sometimes I think that is the key to everything.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by JustBe

I go into the granular level of my aches and pains. I do it better if I lay on my yoga mat. It becomes a stop, drop and be still

I don't pay particular attention to any sort of sensations, but pay close attention to all of them. That's a next step from the breath. It's just that you use breath meditation as a focus point like I said before to train the mind for more acute perception, which enables you to feel more subtle things when extended to the rest of the body. However, the meditation itself just continues the same: trying to feel the most granular level or sublte nuances of the feelings as you possibly can. This doesn't really say anything about how the meditation goes because I'm skipping giant swathes of the mental/emotional aspects of what's going to occur in breath alone... let alone the whole body.

If you practice yoga, holding that pose for a while is not pain free, but the mind stays motionless because if you start reacting you start shaking and lose balance. Same with sitting. If the mind gets agitated you start squirming about trying to get comfortable. This is aversion/desire at play. Adverse to the harsh feeling and craving comfort, so mind agitates, you lose balance and/or squirm about. In practice you can see how that happens. However meditation is ideally "Free from aversion and craving in the world," as Buddha supposedly said.

In your case, lying down on the mat, so no worries about that.

I'm just a bit worried if I go further down the rabbit hole I'll be jumping the gun, but how I would approach it is, exactly stop drop observe, but without being particular about aches and pains, be exacting like you say and go full granular feeling every part of the body starting at crown and working down examining everything without missing an inch anywhere, having no preferences for any types of feelings, giving none particular importance or extra time. A careful, granular, thorough once over ensuring every little part is made aware might take say, like, 10 minutes? Something like that? Bit longer maybe?

I've gone into to full body awareness just buzzing like a bee to where it really starts to open up - but mind gets dull at times and the whole thing turns solid, or I focus more deeply and it turns into tingles and waves. It's not really that, though. It's being able to keep equanimity of mind regardless of what's happening. It becomes more obvious down the road. Lots of people miss it, though.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Gem

Lots of people miss it, though.

It’s good to articulate the experience of subtle/granular feeling level as you go through it. You’ve spoken about it often, but I’m always left wondering exactly what that meant, for you as the experience itself. By no means does it take away from anyone else, it’s more supportive to have some markers along the way in your own process that can support new insights into your own.

So I’m feeling like I’m getting a little bit more understanding reading through your post.

When I drop to my mat, it’s natural for me, with any aches and pains to simply use that as a listening focus. Kind of like, I move into investigation mode, without getting in the way of myself. Just be still and listen, observe and move if that’s the cue. Other times staying present with a changing shifting awareness, of something temporary, that shifts fast, by holding one position. Other times something might not be shifting, I observe and go a little deeper into my body (as awareness) then I might realize I need an adjustment from my chiro. Sometimes it’s an emotional release, sensations or ill observe my mind not focused and jumping around, focus on my breath to centre again.

Most of these things are easily accessible to me now, the wisdom of my own body and awareness, mainly because I’m aware of how to observe, be still and be light. Letting go fully onto the mat, into my body. In some ways, my mind and awareness are working in harmony, or maybe it’s easier to let my awareness lead now. My inner balance no longer contained by thoughts or mind stuff. If something in me is agitated I’m aware it is. I know the deeper process will shift it fast.


I think once your ‘aware’ of how things work as your own mind /body, you have the opportunity to work in a more harmonious way, where you do have control over what you need and as the observer you can know directly what’s unfolding. That gives you back control of you, where you once might have lost it. Your aware of what’s unfolding, what it means and how it all works together. Your aware when your mind is agitated, unfocused or trying to control things. You know how to get back to centre easily and effortlessly, because your ‘aware’.

I don’t sweat the small stuff now, maybe that’s because the subtle, granular level in feeling in me doesn’t have much to stick too. I liken this too, the little irritations of the lived experience. When you can’t find your keys at the last minute, or you burn the dinner. Your car breaks down or someone cuts you off in traffic. Those are the times I know and gauge I’m doing better. I’m also aware when it’s a healthy open clear feeling level. I let myself feel it, express it and it feels wonderful. It’s a healthy open clear response and I am aware it is. I can feel the difference now from imbalanced state to being balanced.

I don’t sweat the big stuff either. I think this correlates to my big stuff in me. Also too having the bigger picture has given my mind a sense of peace and awareness, that I can only manage my own process with what is outside of myself. I’m aware that within the bigger stuff, it’s all a changing process ongoing, much like the small stuff. When it’s big and lingering and I’m struggling, I can only look at what that means in myself. My response if not at peace with myself will always find agitations in the mind/body. The more aware you are of ‘all if you’ the more this correlates to the big picture outside of you. The bigger problems in the world either weigh in you somewhere in you, or they can’t.

I think death as an end point of your own issues correlates closely with being able to go that deep into the body. So how you feel about death, your own body, how you feel about life and others all resides in your mind/body. If you can enter your body as death, you can enter its fullness of life.

A lot of people fear their own deep connection to themselves and all those markers of connection inside our body will always have a connection outside that’s either healthy and strong, or unhealthy and weak. It may look ideal and perfect on the surface, to a whole lot of people, but for those who know their own depth, they’ll recognise things instantly, where it’s all residing. Even that can, if one chooses, will bridge peace of mind..

[Gem]

Originally Posted by JustBe

You’ve spoken about it often, but I’m always left wondering exactly what that meant, for you as the experience itself. By no means does it take away from anyone else, it’s more supportive to have some markers along the way in your own process that can support new insights into your own.

True. I'm a bit loud and talk a lot, but underneath I'm careful about raising desires that instil impure motivations. People really crave pleasurable feelings - like insanely - and they don't know how mad they really are Lol.

The Buddhist philosophy has a lot going on in it. It's not a simple thing where you'd say 'meditate like this because it's the only way to get enlightened'. Its a mix of morality and good-will and generosity and a heap of different things. Not just the method. However, when you distill the causes, like where does malice come from, for example, you are led through such emotions to the sensations you feel in your own body. Ill-will and all that stuff is actually aversion toward to feelings in your own body which can go on to be reflected in psychological self image etc. The issues and blocks are all caught up in the body as that mind interaction at a very subtle vibe level manifests as something you feel. Getting to the origin of this, the meditation is to feel without reacting. It is that simple and that complex.

You start where it's solid, hard and heavy, 'it feels like this', and by trying to feel the lightest details of that, you become aware of subtler realities which are less dense, more fluid and vibratory (or what it feels like to you), but there are also things of the mind that have to be resolved as the process unfolds, and as the body releases old gunk, so too does the mind cease not only holding to it, but also regenerating it through that reactive, resistive process.

I imagine it like a pure awareness penetrating the hard surface and going deeper, from the crude and solid conscious experience to the subtle and refined. I don't want to get too imaginary, but we might say it's a light that penetrates and purifies to whatever depth your conscious awareness is capable of, not just in mind space, but in conjunction with the subtle body as well. Probably as a healer you see deeper in a person than they can see themselves, and maybe you know the ways that can be messed with and stuffed up. I don't know what you know, but it's a delicate business which involves the morals and all that other stuff - if you see what I mean. You can't have desire/aversion, because when 'sight' is really deep, craving is putting things really deep inside - so the equanimity and no-ego aspect is the 'purity', and you just have to trust nature to do what is natural as nothing can withstand the light of pure awareness.

In the long run craving doesn't work anyway because you start getting nice 'energies' and crave with happiness coming from pleasure, but then they start to intensify and you just want it to stop. The 'madness' between desire and aversions can get really extreme, and it's being ingrained at a deep level... not good. At that stage you realise all your pleasures are also pain and you give up on it, and in a deep place of the mind there is a balancing point which is very delicate, and any slight agitation is enough to distract you from it.

I guess that's a version of the background theory of it and I'm speaking from the end where pleasure and pain are part of each other about things that entail a lot of detail. It needs to be taken seriously because you can burst out laughing as well, but luckily it doesn't last long. What if you burst out laughing and then it didn't stop. In less than an hour you'd be in agony and begging 'Please lord please. Make it stop," but it doesn't stop. It goes all day and the next, and all you want is this laughing must stop... See how it relates?

Sorry. I got carried away and actually forgot about your post... Bit arrogant of me.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Gem

nothing can withstand the light of pure awareness.

which is very delicate, and any slight agitation is enough to distract you from it.

t... Bit arrogant of me.

Craving, clinging, unhealthy attachments are all part of our human experience, but sadly, they cause all kinds of grief and unnecessary unhealthy entanglements. I think most of us can say we have had or still have them. Most of us at some time or another blindly unaware as well, so that just makes it all the more difficult to know when your caught up in this way. So yes their are plenty completely living a life craving and desiring, suffering as a consequence and nit even knowing how to get out of it through themselves. It’s often a repetitive issue that won’t be seen until one has had enough, or where one has a built enough balance within, where change through the repetition, comes through after numerous experiences.

I’m speaking more from the ‘experiencers’ perspective, not from someone educated, aware and choosing through that basis. Even so with knowledge and awareness, the mind/body often reflects the experience more at the forefront, until awareness leads the show.

I think I’ve learned, whether the energy is nice and charged up fully, flat energy and no go, their is a middle point of balance within both extremes. So through those processors where unhealthy clinging, desires were prominent, I’d always see directly that being too high or too low could never sustain itself. The balance or middle point, naturally moved me differently to build that centre.

It’s interesting now, I feel like my feeling body, doesn’t go into highs and lows. So it’s more I’m moving in a steady contented stream of being. People caught up in ‘over the top love’ or ‘misery’ around me, feel unbalanced at times. It’s like through your own balance you recognise when the emotional body is still clinging to something, attached and not clear feeling. It’s ok of course. Nothings wrong. All is as it is.

I think the gift in the clarity allows you to not get entangled, be more present in yourself and give permission for others to just be as they are.

Like today at work. Five young country boys with mullets and cowboy hats and gear on, walk in. As I approach them, I can see they are a little tentative with my presence. I felt grounded and present, friendly and comfortable. I sense their apprehension and single out a couple for interaction. After a short while, we are all laughing and poking fun at everyone, with good intentions of course. I manage to fit two of the quieter unsure ones with new akubras. They are both so happy with my choice for them, the fit and happily pay for their new hats. At the counter they are still laughing, joking and all leave more open and relaxed than they walked in. My co worked by this time joins in and she has them all laughing and joking with her mishap in the moment.

It was such a pleasant warm experience, not just for me, but for everyone.

Selling them the hats was really secondary to their smiles and laughter, relaxed eased manner.

You mentioned something interesting. ‘Nothing can withstand the light of pure awareness’

So in relation to one’s process, is their a balanced point with the self where that kind of awareness illuminates your process must naturally?


I think stuffing up comes back at you as a learning curve. I think the greatest turnaround for me was reaching a point where by, everything such as discernment, truth, intuition and trust, move together in a harmonious flow. When your grounded in this way, clear in each one, their is no messing around anymore. You have to clean up all those messy bits as yourself to know and learn that movements from there, are trusted to that depth as clarity.