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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Spirituality & Beliefs > Meditation

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  #21  
Old 18-05-2021, 11:30 AM
Gem Gem is offline
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Originally Posted by A human Being
This is a good and important point, I think - people sometimes approach meditation as a predominantly mental practice, but I personally prefer an approach that encompasses all aspects of our experience, including the various feelings and sensations felt in the body, as this helps to root our attention in our present experience. And the breath is of course intimately related to the body (it's the body that breathes, after all), so being conscious of the breath inevitably puts us in touch with the body too, as you say.
Most people in meditation ideally want to lose body awareness, but I've gone the other way and remain aware of the body. My abstract reason for that is about body/mind/spirit balance, but purification generally happens through 'equanimity with the body', which is basically having a neutral disposition toward feelings. We'd usually think of emotional contents as psychological for example, but these are largely physical feelings, yet we tend to fabricate mentalities around them, so feelings in the body correlate directly to emotional blocks, which are created and/or maintained through phychological reactivity toward their physically feeling, and released via the 'neutral disposition' them (mindful equanimity).

I think the ability to 'just observe' is the sort of skill we need more that any other, but we find that is difficult because we tend to react - aversion to pain and desire for pleasure - which incites the volition, aka generates kamma, aka perpetuates ego through time from moment to moment in that cycle of 'rebirth'.

Since my own approach is of the non-volitional kind, 'just watch what happens', I've been able to strip everything bare, like, if you mantra, stop doing that. If you control the breath, stop it, if you are visualising light or whatever, don't. If you count breaths, desist. Then all the things you do unintentionally are revealed, and I just notice what I am doing and cease to do so, at least so far as I'm able. However, it's ironically very hard to not-do. We are habitually ingrained to do something and react to everything. Hence the meditation teachers are always telling us to do, like visualise this, imagine that mantra, control your breathing thus, count breaths etc etc etc.

As such my meditation approach is completely counter to everything. I don't try to lose body awareness - I remain body-aware, and I don't do anything - I stop doing what I do do. It's like the truth, I'm aware and this is what is happening. Anything blocking the system, well, it can stay there or it can come loose. That is not my concern and I don't try to 'make it happen' - or resist what just happens to happen. I am aware of what it feels like. 'It feels like this'. Period.
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  #22  
Old 18-05-2021, 12:53 PM
BigJohn BigJohn is offline
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Meditation, The reason behind it.

Is there a reason?
Or did it developed as we developed?

For example, can you imagine surviving in a world before Homo Sapiens came on the scene? or where Homo Sapiens the first to use 'meditation'?
Was, what we now call 'meditation', called something else?
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        Happiness is the result of an enlightened mind whereas suffering is caused by a distorted mind.
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  #23  
Old 18-05-2021, 03:12 PM
A human Being A human Being is offline
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Originally Posted by Gem
However, it's ironically very hard to not-do. We are habitually ingrained to do something and react to everything.
Very true! I think we're pretty much hard-wired to strive and struggle in order to survive and find happiness (however fleeting), so meditating in the way you suggest tends to feel counter-instinctual - 'Wait, so I just sit and do literally nothing? And that's supposed to be beneficial in some way?' But by sitting with ourselves in this way, becoming truly intimate with our inner lives, what's been hitherto suppressed and denied in us can start to arise and release, and in time we begin to feel more clarity and peace.
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  #24  
Old 19-05-2021, 01:12 AM
Gem Gem is offline
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Originally Posted by BigJohn
Meditation, The reason behind it.

Is there a reason?
Or did it developed as we developed?

For example, can you imagine surviving in a world before Homo Sapiens came on the scene? or where Homo Sapiens the first to use 'meditation'?
Was, what we now call 'meditation', called something else?
There are reasons in two ways: 1) the motivation one has, or the reason why one meditates, which leads to the second; 2) the reason they use the particular meditation method they do.

In the second, most obey and repeat what their teacher says because stepping out entirely alone comes with the discomfort of uncertainty. However, if you rely on someone to follow, you become more docile as you lose more of your ability to discern. If you step out alone, you only have what you discern for yourself to rely on, and suddenly things become more serious. It's like you are fine walking the path set out in the forest, but one day you get lost and there is no path. Then you get really serious about finding your way home.

Before people lived nature was just moving on its own, and in my view, meditation is defined by letting nature be 'as it is', and move in body/mind with nature. The issue is aversion, which leads to resistance, and desire, which leads to trying to make nature the way you want it to be, craving, clinging, and so on. Hence, the art of meditation is to stop doing that. Just be aware and let everything be 'as it is'.

If right now you simply stop to notice so you are conscious of what this is experience is currently like, you'll notice that by just being consciously aware you've already stopped doing. To me that's the gist of it. But it won't take long before you realise that you can't stay still for very long. Something happens and the mind starts to react, and you realise, all my life I am being driven by mental reactivity... all my motives driven by aversion and desire. Something ulpleasant happens I don't like it and avoid, pleasure happen, I want that more and chase. The whole life is just ego running from this and chasing after that, but then you stop to actually notice 'what is', and see how you stopped avoiding, ceased chasing, and you know, 'this is the way it is'.

However, the teachers are always saying do this and do that, so even meditators rarely just stop to notice, always trying to keep the mantra going, control their breathing, make an experience happen, because they desire experience, so they do stuff to avoid what they don't like and to get what they want. But then they stop and notice 'this is how it is'.

Hence, meditation is a process of forgetting what 'this is like' and running off with reactions and fabrications, but then noticing that you got lost in the dream, and thereby remembering reality 'as it is' as you experience it.
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  #25  
Old 19-05-2021, 02:24 AM
BigJohn BigJohn is offline
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Originally Posted by Gem

EXCERT

Before people lived nature was just moving on its own, and in my view, meditation is defined by letting nature be 'as it is', and move in body/mind with nature.
To me, that is the essence of Animism.......... which might be the oldest belief system.
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        Happiness is the result of an enlightened mind whereas suffering is caused by a distorted mind.
   ⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜ ⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜⁜


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