Trouble with silencing my mind while meditating...

[aloha]

Originally Posted by Ground

Faith and discipline undermine equanimity.
Faith fosters attachment through focusing on one object or one set of objects in the affirmative and ignoring or even negating others. Discipline is stress and the opposite of relaxation. So faith and discipline make equanimity impossible.

Faith, or belief, is extremely powerful stuff. The opposite of faith is doubt; faith is the remedy for doubt.

The buddha tells us that the dhamma is like a raft, to take us across the stream of samsara, which is productive of ignorance and suffering, to the other shore of enlightenment. Once on the other shore, the raft of the dhamma is tossed aside, no longer needed. By this I think he meant that we need faith in the dhamma, at least enough faith to practice meditation. Even one solid week of sincere and consistent meditation should be enough to convince the aspirant of its efficacy, according to the buddha. When the fruit of meditation has been realized, nibbana achieved, faith and discipline are dropped, no longer needed or desired. (I have faith it is so.) It requires faith to believe that liberation is possible. (Where are the wise men? where?)

Once we are convinced, we continue to practice, understanding that further doubt is useless and counterproductive. We defend our mindfulness, our constancy of practice, from doubts and other attachments, using faith in the dhamma as a conveyance (yana).

Discipline, in the positive sense, is the developed ability to choose higher (inner) pleasures over lower ones. It is responsibility. (Freedom need not be confused with irresponsibility.)

Like fighting fire with fire, or extracting a thorn with a thorn, or using a small amount of poison as a cure, we impose faith and discipline on an unruly mind as we would saddle and bridle a horse. We take the best of our concepts, let the obviously flawed ones go, until eventually no concepts intrude into the abiding realization that everything is just so.

The best horse submits when the shadow of the whip is seen. The worst horse only when the skin is flayed. (Suzuki roshi used to say we are all the worst horse.)


aloha

[aloha]

Originally Posted by Gem

(snip)

Well 'killing' is strictly renounced, but not all Buddhists are vegetarians. The precepts don't say 'I shall not consume meat'. Although the precepts are taken as a vow along with the three Jewels, 'Sila' refers to a more integral morality based on benefit rather than harm. It is closely related to metta (in that what arises within or from the pure heart would be reflected manifestly in compassionate activity), and is also linked with laws of volition and karma. I think it really means one need be aware of their malicious and/or kind intent so as understand for themselves what morality is. My saying is, 'obedience is not ethical'.


Sure, desire is at the root of suffering, but to savour the sweet is to 'enjoy it while lasts', and soon enough it will be gone.


Complicated stuff as sex, gender, sexuality are a big part of human identity. When undertaking retreat I observed strict celibacy, which I believe is enforced because a lot of emotional contents and self imagery are tied to physical sensations of sexual urges. In any regular life people take some action to 'relieve' this urge, but in retreat such relief isn't permitted, so if a person has latent sexual frustrations, these surface as one has no way to avoid the sensation we call 'urges', and thus can not avoid the associated psychology. One has to come to peace all that, including the associated emotional contents. It has nothing to do with dulling these urges. On the contrary, one will become increasingly acute to such arising sensations. The psychological reactions to these sorts of sensations will subside, which is to say, the desires, frustrations and so forth will be eroded under the impassive gaze of mindful conscious awareness. This applies to all physical sensations, so celibacy is a mere facet within the overall practice of 'letting it be as it is'.


Indeed, the quietude of mindful awareness is the fundamental key to resolving the psychological reactivity we experience as 'suffering' (though ways are various and usually mulit faceted). It's just that the person can't do anything about it, so to speak (which is why it is a problem in the first place). The resignation to 'as it is' is what enables it to pass. Aversions toward the arising experience cause people to suppose they should act to get rid of it prune it etc, but such action is obviously compelled by aversion toward whatever it is that thought to need cutting off. The tricky bit is not minding either way if it is present of if it ceases to occur, for then you have no impetus to 'interfere', and will not invest in it in any way, either by clinging or by rejecting. A simple fact will remain. "It is". Of course 'this will pass' in just the same way as 'sweet things' do - so we're aware, it is, it is changing, it has transformed.


Sure, volatile reaction such as anger may arise to some degree, but it will not overwhelm the balance of ones mind. If the practice is 'right' the very roots of all that will be revealed, and once clearly seen and understood, it can no longer catch one unawares and overwhelm them. This means one won't be be compelled by it, but rather, respond mindfully in such unsavory situations.



Oh, It's my pleasure, entirely.


I don't go so high into Buddhist doctrines because it becomes a jumble to me, and really, any person only need be concerned with the practice, which is not 'how to practice', but 'what it is to practice'. We established practice isn't about the experiences one might desire, so this puts the notion of a goal in question. We also alluded to the process of purification (which I claim is consequential) - but because there is no adverse quality to it - the purpose is other than pruning or getting rid of what we deem harmful or unpleasant. I suggest that all this is about being at peace with whatever experience is occurring right now, and therein lies both the simplicity and the difficulty of meditation.

We have some significant disagreements here, brother, if you will bear with me, perhaps some light can be shed on practice and theory, and the lines between.

It is true that killing is strictly renounced, but that not all buddhists are vegetarians. I think they are wrong, not to put too fine a point on it. I don't sieve mosquito larvae from my water so as not to injure the potential insect, but I don't see how anyone can justify taking the precepts while eating meat. There are always exceptional circumstances. To me, a so-called buddhist who eats meat encourages the killing of animals by others, just as consuming pornography encourages sex slavery and engaging in any other human vice encourages pandering to that vice. For a buddhist it is not just how our behavior affects one's own enlightenment, but how it affects the enlightenment of all sentient beings.


Blake said, "who savors a joy as it flies/ lives in eternity's sunrise." If you are living in eternity's sunrise, savor the sweet and savor the bitter as well, because the two are one reality, non-dual. Confusion arises when experiences of true beauty, harmony, justice and virtue become confused with pleasures such as I like ice cream. A beautiful sunrise, a flower, a mountain, these things might give us "intimations of immortality," experience of plato's Forms, true Beauty and Justice. Even a beautiful man or woman may appear as Beauty incarnate, as dante's beatrice, or joyce's molly bloom. The beauty of nature is the beauty of heaven and earth. But savoring sensual treats and delights, indulging in desires for material things, create as much suffering as it does pleasure, measure for measure. The "psychological reactivity" we encourage in pleasure is the same we discourage in suffering. Thinking about food when you are hungry is about as satisfying as drinking seawater when you are thirsty.

As for celibacy, I'm not sure you took my point. Of all desires, sex is the one most likely to run away with a person; from what I hear, many people have lengthy sexual fantasies during those long retreat meditations, just to fill the time pleasurably, which is utterly counter-productive in my view. Greed and lust are the basest of the low thoughts and desires we should be flicking away during meditation. Just note the arising of lust, note it's unwholesome nature, and let it go, without further ado. Same as thoughts of chores to do or the meal you will eat, petty remorse for ancient sins, idle memories or whatever other passing fancies. It is only for an hour or two a day, this effort; and it becomes easier, if you stick with it. It is important to understand that enlightenment has a beginning, middle and end, and practices change depending on where you are on your path. ("First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." Before enlightenment, I saw mountains as mountains, rivers as rivers. During enlightenment, I saw no mountains, and no rivers. After enlightenment, I again saw mountains and rivers: but what mountains! what rivers!)


As for dulling the urges, as you say, that doesn't happen. One can gain control through catching the tendency to anger, greed, delusion or lust as it arises and feeding it no attention. As in the steps to the co-arising of phenomena, craving is followed by clinging. If we recognize craving as it arises, we can avoid clinging. Clinging to objects of lust or greed is like a fire clinging to its fuel. Remove spark, air, fuel; any one of these and end the burning fire of clinging. In meditation, "air" is attention; deny attention to sense-objects and they cease to be sense-objects, the mind moves on, free of attachment. For some, lust is the chief problem, for some greed, others anger, or vanity. Buddhism provides many remedies for individual cases.

I get the impression you are saying, "If you don't mind suffering, it will go away." This does not jibe well with savoring sweetness as long as it lasts. Actually, this is the error of choosing that keeps us attached. Seeing non-dually, "if thine eye be single," all experience is bittersweet at once. If we had cosmic vision and saw all things to their ends, the ups and downs would even out. Having faith this is so, we practice patience.

The root of suffering is fear and attachment. The things over which we suffer cause us real pain only momentarily; if we can leave those moments in the moment, dealing with them with our full attention and then moving on, we can enjoy peace most of the time. And it is not that we experience peace in the present moment, it is the experience of peace throughout all moments that is the end of meditation. All moments become The Moment; at that point, meditation is presumably redundant, though likely still practiced.

The buddha said he knew many things that he would not teach, as many as leaves in the forest. Only this handful of leaves, the dhamma, he offered to us, as remedies for our ills. We are all like a person shot in the chest with an arrow, for whom all questions of facts or relationships have ceased to be meaningful, only the pain of the arrow and the need to have it removed and the wound treated. We need to put our selves in the hands of the physician, and follow the prescriptions, in order to become well. We follow the path: we reject illness and unwholesome ways and embrace good health practices. We learn compassion for others from our own experiences of suffering.

Perhaps I embrace a more activist view of buddhism, as opposed to your "quietism." I understand how people want to take hold of themselves and change things, not realizing that everything is already well in hand by its very nature. Chinese buddhists/taoists have a phrase, "wei wu wei" or "doing non-doing." This refers to coming to a natural state where we unthinkingly behave with grace and virtue, like a duck being a duck, or an eel being an eel, as opposed to a human being "human, all too human." We are what we are, we can't always see why we do what we do, but if we are free to be ourselves and fulfill our human potential, it will appear as leadership and activism to some. Or crazy wisdom. Or folly.

We can agree to disagree on issues we have fully aired out. You seem sincere and well-grounded in your training, and I appreciate and value that, brother. May all beings be happy.


aloha

[aloha]

Originally Posted by shiningstars

aloha,

I have only read your initial paragraph and would like to comment.

No, they are not emblematic of spiritual materialism. There are fees to be paid, rent, maintenance, heating, food, etc.

snip


shiningstars

Yes. My point exactly. Many people profit.

More than that, materialistic westerners can go on vacation, gawk at the monks on display and take selfies, all the while convincing themselves that their practices are generating "merits" which add up like frequent flier miles.



As we say in hawaii, "try smile."

Or, "may I take your hat and goat?"

The buddha recommended seclusion, being a recluse, homelessness. As for dana, I would personally be perfectly happy to provide to any homeless beggar who passes my door up to a handful of grains per day. Also, I dedicate the merits of every meditation I engage in, without fail, to the liberation of all being(s). All merits earned - a laughable concept btw - freely given, should they apply. And reiterated twice a day, with feeling.

Where there is any profit motive whatever, from wealth to self-esteem, there is clinging to craving. (2nd NT)

I'm not pointing fingers, all human motivation is complex and multi-layered. The best ideas are satisfactory on many levels. Compromises with practicality can undermine even well-meant efforts. At least, we can consider these ideas with an open mind. Every one of us represents a unique solution to the arrow in the chest phenomenon.


Meditation, again, is about seeing clearly.


aloha

[Gem]

Originally Posted by aloha

We have some significant disagreements here, brother, if you will bear with me, perhaps some light can be shed on practice and theory, and the lines between.

It is true that killing is strictly renounced, but that not all buddhists are vegetarians. I think they are wrong, not to put too fine a point on it. I don't sieve mosquito larvae from my water so as not to injure the potential insect, but I don't see how anyone can justify taking the precepts while eating meat. There are always exceptional circumstances. To me, a so-called buddhist who eats meat encourages the killing of animals by others, just as consuming pornography encourages sex slavery and engaging in any other human vice encourages pandering to that vice. For a buddhist it is not just how our behavior affects one's own enlightenment, but how it affects the enlightenment of all sentient beings.

Maybe, but ethics is very complex and loaded with issues and dilemmas.

Blake said, "who savors a joy as it flies/ lives in eternity's sunrise." If you are living in eternity's sunrise, savor the sweet and savor the bitter as well, because the two are one reality, non-dual. Confusion arises when experiences of true beauty, harmony, justice and virtue become confused with pleasures such as I like ice cream. A beautiful sunrise, a flower, a mountain, these things might give us "intimations of immortality," experience of plato's Forms, true Beauty and Justice. Even a beautiful man or woman may appear as Beauty incarnate, as dante's beatrice, or joyce's molly bloom. The beauty of nature is the beauty of heaven and earth. But savoring sensual treats and delights, indulging in desires for material things, create as much suffering as it does pleasure, measure for measure. The "psychological reactivity" we encourage in pleasure is the same we discourage in suffering. Thinking about food when you are hungry is about as satisfying as drinking seawater when you are thirsty.

A sensation can be wonderful without needing a desire for it, so of course one is to enjoy their life, savour their experiences and so forth. It's just that any given experience (sensation) doesn't last, and is momentary in essence.

As for celibacy, I'm not sure you took my point. Of all desires, sex is the one most likely to run away with a person; from what I hear, many people have lengthy sexual fantasies during those long retreat meditations, just to fill the time pleasurably, which is utterly counter-productive in my view. Greed and lust are the basest of the low thoughts and desires we should be flicking away during meditation. Just note the arising of lust, note it's unwholesome nature, and let it go, without further ado. Same as thoughts of chores to do or the meal you will eat, petty remorse for ancient sins, idle memories or whatever other passing fancies. It is only for an hour or two a day, this effort; and it becomes easier, if you stick with it. It is important to understand that enlightenment has a beginning, middle and end, and practices change depending on where you are on your path. ("First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." Before enlightenment, I saw mountains as mountains, rivers as rivers. During enlightenment, I saw no mountains, and no rivers. After enlightenment, I again saw mountains and rivers: but what mountains! what rivers!).

Retreats would typically involve many hours of deliberate meditation during the day and a discourse on the philosophy behind the meditation in the evening, and even when working on such a premises on would expect at least 3 hours of compulsory meditation time throughout the day. Celibacy is practiced for the reasons I described and it's basically incorrect to consider celibacy on its own apart from the more general aspect of 'sensation'.

As for dulling the urges, as you say, that doesn't happen.

I didn't say dulling the urges. On the contrary.

One can gain control through catching the tendency to anger, greed, delusion or lust as it arises and feeding it no attention.

Exactly - you come to notice these desires at a more subtle level, and understand how you generate them in reaction to your sensory experience. If you understand how you generate your own suffering, you'd most probably stop doing that.

As in the steps to the co-arising of phenomena, craving is followed by clinging. If we recognize craving as it arises, we can avoid clinging. Clinging to objects of lust or greed is like a fire clinging to its fuel. Remove spark, air, fuel; any one of these and end the burning fire of clinging. In meditation, "air" is attention; deny attention to sense-objects and they cease to be sense-objects, the mind moves on, free of attachment. For some, lust is the chief problem, for some greed, others anger, or vanity. Buddhism provides many remedies for individual cases.

I get the impression you are saying, "If you don't mind suffering, it will go away."

That's not what I said.

This does not jibe well with savoring sweetness as long as it lasts.

I did say you should savour/enjoy etc it for as long as long as it lasts, but it doesn't last long. On a more subtle level it's just momentary, but on the grosser level it seems to have some endurance.

Actually, this is the error of choosing that keeps us attached. Seeing non-dually, "if thine eye be single," all experience is bittersweet at once. If we had cosmic vision and saw all things to their ends, the ups and downs would even out. Having faith this is so, we practice patience.

Yep, life has its ups and downs.

The root of suffering is fear and attachment. The things over which we suffer cause us real pain only momentarily; if we can leave those moments in the moment, dealing with them with our full attention and then moving on, we can enjoy peace most of the time. And it is not that we experience peace in the present moment, it is the experience of peace throughout all moments that is the end of meditation. All moments become The Moment; at that point, meditation is presumably redundant, though likely still practiced.

Meditation is fundamentally awareness in this moment.

The buddha said he knew many things that he would not teach, as many as leaves in the forest. Only this handful of leaves, the dhamma, he offered to us, as remedies for our ills. We are all like a person shot in the chest with an arrow, for whom all questions of facts or relationships have ceased to be meaningful, only the pain of the arrow and the need to have it removed and the wound treated. We need to put our selves in the hands of the physician, and follow the prescriptions, in order to become well. We follow the path: we reject illness and unwholesome ways and embrace good health practices. We learn compassion for others from our own experiences of suffering.

Perhaps I embrace a more activist view of buddhism, as opposed to your "quietism."

I don't personally identify as a Buddhist, but I did a bunch of Buddhist meditation.

I understand how people want to take hold of themselves and change things,

That's not something I said.

not realizing that everything is already well in hand by its very nature. Chinese buddhists/taoists have a phrase, "wei wu wei" or "doing non-doing."

Yep, it's the not doing which brings about the undoing.

This refers to coming to a natural state where we unthinkingly behave with grace and virtue, like a duck being a duck, or an eel being an eel, as opposed to a human being "human, all too human." We are what we are, we can't always see why we do what we do, but if we are free to be ourselves and fulfill our human potential, it will appear as leadership and activism to some. Or crazy wisdom. Or folly.

We can agree to disagree on issues we have fully aired out. You seem sincere and well-grounded in your training, and I appreciate and value that, brother. May all beings be happy.


aloha

You say you disagree, but you think I said things which I didn't say.

[Ground]

Originally Posted by aloha

Faith, or belief, is extremely powerful stuff. The opposite of faith is doubt; faith is the remedy for doubt.

The buddha tells us that

Of course faith is important for buddhists because they are believers and becoming attached to their beliefs and not deviate from them is essential for them. They are individuals seeking a home and trying to find this home in buddhist belief system. That is why if they experience something that does not comply with their beliefs they often become upset and/or seek to escape from the situation.

Therefore I have written:

Faith fosters attachment through focusing on one object or one set of objects in the affirmative and ignoring or even negating others. ... So faith ... make[s] equanimity impossible.

Occasionally buddhists can achieve unstable equanimity but only in a buddhist setting e.g. when they are together with other buddhists and where they can comfirm each others buddhist believes and feel safe or when they separate from 'the world outside'. But as soon as they face a non-buddhist environment they may again lose this unstable equanimity.

Please be aware that this form section is not a specifically buddhist section, it is about meditation in general, i.e. meditation in the context of all systems of beliefs or non-beliefs. So if you argue from within your buddhist belief system 'the budddha said ...' and the like then this may be an invalid argument for many users here who are not buddhists.

[Joyce]

Originally Posted by aloha

"More virtue, athenian, and less philosophy."
aloha

Thanks aloha. More virtue (being true to our~self; opening our heart, speaking our truth, letting go of whatever ties our spirit to it~self is what we all want!!! Much al0ha and mahalo

Originally Posted by Ground

Please be aware that this form section is not a specifically buddhist section, it is about meditation in general, i.e. meditation in the context of all systems of beliefs or non-beliefs. So if you argue from within your buddhist belief system 'the budddha said ...' and the like then this may be an invalid argument for many users here who are not buddhists.

Ground, Buddism is a great "religion", so to say, which isn't for everyone, yet it's great for some. And yes, meditation is for all willing to calm their mind to their heart.

This calming is essential for anyone on any path, and that's what 'we all' have found or are seeking.

Happiness is an awesome path to be on!!!

[Ground]

Originally Posted by Joyce

Ground, Buddism is a great "religion", so to say, which isn't for everyone, yet it's great for some.

no, it just is one religion among numerable religions. But yes it certainly isn't for everyone since many follow other religions.

Originally Posted by Joyce

And yes, meditation is for all willing to calm their mind to their heart.

Well some want to achieve some insight which is not just calming their minds.

Originally Posted by Joyce

This calming is essential for anyone on any path, and that's what 'we all' have found or are seeking.

This may be your personal truth but not necessarily the truth of others.

Originally Posted by Joyce

Happiness is an awesome path to be on!!!

Well but a very ordinary path since the world is attached to happiness.

[evolvedbeloved]

I have similar issues. Sometimes unwinding the body in preparation can help. Put on some music that moves your soul and just allow it to flow through you naturally. Let the music move your body. This can turn into a kind of meditation. In your mind's eye, dance this unwinding dance in 5D.

[Joyce]

[quote=Ground][quote]no, it just is one religion among numerable religions. But yes it certainly isn't for everyone since many follow other religions.
[/QUOTEWow, I had believed I was saying the same thing. Hmmm

Well some want to achieve some insight which is not just calming their minds.

My goodness, this feels like some kind of spiritual battle going on here. Certainly people want insight from meditating. It's my belief if the mind is NOT quiet, how is heart-intelligence, higher-power, God, whatever one want to cal it going to HEAR?!? Do I need to clarify we don't actually "hear". Perhaps I have a combative posture, and if so accept my apology. This is not my instent.

This may be your personal truth but not necessarily the truth of others.

Samantics. Anyway it does not matter. I'll not be back to this thread.

Well but a very ordinary path since the world is attached to happiness.

Wow, I don't know where you live, but I find this statement clearly combative. So as I said ~ ahuiho

[aloha]

Originally Posted by Gem

I just explained it, but basically life is going to be pleasure and pain and best one can do is keep an even keel. The meditation is a journey of healing (I call 'purification') but the psycho-emotional healing or benefits are consequential - not the purpose.

(snip)

Your statements here are far from buddhist orthodoxy, brother. Of course, in buddhism orthodoxy is one of the five fetters. You may recall, the buddha named his only son "Fetter."

Perhaps you draw un unstated distinction between "psycho-emotional healing" and spiritual healing. Healing is one of the primary metaphors for buddhist practice; "salvation" is the goal. This goal is not merely to "keep on an even keel," either. We want to sail the boat, however the keel, to the other shore. The goal is complete freedom, the buddhahood of the lion's roar.

I don't think we are sick, necessarily, just because we are not yet enlightened. I think we mature into buddhas, as the fruit of a process of development. Enlightenment, being beyond time, may be said to be instantaneous... but it can seem to be a long time coming. Sometimes it flickers... sometimes it is right here now, but unavailable to 'ordinary consciousness.'

"Those who speak do not know; those who know do not speak." This means that ordinary verbal consciousness, the kind that may be communicated between or among being(s), cannot experience enlightenment, which is non-dualistic.

We come to buddhism humbly, seeking healing, and we find so much more, liberation. We seek to save our lives, and instead lose them.


aloha