Meditation practices

[I, Brian]

I realise that meditation is now essentially widespread as a tool and practice - but as I lean towards believing it began and developed in the East as a direct companion to the study and practices of Eastern philosophies, then I'll pose my question here.

Firstly, how does a person actually meditate?

Secondly, how many different types of meditation are there, that have very real traditional roots?

Thirdly, how would a person find a technique that best suits them?

[Susma Rio Sep]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

I realise that meditation is now essentially widespread as a tool and practice - but as I lean towards believing it began and developed in the East as a direct companion to the study and practices of Eastern philosophies, then I'll pose my question here.

Firstly, how does a person actually meditate?

Secondly, how many different types of meditation are there, that have very real traditional roots?

Thirdly, how would a person find a technique that best suits them?

I studied in Catholic schools from tender childhood up to college levels, and lost my faith or rather became a postgraduate Catholic.

For college I lived in a campus where there is a community of priests of the most learned kind who practice meditation daily.

I was so good with my studies and good also with my personal life that the priests running the school expected me to join them; I was encouraged to take more theology courses than the minimum needed. And I used to join them in their devotions, also and specially in their meditation sessions, individual and common.

So, I should know about Catholic meditation. I used to read also treatises of asceticism and mysticism, the masters of the Catholic Church on contemplation, and all that.

Looking back: it was just thinking with imagination and excitation of your emotions: sorrow, joy, admiration, etc., keeping God's presence or Jesus' or Mary's in your consciousness. Sometimes I would doze on and off, and imagine myself to be in some kind of ecstatic state.

As I said, looking back, it was just thinking. I developed the habit of thinking; so that even today when I am in bed I would think and think and think about many things and everything. One of my continuous thinking is what religion is essentially all about.

About Buddhistic meditation, I really don’t know Adam and Eve from it. Once some Hindu missionaries dropped by my place to talk to me about meditation, and I politely told them that I had been that route already, in the Catholic system; and I didn’t think there’s anything basically different from what they would teach me. Besides, I told them that a very good course in logic and critical thinking can be good for getting enlightened in one’s mind.

What I like to find out now is exactly what Buddhists are meditating on or about. With Catholics meditation is centered on God, the saints, the spiritual life, the how of virtues and the bane of sins. On a very high level, one imagines the kind of existence that is entirely devoid of all sense impressions. That’s the kind that gets me dozed off.

No wonder I decided I was not destined for the Catholic priesthood, notwithstanding all the cajolings of the campus fathers. In addition, for all their learning and sharp mind they appeared to me to have put themselves into a dungeon of their own making in regard to knowledge and life, with their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, including intellectual obedience.

Susma Rio Sep

[emong]

Buddhist Meditation centers on nothingness to gain knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things. Since Buddhism is not a religion, there are no mandates for reflecting on anything. You missed out greatly when you assumed it paralleled Catholic meditation and turned down the instruction.

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

I realise that meditation is now essentially widespread as a tool and practice - but as I lean towards believing it began and developed in the East as a direct companion to the study and practices of Eastern philosophies, then I'll pose my question here.

Firstly, how does a person actually meditate?

Secondly, how many different types of meditation are there, that have very real traditional roots?

Thirdly, how would a person find a technique that best suits them?

Namaste Brian,

thanks for the post.

there are several different ways in which a person can meditate and as such, i shall have to be brief and rather general with my replies.

meditation is, primarily, a means of monitoring the interior self... a method to see where thoughts arise from and go to, a means to exploring who we are, why we are that way and what we can do to change that should we choose to.

in any event... the most typical type of meditation that one sees is called "sitting meditation" (Zazen in Zen). This type of meditation is engaged in either by oneself (in retreat or at home) or in a group (sangha) or other setting. one picks a quiet place that they can be uninterrputed for at least 20 mins.

in the west, the most common image is that of a person sitting in the so-called Full Lotus posture, with right ankle on left thigh and left ankle on right thigh. this can be a difficult posture, however, it is the one that is held up in the classics as the best posture to use. this gets into some highly specialized areas that i think we should leave alone for now... it should be kept in mind that one can engage in this type of meditation or others, such as walking meditation.

also, though the Full Lotus posture is recommended, you can also use the Half Lotus or Lotus posture. one can also sit in a chair without crossed legs or sit cross-legged. the important aspect of the posture is that it should be one that you can maintain easily enough for about 1 hour and that it's condusive to staying awake. discipline is important in the practice and some of these "rules" are reflections of that.

once you've found a posture, the most widely used method is called "breathing meditation". in essence, you focus your attention on the lower diaphram and breath in and out with a smooth, easy rythym to a count of 4... in, 2, 3, 4... out, 2, 3, 4.

the eyes, when beginning, can be closed. however, after some practice you should open your eyes for meditation, keeping them lightly lidded and slightly downward gazing. your hands can be in the traditional mudra of meditation (left hand in lap, right laying on top with thumbs lightly touching, or the Indian style where the hands rest on the thighs and the forefinger and thumb touch.

as for a technique to employ... usually, that is best left to an individual teacher and student to determine. however... i shall present a very powerful method that is completely endorsed by the Three Schools.

during your meditation, do the counted breath for awhile... usually it takes 20 mins or so for the mind to calm down. you don't have to do anything really to make this happen other than focusing your attention on your breathing. when a thought arises, observe it as if you were on a stream bank and the thought was a piece of flotsam on the stream floating by. no attachment to it.

after about 20 mins or so, your mind will be calm (though it may not appear like it very much at the beginning :0) enough to engage in the technique. using your minds eye... look into the source of your thoughts.. from where do they arise? where do they go? who is thinking these thoughts? keeping thinking backwards like this and eventually you will have attainment.

[The Fool]

Originally Posted by Vajradhara

meditation is, primarily, a means of monitoring the interior self... a method to see where thoughts arise from and go to, a means to exploring who we are, why we are that way and what we can do to change that should we choose to.

Thanks for that - those words in particular make great sense to me. At the moment I have a number of stresses that are really building up. I need to be able to find a way to relax myself internally.

The quote above makes most sense - I leerned long ago how to "fall within" and "tune in" (for lack of a better phraseology) - - - but seldom now remember to do so.

I'm going to see if I can set some time aside and do something - tune in, do beathing exercises, and generally try to focus on internal calming.

Many thanks for the comments - I'll tune in now, and see how things go.

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by The Fool

Thanks for that - those words in particular make great sense to me. At the moment I have a number of stresses that are really building up. I need to be able to find a way to relax myself internally.

The quote above makes most sense - I leerned long ago how to "fall within" and "tune in" (for lack of a better phraseology) - - - but seldom now remember to do so.

I'm going to see if I can set some time aside and do something - tune in, do beathing exercises, and generally try to focus on internal calming.

Many thanks for the comments - I'll tune in now, and see how things go.

Namaste brian,

i wish you success in your endeavor

[Susma Rio Sep]

Originally Posted by emong

Buddhist Meditation centers on nothingness to gain knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things. Since Buddhism is not a religion, there are no mandates for reflecting on anything. You missed out greatly when you assumed it paralleled Catholic meditation and turned down the instruction.

Can we really come to the interconnectedness of all things with meditating on nothing?

On the level of physics and chemistry, aren't all things interconnected? And when you consider that every action of man impacts on every other action of every other man actually existing or still to appear; there is certainly the interconnectedness of all things.

That all things are interconnected is a fact, whether you meditate or not on it, it is still so. That you meditate on nothingness and arrive at the knowledge of this fact, I believe the semantics here has to be further worked out.

In the preceding posts Vaj has given us some very instructive steps for Buddhistic meditation, dwelling on the posture and the breathing aspects.

Let me see now, we have in our mind the following faculties: memory, imagination, various ways of thinking: deductive, inductive, trial and error, etc., and also the big affective faculty of the will for consenting or dissenting or being indifferently situated -- neither pro nor anti.

Does Buddhistic meditation have any place for the above enumeratied faculties of the mind -- specifically; because whether any meditation system brings these faculties in or not explicitly, the fact is that meditation has to do with the mind; and the mind actively is the functioning of the above enumerated faculties.

Susma Rio Sep

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by Susma Rio Sep

Can we really come to the interconnectedness of all things with meditating on nothing?

On the level of physics and chemistry, aren't all things interconnected? And when you consider that every action of man impacts on every other action of every other man actually existing or still to appear; there is certainly the interconnectedness of all things.

That all things are interconnected is a fact, whether you meditate or not on it, it is still so. That you meditate on nothingness and arrive at the knowledge of this fact, I believe the semantics here has to be further worked out.

In the preceding posts Vaj has given us some very instructive steps for Buddhistic meditation, dwelling on the posture and the breathing aspects.

Let me see now, we have in our mind the following faculties: memory, imagination, various ways of thinking: deductive, inductive, trial and error, etc., and also the big affective faculty of the will for consenting or dissenting or being indifferently situated -- neither pro nor anti.

Does Buddhistic meditation have any place for the above enumeratied faculties of the mind -- specifically; because whether any meditation system brings these faculties in or not explicitly, the fact is that meditation has to do with the mind; and the mind actively is the functioning of the above enumerated faculties.

Susma Rio Sep

Namaste Susma and all,

let me clarify something that emong said... as it's important and can cause one to miss the mark.

it's not "nothingness" that one mediates on, it's emptiness. there is a vast difference between those two things in Buddhist philosophy.

in any event.. on with the post

yes, we can really experience interconnectedness with all things when we meditate on emptiness.

i'd agree with you... science is coming to the opinion more and more often that all things have an interconnectedness to them. for instance:

Leibniz says: Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond.

H.P. Stapp says: An elementary particle is not an independently existing, unanalyzable entity. It is, in essence, a set of relationships that reach outward to other things..

indeed... the missapprehension is in the word "nothingness" instead of the word "emptiness". emptiness in Buddhism is a very specific term and means a very specific thing. depending on the school that one practices, the meaning will go from coarse to subtle. emptiness means that objects are devoid of an inherent existence and only exist in dependence on their causes and conditions. the point of the meditation on emptiness is not to understand this intellecutally, rather, to actually have the experience of being connected to all things.

intellectual understanding and practice is used in a very specific way in Buddhist practice and takes a back seat to Buddhist experience of the practice.

hmmm... the Buddhist exposition of mind is more vast than what you've outlined. remember, we've been looking at this for a very long time, nearly 2,500 years. the mind isn't seen in the same way in Buddhism.. it's nothing more than the physcial residence of the consciousness. the consciousness is where Buddhist praxis is pointed towards.

unfortunately, i do not have the time right now to go into great depth about mind and consciousness in Buddhist philosophy, however, i will attempt to provide more information in the next upcoming days, in this regard.

[Tang_kuanu]

hi guys i recently join this forum just wanna say hi to the people at christain forum.com and i wanna ask what to expect in buddhist medittaion? and how do you do it?

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by Tang_kuanu

hi guys i recently join this forum just wanna say hi to the people at christain forum.com and i wanna ask what to expect in buddhist medittaion? and how do you do it?

Namaste Tang,

welcome to the forum.

what to expect? hmm... well... that's a hard one to answer as there are several different types of meditation that one can do, such as absorbtion meditation or insight meditation.

in any event, the working guidelines for this generally say that one should not practice with the idea of "gain" or "loss", one should have no fixed ideas in their heads. if you have never eaten an orange, no matter what i say about it, your experience of it will be different than mine. that is good way to think about the Buddhist meditations. we can talk about it to some degree but our experience of it is what is important.

how to do them. well... this gets into an area that i can only touch on briefly, and i have have already done so in this thread. to wit:

also, though the Full Lotus posture is recommended, you can also use the Half Lotus or Lotus posture. one can also sit in a chair without crossed legs or sit cross-legged. the important aspect of the posture is that it should be one that you can maintain easily enough for about 1 hour and that it's condusive to staying awake. discipline is important in the practice and some of these "rules" are reflections of that.

once you've found a posture, the most widely used method is called "breathing meditation". in essence, you focus your attention on the lower diaphram and breath in and out with a smooth, easy rythym to a count of 4... in, 2, 3, 4... out, 2, 3, 4.

the eyes, when beginning, can be closed. however, after some practice you should open your eyes for meditation, keeping them lightly lidded and slightly downward gazing. your hands can be in the traditional mudra of meditation (left hand in lap, right laying on top with thumbs lightly touching, or the Indian style where the hands rest on the thighs and the forefinger and thumb touch.

as for a technique to employ... usually, that is best left to an individual teacher and student to determine. however... i shall present a very powerful method that is completely endorsed by the Three Schools.

during your meditation, do the counted breath for awhile... usually it takes 20 mins or so for the mind to calm down. you don't have to do anything really to make this happen other than focusing your attention on your breathing. when a thought arises, observe it as if you were on a stream bank and the thought was a piece of flotsam on the stream floating by. no attachment to it.

after about 20 mins or so, your mind will be calm (though it may not appear like it very much at the beginning :0) enough to engage in the technique. using your minds eye... look into the source of your thoughts.. from where do they arise? where do they go? who is thinking these thoughts? keeping thinking backwards like this and eventually you will have attainment.

[Tang_kuanu]

hey very interesting i will try it and another question is it alright to sit cross leg for the rest of the night? like if your meditating then accidently fall asleep in that position is it dangerous to sleep cross leg sitting up?

[Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine]

Zdrastvuitsye, hola, shalom, salaam, Dia dhuit, hej, namastar ji, konbanwa, squeak, meow, :wave: to Tang_kuanu.

Vajradhara, a question: what if the student/practitioner goes o.o.b. during meditations? I was taking classes on relaxation and meditation in school and, when it came time to do meditations, I tended to, um, "travel" shall I say. I haven't practiced meditation because I have this problem, and I'm afraid that if I tried doing so alone or with another teacher who couldn't "travel", I may become "caught outside" shall we say (I must admit, I'm a very nervous practitioner of Eastern meditations.)

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

[emong]

Originally Posted by Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

Zdrastvuitsye, hola, shalom, salaam, Dia dhuit, hej, namastar ji, konbanwa, squeak, meow, :wave: to Tang_kuanu.

Vajradhara, a question: what if the student/practitioner goes o.o.b. during meditations? I was taking classes on relaxation and meditation in school and, when it came time to do meditations, I tended to, um, "travel" shall I say. I haven't practiced meditation because I have this problem, and I'm afraid that if I tried doing so alone or with another teacher who couldn't "travel", I may become "caught outside" shall we say (I must admit, I'm a very nervous practitioner of Eastern meditations.)

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

That's an interesting conundrum, "fear of meditation".
What would being "caught outside" be like. Would the soul that is "outside" really have a fear of not being able to return.
Somehow having the "problem" of being purely spiritual does not lend itself to "feeling fear". At least that's how I see it.

[sjr]

Originally Posted by Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

Zdrastvuitsye, hola, shalom, salaam, Dia dhuit, hej, namastar ji, konbanwa, squeak, meow, :wave: to Tang_kuanu.

Vajradhara, a question: what if the student/practitioner goes o.o.b. during meditations? I was taking classes on relaxation and meditation in school and, when it came time to do meditations, I tended to, um, "travel" shall I say. I haven't practiced meditation because I have this problem, and I'm afraid that if I tried doing so alone or with another teacher who couldn't "travel", I may become "caught outside" shall we say (I must admit, I'm a very nervous practitioner of Eastern meditations.)

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

Phyllis,
What a wonderful expirence,where did you go? What did it feel like when you returned? Try a westernized meditation where you create an observer, an observer of breath, an observer of thoughts, an observer of feelings. A sort of non attatchment.STOP THE INTERNAL DIALOGUE and Have fun.

SJR

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by Tang_kuanu

hey very interesting i will try it and another question is it alright to sit cross leg for the rest of the night? like if your meditating then accidently fall asleep in that position is it dangerous to sleep cross leg sitting up?

Namaste Tang,

thank you for the post.

in the Vajrayana tradition, that is how you sleep during your retreat period. the only real danger, that i can see, is that your circulation may become restricted during the rest period. however, that is not something that is normally reported as a problem during the retreat period so may be nothing to worry about at all.