Re: Meditation for Physicalists (was Re: Where rubberz meets the

On May 15, 5:29 pm, RaaN <raan2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On May 15, 5:52 am, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On May 15, 1:01 am, Awaken21 <lukecar...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > > On May 14, 9:28 pm, RaaN <raan2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > > > Why do you suppose sitting doing nothing is such a great idea? 
Laying
> > > > down and dreaming is a much better and more natural way to do
> > > > nothing.  But to sit and mimic a corpse even to the point of
trying to
> > > > stop ones own thinking hardly seems a sane activity. 
Contemplative
> > > > walking has done enough to bring about insight and awakening in my
> > > > life so that to engage in a totally unnatural nonactivity seems a
sort
> > > > of voluntary insanity or at best a decadence.  As far as that goes
> > > > there are a wide variety of plants available both legal and
illegal
> > > > that will propel one almost immediately into the kind of altered
state
> > > > medi(po)tators are trying to achieve by corpse mimicry, and afford
> > > > much more insight and depth.  Even Krishnamurti admits the danger
of
> > > > meditation to ones sanity.  At least creating art or playing music
or
> > > > even exercising as a kind of meditational practice produces
something
> > > > that benefits and edifies others.  Sitting selfishly in meditation
> > > > like a catatonic is more likely to lead to complacency escapism
and
> > > > quietism.  It's amazing what people come up with to justify their
> > > > delusionally self righteous practice of avoidance and
void-mongering.
> > > > --
> > > > RaaN
>
> > > This is completely inaccurate description of proper meditation.
>
> > I would have to agree with Awaken21 about this.  Perhaps you got your
> > description of meditation from Keynes, or another one of these
> > snollygosters around these parts.  They are clueless.
>
> > There are two ends of the spectrum in mediation.  There is the
> > focusing and concentrating, and then there is opening one's bare
> > attention to whatever one is experiencing without adding to the
> > experience.  In Buddhism, these are called tranquility (samatha) and
> > insight-penetration (vipassana).  Vipassana, also called insight or
> > mindfulness meditation, tends to get emphasized and talked about the
> > most because it's where the long-term therapy and transformation takes
> > place; yet the Buddha included right concentration and right
> > mindfulness together in his eight-step plan.
>
> > Mimicking a corpse isn't helpful at all, I agree!  The only real
> > advantage to sitting meditation is that when the body quiets down, the
> > mind tends to follow and quiet down a bit so it's easier to pay
> > attention and not get lost in a story.  Also, the sitting posture
> > maximizes two variables: one tries to be both maximally awake and
> > maximally relaxed.  The point is to pay attention carefully to
> > everything that is happening, to thoughts, to sensations.  The goal is
> > not to stop thinking and imitate a corpse.  By just paying attention
> > to whatever arises, be it physical sensations, or thoughts, or
> > emotions, and just watching these things come and go, we get to
> > carefully examine our minds.  We then can be more attentive in our
> > daily lives and be more present to our experiences.
>
> > The best place to start, in my arrogant opinion, is by readingBhante
> >G, the wonderful old monk who established a monastery and retreat
> > center a couple of hours from me, the Bhavana Society where hopefully
> > I'll get to meet up with Dave K.  He provides a delightful description
> > of Buddhist Vipassana meditation, and you won't go astray and think
> > that it's about imitating a corpse or believing in an ego separate
> > from a body or whatever else the nutters around here that call
> > themselves Buddhists claim.  Read his "Mindfulness on Plain English"
> > online for free.  That goes for anyone else who has any serious
> > interest in Buddhist meditation.  I've met the dude and hung out
> > talking to him.  He gets the dharmatroll 5-star seal of approval and
> > two thumbs-up.  Here's the link:
>
> >http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english.php
>
> > Alternate site:
>
>
>http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books2/Gunaratana_Mindfulness_in_Plain_English.htm
>
> Thanks for this, I'll get back to you.
> --
> RaaN

Please do, RaaN.

I've skimmed the thread.  Your outsiders description of meditation as
playing dead and then the various responses from the crowd have been
fascinating to skim.

Personally, until you've done years and years of meditation and gone
to retreats, I don't think reading the original suttas is that
helpful.   I still think that reading a book like Bhante Gunaratana's
where meditation, when you do authentic Buddhist meditation practice,
is explained clearly and simply.

After reading various posts in the thread, I still think this book,
now replicated freely online, is the best explanation and into I know
of.  Here's another key passage that I think you'll find helpful and
that is relevant to this thread.

--DharmaTroll


From Bhante Gunaratana's "Mindfulness in Plain English":

<<Within the Judeo-Christian tradition we find two overlapping
practices called prayer and contemplation. Prayer is a direct address
to some spiritual entity. Contemplation in a prolonged period of
conscious thought about some specific topic, usually a religious ideal
or scriptural passage. From the standpoint of mental culture, both of
these activities are exercises in concentration. The normal deluge of
conscious thought is restricted, and the mind is brought to one
conscious area of operation. The results are those you find in any
concentrative practice: deep calm, a physiological slowing of the
metabolism and a sense of peace and well-being.

Out of the Hindu tradition comes Yogic meditation, which is also
purely concentrative. The traditional basic exercises consist of
focusing the mind on a single object a stone, a candle flame, a
syllable or whatever, and not allowing it to wander. Having acquired
the basic skill, the Yogi proceeds to expand his practice by taking on
more complex objects of meditation chants, colorful religious images,
energy channels in the body and so forth. Still, no matter how complex
the object of meditation, the meditation itself remains purely an
exercise in concentration.

Within the Buddhist tradition, concentration is also highly valued.
But a new element is added and more highly stressed. That element is
awareness. All Buddhist meditation aims at the development of
awareness, using concentration as a tool. The Buddhist tradition is
very wide, however, and there are several diverse routes to this goal.
Zen meditation uses two separate tacks. The first is the direct plunge
into awareness by sheer force of will. You sit down and you just sit,
meaning that you toss out of your mind everything except pure
awareness of sitting. This sounds very simple. It is not. A brief
trial will demonstrate just how difficult it really is. The second Zen
approach used in the Rinzai school is that of tricking the mind out of
conscious thought and into pure awareness. This is done by giving the
student an unsolvable riddle which he must solve anyway, and by
placing him in a horrendous training situation. Since he cannot flee
from the pain of the situation, he must flee into a pure experience of
the moment. There is nowhere else to go. Zen is tough. It is effective
for many people, but it is really tough.

Another stratagem, Tantric Buddhism, is nearly the reverse. Conscious
thought, at least the way we usually do it, is the manifestation of
ego, the you that you usually think that you are. Conscious thought is
tightly connected with self-concept. The self-concept or ego is
nothing more than a set of reactions and mental images which are
artificially pasted to the flowing process of pure awareness. Tantra
seeks to obtain pure awareness by destroying this ego image. This is
accomplished by a process of visualization. The student is given a
particular religious image to meditate upon, for example, one of the
deities from the Tantric pantheon. He does this in so thorough a
fa****on that he becomes that entity. He takes off his own identity and
puts on another. This takes a while, as you might imagine, but it
works. During the process, he is able to watch the way that the ego is
constructed and put in place. He comes to recognize the arbitrary
nature of all egos, including his own, and he escapes from bondage to
the ego. He is left in a state where he may have an ego if he so
chooses, either his own or whichever other he might wish, or he can do
without one. Result: pure awareness. Tantra is not exactly a game of
patty cake either.

Vipassana is the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices. The method
comes directly from the Sitipatthana Sutta, a discourse attributed to
Buddha himself. Vipassana is a direct and gradual cultivation of
mindfulness or awareness. It proceeds piece by piece over a period of
years. The student's attention is carefully directed to an intense
examination of certain aspects of his own existence. The meditator is
trained to notice more and more of his own flowing life experience.
Vipassana is a gentle technique. But it also is very , very thorough.
It is an ancient and codified system of sensitivity training, a set of
exercises dedicated to becoming more and more receptive to your own
life experience. It is attentive listening, total seeing and careful
testing. We learn to smell acutely, to touch fully and really pay
attention to what we feel. We learn to listen to our own thoughts
without being caught up in them.

The object of Vipassana practice is to learn to pay attention. We
think we are doing this already, but that is an illusion. It comes
from the fact that we are paying so little attention to the ongoing
surge of our own life experiences that we might just as well be
asleep. We are simply not paying enough attention to notice that we
are not paying attention. It is another Catch-22.

Through the process of mindfulness, we slowly become aware of what we
really are down below the ego image. We wake up to what life really
is. It is not just a parade of ups and downs, lollipops and smacks on
the wrist. That is an illusion. Life has a much deeper texture than
that if we bother to look, and if we look in the right way.

Vipassana is a form of mental training that will teach you to
experience the world in an entirely new way. You will learn for the
first time what is truly happening to you, around you and within you.
It is a process of self discovery, a participatory investigation in
which you observe your own experiences while participating in them,
and as they occur. The practice must be approached with this attitude.

"Never mind what I have been taught. Forget about theories and
prejudgments and stereotypes. I want to understand the true nature of
life. I want to know what this experience of being alive really is. I
want to apprehend the true and deepest qualities of life, and I don't
want to just accept somebody else's explanation. I want to see it for
myself." If you pursue your meditation practice with this attitude,
you will succeed. You'll find yourself observing things objectively,
exactly as they are--flowing and changing from moment to moment. Life
then takes on an unbelievable richness which cannot be described. It
has to be experienced.

The Pali term for Insight meditation is Vipassana Bhavana. Bhavana
comes from the root 'Bhu', which means to grow or to become. There
fore Bhavana means to cultivate, and the word is always used in
reference to the mind. Bhavana means mental cultivation. 'Vipassana'
is derived from two roots. 'Passana' means seeing or perceiving. 'Vi'
is a prefix with the complex set of connotations. The basic meaning is
'in a special way.' But there also is the connotation of both 'into'
and 'through'. The whole meaning of the word is looking into something
with clarity and precision, seeing each component as distinct and
separate, and piercing all the way through so as to perceive the most
fundamental reality of that thing. This process leads to insight into
the basic reality of whatever is being inspected. Put it all together
and 'Vipassana Bhavana' means the cultivation of the mind, aimed at
seeing in a special way that leads to insight and to full
understanding.

In Vipassana mediation we cultivate this special way of seeing life.
We train ourselves to see reality exactly as it is, and we call this
special mode of perception 'mindfulness.' This process of mindfulness
is really quite different from what we usually do. We usually do not
look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a
screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects
for the reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought stream
that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in
activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and
gratification and an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We
spend all of our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying
to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the
world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted. In Vipassana
meditation we train ourselves to ignore the constant impulses to be
more comfortable, and we dive into the reality instead. The ironic
thing is that real peace comes only when you stop chasing it. Another
Catch-22.

When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment
arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real
beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without
illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, that is when real
freedom and security are yours. This is not some doctrine we are
trying to drill into you. This is an observable reality, a thing you
can and should see for yourself.

Buddhism is 2500 years old, and any thought system of that vintage has
time to develop layers and layers of doctrine and ritual.
Nevertheless, the fundamental attitude of Buddhism is intensely
empirical and anti-authoritarian. Gotama the Buddha was a highly
unorthodox individual and real anti-traditionalist. He did not offer
his teaching as a set of dogmas, but rather as a set of propositions
for each individual to investigate for himself. His invitation to one
and all was 'Come and See'. One of the things he said to his followers
was "Place no head above your own". By this he meant, don't accept
somebody else's word. See for yourself.

We want you to apply this attitude to every word you read in this
manual. We are not making statements that you would accept merely
because we are authorities in the field. Blind faith has nothing to do
with this. These are experiential realities. Learn to adjust your mode
of perception according to instructions given in the book, and you
will see for yourself. That and only that provides ground for your
faith. Insight meditation is essentially a practice of investigative
personal discovery.>>