Meditation people roll call!

Okay, so then, my "assumption" was correct. Your experience with "God" is different from nondual awareness and nonconceptual reality.

Actually, when you referred to "the vision of nonduality" earlier, I thought you were referring to the spiritual plane that one may experience in a state of meditation. I see that you are actually talking about perception and awareness.

I believe that my journey through life is similar to the one you've described as rigpa, however. That the true reality of which you speak is what I mean by talking about "God."

Well, whatever you are doing, I respect. I was not trying to argue with you or find fault with you. I was merely trying to explain these things you were asking me about. Maybe I didn't do such a good job. I take full responsibility if I have misrepresented the Dzogchen teachings and I hope what I have said or attempted to say have not been a hindrance or created any hindrances for anyone. I don't claim to be enlightened whatsoever and I am definitely not a master of anything and probably not even a very good student. To go against popular opinion, let me just say that I very much respect the guru tradition and the master-disciple relationship. Anyone who is interested in anything I wrote should find a qualified Dzogchen teacher of authentic lineage or at least check out a few books. Don't base your perception of it on my inarticulate dialog.

whatever you are doing

Living in what might be considered a state of meditation. When I was in my mid-twenties, I went from meditating a lot to basically living in a state of meditation. At the time, I believed this was necessary. I believed that if all of my actions were aligned as much as possible with the infinite energy flow of the cosmic oneness, that I would then be doing all I could NOT TO DIE.

All of this detachment and essentially walking through life as a ghost, however, entailed a real slowness. And when I see that video you linked to upthread, that is what I see - the slowness. What I learned for myself in going through that process was that energy is often better dealt with not by releasing it unto God but through action. And I learned that I wasn't necessarily healthier for living in that way.

Nevertheless, I've basically retained that state of being aware of energy, being able to channel energies anytime, and being aware of thought. But I'm only interested in releasing thoughts to the extent that they seem unhelpful to me in my path in life - not as a matter of general spiritual discipline.

Are you working with the nadis and chakras?

Nadis, I guess, basically correspond to the Chinese meridians? I don't know much about the meridians, but I do use Chinese medicine and believe in it very much.

I'm actually in the middle of taking a class on the chakras right now. It's been helpful for me in understanding certain physiological and emotional issues, definitely. It's been great! But I feel I've got more work to do in terms of meditation and being more aware of the chakras being open or closed. Opening them to allow energy to flow out and attain more balance, but also keeping them protected.

Hmmm, not too familiar with Chinese terminology. I think nadis are meridians. Nadis are energy channels throughout the body. There are two important nadis which they call "sun and moon" in India and Tibet at least and are basically important for moving energy around. Anyway, yantra yoga and guru yoga are Dzogchen practices which works with energy. One is more physical and one is more mental. It is fascinating that energy-light-sound amounts to breath. Yantra yoga is a secondary practice to prepare the body and guru yoga is a very important "short cut" to nondual realization. They are to help relax the mind and body into the undisturbed primordial energy state. There is also a practice of dream yoga in which one has experiences to certainly learn from, but there is the caution not to become involved in fantasy. However, when wisdom spontaneously occurs from the nondual state, there is no doubt about it as it totally defies logic. It can't be explained. It should be impossible. It won't be believed by anyone else. Where does this nondual wisdom come from? Some people would probably run away screaming about devils or something. It just spontaneously occurs. It is miraculous in relative reality, but perfectly natural and ordinary in the primordial sense.

I thought you were referring to the spiritual plane that one may experience in a state of meditation. I see that you are actually talking about perception and awareness.

Yes, in my practice, these things are experiences and are not too important. It is always important to achieve wisdom, of course. But, it's funny if you think about spiritual vs. material forms. The experience of a "supernatural" occurrence does not actually change anything necessarily except you become more flexible in your thinking. You might reconsider whether or not certain fabled entities are real or not. But, whether they are real or not, it does not actually change your experience very much to have this knowledge. I remember when I first spoke to another Dzogchen student about my experiences with meditation, I explained that I was really "there", "just really there" I said and I was so very certain it must be rigpa. He knew I was wrong and helpfully told me I can find out exactly what rigpa is because there is a book that explains exactly what rigpa is and what it is not. A book I already owned, in fact. He told me that what I was doing was Kriya yoga and to remember all these things are just experiences I shouldn't get too attached to. They may be good, they may be bad, but ultimately weren't that important. What was most important was to realize the state of presence and remain there. I was a bit disappointed by this and stubbornly stuck to my Kriya yoga (I still do it!) thinking it was basically the same thing (I don't think this anymore) and this Dzogchen guy was too closed-minded to know the difference. Then, I took my ideas to the online community, where Dzogchen teachers literally told me to "shut my mouth and find a teacher." Well, I really took offense to that, naturally, and began to think of the entire community as a bunch of uppity jerks. The teachers told me to shut up and find a teacher! WTF? What was worse is they would not even try to explain to me anything about what was wrong with my thinking. Many of the teachings are still totally secret and what is generally known isn't usually elaborated upon by anyone that I've ever seen in the way I have been attempting to, except in books of course. Anyway, I don't think they're "uppity jerks" anymore. ;-) That was The Teacher telling me what I needed to hear.

Forgot that I wanted to mention I had some frightening experiences when I was experimenting with kundalini yoga. Chakra work can be a little dangerous or at least kind of unpleasant (not an attempt to make you paranoid or anything). I never believed the hype about "kundalini sickness" and was only slightly worried about success after reading multiple horror stories of awakening, but when stuff started to happen, I quit immediately. Later discovering the book "Living With Kundalini" by Gopi Krishna had me thanking my lucky stars I quit when I did.

For me, the chakra work so far has been an extension of the balancing efforts that were a big part of what I did in meditation anyway. Some of the associations have been very helpful - just realizing that a particular color affects a particular chakra, for example and how you can nourish a chakra by what you wear and what you eat (yellow vegetables and green vegetables, for example). Or the visualization technique of sending rays of colored light into your body.

And, of course, particular chakras are the centers of facets related to human existence (family being in the root chakra, for example). One thing I just realized yesterday is that for a long time I've associated tiredness of the eyes with what in Chinese medicine is known as "liver qi stagnation" and, sure enough, the sense of sight is associated with the solar plexus chakra (the physical areas of which involve the stomach, liver, gall bladder). (That connection is probably explained in the Chinese meridian system as well.)

How do corndogs and blowjobs fit into all of this?

you can give one one

wut

Is there a good "guided meditation" in existence?

Guide me to it, if you can!

guided meditation with thich nhat hanh aka the realest dude

Thanks! Will give some a try. Looks like he has a few things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csyCrcpDs58#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsFlrdXVFgo&feature=related

nishijima is awesome.

I started a meditation class today, and I will now be attempting to observe the part of me that observes twice a week. We only meditated for 10 minutes today, but it was long enough for me to kind of internally freak out. We went around in a circle afterward and briefly discussed what we noticed, and I accidentally gave out the biggest hippie-fried answer out of anyone in the room. But I couldn't help it - I really did notice a long repeating rhythmic phrase between two hums on opposite sides of the room, my head really did feel like it was in a box, and I saw some weird shit on my eyelids.

er... that's how I feel most of the time!

OK, that sounded a bit flippant, sorry. What I mean is that as far back as I can remember, I've been able to drop into that kind of state pretty much instantaneously. I'm not claiming that it's proper meditation or anything, but it's an ability that's probably one of the key things that's stopped me from going crazy over the years. If I get too stressed, I can insta-meditate for a few minutes.

This thread reminds me that I really should try to make time to practise TM more often. Everything Jon Lewis said upthread holds pretty much true for me, too: the industry surrounding it is more than a little dubious but there were some truly decent and committed people involved. I read somewhere that there are now "unofficial" ways of learning the technique: if anyone has any experience of that, I'd love to hear it.

Anyway: it works wonders for me, and I really don't know why I fall out of the habit of doing it. Because I'm a knob, I guess.

was toying with the idea of doing the vipassana course that's coming up soon enough for a while now. but the timetable sounds a bit scary maybe and am also worried abt hemp-wearing types

4:00 am Morning wake-up bell
4:30-6:30 am Meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30-8:00 am Breakfast break
8:00-9:00 am Group meditation in the hall
9:00-11:00 am Meditate in the hall or in your room according to the teacher's instructions
11:00-12:00 noon Lunch break
12noon-1:00 pm Rest and interviews with the teacher
1:00-2:30 pm Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30-3:30 pm Group meditation in the hall
3:30-5:00 pm Meditate in the hall or in your own room according to the teacher's instructions
5:00-6:00 pm Tea break
6:00-7:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
7:00-8:15 pm Teacher's Discourse in the hall
8:15-9:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
9:00-9:30 pm Question time in the hall
9:30 pm Retire to your own room--Lights out

so i've been thinking of starting to do this

like, 20 minutes a day of just simple meditation

yday and today i did 10 minutes each, just sitting peacefully focusing on my breathing

i really have a lot of stress/anxiety to deal with, i feel like this might help a bit?

and i have so many voices in my head, its like a fuckin pinball machine in there. i'd like to be able to slow that shit down.

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i like "namu amida butsu" not because i believe at all in the tenets of amida buddhism but i love the way it repeats in my head. i guess that's what makes a good mantra.

― s1ocki, Tuesday, July 17, 2007 10:17 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

just noticed this! it's still true, maybe i should use it!

adam do you still do it? hoos?

any tips/thoughts would be great. we dont need to talk about past lives & stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPh59jOoiEs

When I'm on my game I'm doing 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night, but realistically lately it's more like 30 mins a day on days when I'm not really doing anything else in the morning.

Resist the feeling that you might be "doing it wrong" or wasting your time or "not really meditating" if you get distracted. Eventually those feelings will come up, because they always do. They're wrong.

THAT mantra quote is one of my all-time favourite must-be-underrated comic moments.

Delivered almost as a throwaway line in that scene, it says SO MUCH about so many things...

A friend of mine has gotten into buddhism recently and suggested I try metta bhavana, which is meditation on one's emotions and "lovingkindness", its good for self-image and such. Breathing/posture exercises I also want to try more of. I need to make some changes, I'm a bit of an aimless wreck.

Resist the feeling that you might be "doing it wrong" or wasting your time or "not really meditating" if you get distracted. Eventually those feelings will come up, because they always do. They're wrong.

― some droopy HOOS in makeup (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i liked the zazen thing that said, if another thought comes up, just take a mo to acknowledge it and let it go on its merry way

yeah, be like, "thought."

whats up thought, i gotta peace

i was doing ten minutes a morning for a while, i guess i was a bit calmer overall. i started after picking up a book called "start where you are" which imo was a pretty good place to "start."

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Where-You-Are-Compassionate/dp/1570628394

i'm a newb but lots of advice therein^^ seems pretty clear and practical.

no newbs allowed

jk

vgrrl: are you meditating up there?
hoos: my cushion is still sitting in my closet uninflated
hoos: which is probably some kind of metaphor

why do u have to pay to learn tm, seems like a total red flag w/ the word bullshit on it

been doing this for about two weeks now. about 10 minutes a day. not always very successfully but taking it in stride and going easy on myself. i think once i stop wondering "has it been 10 minutes yet?" i can start doing it for longer!

The running thread got me thinking about this.

When I do long distance runs, I really believe this is akin to meditating. The whole listening to your breathing, concentrating for a period of time, being in the "now", even the ability to solve problems that have been bothering you, etc.

I used to meditate for 45 minutes every morning, but now I find that walking or cycling gets me in the proper frame of mind much easier.

That makes complete sense to me, as running has that same effect on me.

i have been wanting to start a meditation practice but have only been sporadic, though it's definitely something i want to engage in more.

I do meditative exercises but I've come to it through drama class, the deep breathing is used as a way to remove muscle tension and boost your voice, works very well and the sense of relaxation is amazing.

We also use these rubber balls a lot, probably more on the muscular side of things but I find them amazing.

They're called Miracle Balls and look very QVC and lame, but I find them amazing as part of meditative exercises as well as more active stuff.

I had a 1-hour formal meditation last night at a public center with some monks present, guiding the process and chanting a bit. It's the longest session I've ever tried, and it was also the first time I'd done it in public. When they woke us out of it, I was sort of upset because I felt like it was 15 minutes max. I really did not believe I had been sitting there for an hour. There were a few instructions -- a mantra, a visualization, etc. -- but I pretty much ignored them most of the time and just let my mind wander. There were 2 or 3 different times when I felt like I was falling out of my body and snapped open my eyes and was extremely disoriented for a few seconds afterwards. Basically it felt like during that hour I was experiences many different conceptions of time.

It was a great experience and I would love to try this again, perhaps tomorrow! SO MUCH seemed to happen even though all I was doing was sitting still in one place.

my bf has enrolled in a study through brown u. on the effects of mindfulness meditation practice on anxiety & depression & post traumatic stress. it's pretty intense , v interesting. he's asked to do at least 40 mins on his own each day in addition to a weekly 3 hour instruction plus a full day retreat. it's a neuroscientific approach, and it has involved him wearing an appliance to monitor his brainwaves during sleep and having EEG while he looks at 'stressful images' (burn victims! simulated domestic violence! wtf). it's all pretty nuts imho, there's some info on the lab here: http://www.brittonlab.com/

Any tips on how to get started on meditating correctly? I just fall asleep.

:(
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/vipassana-guru-s-n-goenka-dies/1176659/

So the last time I regularly meditated was almost 20 years ago. It was so hard for me to stay with the breath that I basically decided I couldn't do it.

Long story but I started again recently and ... it's mindblowingly different. I'm way better at staying with the breath, and when my mind wanders I'm able to bring it back without getting mad at myself. I feel like this honeymoon can't last but right now I'm pretty excited.