>>39587317
you arent thoughts youre the awareness, pretend thoughts are clouds, pull back and watch them float by, practice being the Watcher

>>39587317
A decent simple beginning approach to tranquility meditation I came across once and personally found effective for quieting my mind and feeling very calm is to first find a nice place with fresh air to sit, then set a timer with a genle alarm sound like maybe a soft bell, and then start off your meditation by closing your eyes and mentally counting your in-breaths up to some number (say 12 or 60). Then count every second in-breath for the same number, then every fourth in-breath for the same number, and then stop counting and just focus on breathing in itself until the alarm goes off. You could also count out-breaths instead of in-breaths. I'm not sure if there's a reason to prefer one or the other. Beyond that, I could recommend this guide: https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/WithEachAndEveryBreath/Contents.html

But there are lots of approaches to "meditation" with different purposes (some mainly about using concentration to induce tranquility, some more focused on an open-ended mindfulness to gain insight into how experience operates, and some based on active visualization to produce certain effects), so if you try something and after a while you don't find yourself getting much out of it, feel free to look elsewhere.

Many people say that you can "Be in meditation while doing anything" but in my personal opinion this is extremely hard to pull of because the majority of people think and analyze what they are doing 24/7 and most of them don't even realize it, in other words they don't directly experience what they are doing and only do while being hypnotized by the ego and its thoughts/emotions.

People also say that there are many ways to meditate (watch a candle, watch a white wall, listen to binaural beats, open-monitoring in which you notice everything which arises in the field of your awareness e.t.c.), for me that all of these have the same end-goal: Achieving a relaxed state of body and reclaiming the focus of your awareness which has been taken away into following stories and analyzations made up by the mind.

Also let us think of the body first:
Sit in the dark with no distractions and see if your body and breathing are relaxed, don't think and analyze what you feel, just focus on the feeling of your body sitting there and breathing. Did you find any tension? Just focus on it and let it relax, maybe you will find that you don't need to "do the relaxing" and that the relaxing happens automatically once you spot the tension.
For me relaxing my body was a crucial part which I ignored for a long time, but how can there be silence and stillness if the basis of your being (your body) is not attuned to silence and stillness? Muscle is about 40% of your body mass and you have the ability to relax it.
Plus this muscle relaxation also trains you to distinguish between when you're actually focusing on something and when you're hypnotized and taken away into daydreaming.

After you get really good at relaxing your muscles focus on your breathing. An anon many months ago on here said that the main objective of meditation is to return your breathing into its original state when you were young: Relaxed, deep and without strain.
This of course also trains the focusing of your awareness.

Just sit still and breathe.

Retake the focus of your attention from automatic language-thinking and use it to actually see what is happening.

>>39587317
Treat your thoughts like leaves floating down a stream you are sat in front of - don't worry about where they came from, don't worry about where they're going, just observe them. If the thought "I have to do X tomorrow" pops into being you just go "k". Don't engage the thought, don't anticipate the next thought, just embrace being between thoughts

>>39587317
Vipassana and shamatha meditation guide for retards:

Step 1: Sit down comfortably and close your eyes.

Step 2: Let your mind wander through the memories in your embarrassing life without consciously fixating on any.

Step 3: Do this until you feel a mental yank and start hearing a humming sound similar to tinnitus, then make the sound your object of meditation, focusing completely on it, and don't let it go.

Extra Step: Dedicate less than 20 minutes to it and open a thread complaining about shit not working.

Clear your mind and relax your body totally.

Don't let any thought take place in your mind, don't let any emotion/tension take place in your body.

bump

>>39590640
Should I let my mind wander until it has nothing more to say and the humming sound comes? Will this sound come to any person 100%?

Or should I pick an object and just bring myself back to it each time I catch myself thinking?

>>39595147
>Should I let my mind wander until it has nothing more to say and the humming sound comes? Will this sound come to any person 100%?
If you want to do it following my "guide" you should let your mind wander at first, flowing naturally through memories (which are sensations), observing them without sticking to them. And yeah, the humming comes to everyone through any meditative practice, for some it will come easy for some it won't, could take you 20 minutes or an hour or two. The more you get the humming the easier it becomes to go back to it willingly, but at first you'll just have to sit down and meditate until it decides to appear.

>Or should I pick an object and just bring myself back to it each time I catch myself thinking?
That's what you're going to do with the humming once it appears, this type of meditation where you concentrate on a single element is called shamatha. Until you get the humming, do vipassana instead, which consists on observing and examining various sensations, in this case your flow of memories.

People who start with shamatha always struggle and are likely to abandon. Vipassana is way more natural for a beginners, you switch to shamatha only when the hum appears, making the hum your only element of concentration, this method is how i would teach anyone with no experience.

>>39587317
Reminder to the crypto-Buddhist thread:
THER3E ARE MANY DIFFERENT WAYS TO MEDITATE, WITH MANY DIFFERENT GOALS.
DO NOT LET BUDDHISTS PREACHERS TELL YOU THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY, FOR ONLY ONE REASON.

>>39587317
You read the bible

Every type of meditation has different fruits.

Samatha: Focusing on your breath. Teaches concentration.
Vipassana: Body sensory scanning. Teaches you how to feel, which leads to pleasure. Teaches your ego to let things go.
Pranayama: Breathing exercises that build up the air element, gives control over thoughts, and teaches concentration. Pranayama gives a pleasant mental energy boost.
Gayatri Mantra Meditation: A prayer that asks the deity to illuminate the mind with wisdom. Continued meditation will blessings of the deity, wisdom of the deity, feeling the energy of the deity, removing sins and ignorance, create an astral body in the form of the deity, initiation into the heaven of the deity.
Taoist: Mainly focused on cultivating energy, and letting energy flow. Not really focused on purifying the mind. So only taoist energy work can lead to a huge ego, but lots of pleasure from the energy.
Scripture Study: A great way to purify the mind, as the insights that might take many hours of introspective meditation, can be plainly stated in a few words.


>>39595316
This

>>39595316
>DO NOT LET BUDDHISTS PREACHERS TELL YOU THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY, FOR ONLY ONE REASON.
The funny thing is, many buddhist dont even realize there are different goals and fruits for the mainstream buddhist meditations.
Shamatha and vipassana lead to quite different fruits.

>>39596070
Shamatha is simply concentrating in one point or element, undivided attention. And vipassana is simply the "soft examination" and observation of many points or elements. Breathing is the most common and traditional element/s used in both but i find it's not the best choice for beginners. Using thoughts instead is easier and better for vipassana, and using the humming sound that this produces (the "nada sound") which is a nimitta, it's better for shamatha because its vibration is felt throughout the whole body and it's a flat, constant sound.

Breathing is seen as the "old reliable" because you never stop breathing so it's always there, but so are trains of thought, which you are more engaged with regularly and offer more variety for vipassana.

>>39596070
>Pranayama: Breathing exercises that build up the air element, gives control over thoughts, and teaches concentration. Pranayama gives a pleasant mental energy boost.
>Gayatri Mantra Meditation: A prayer that asks the deity to illuminate the mind with wisdom. Continued meditation will blessings of the deity, wisdom of the deity, feeling the energy of the deity, removing sins and ignorance, create an astral body in the form of the deity, initiation into the heaven of the deity.
>Taoist: Mainly focused on cultivating energy, and letting energy flow. Not really focused on purifying the mind. So only taoist energy work can lead to a huge ego, but lots of pleasure from the energy.
>Scripture Study: A great way to purify the mind, as the insights that might take many hours of introspective meditation, can be plainly stated in a few words.
none of those are meditations

>>39595273
I see, thank you very much, indeed I have struggled with single-point concentration for many years because all these thoughts always came and took my focus away, vipassana sounds more natural and better for me, thank you again.

>>39598064
In Vipassana retreats they spend the first 3 days just focusing on the space around your nose and lip for 10-12h/day. It's used as a crash course to train awareness. After that they move on to scanning areas on the body up and down, back and forth.

how is meditation different from gooning? they both feel like take on hedonism, just from opposite sides of the bell curve

this is a genuine question, I need a take on this so I can formalize intuitively in my head

>>39587317

These free guided meditations are very good

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/mindfulness-meditation-downloads/

>>39598378
Meditation is not fun and is hard to do, it's like exercise

>>39587317
Simple. If you have any questions ask.

>>39598390
so is gooning, you are doing both with the goal of feeling something positive

>>39598404
Gooning is actively pleasurable and easy to do, meditation is not and your mind resists it.

>>39598378
Meditation means different thing at different levels. At the most basic level, meditation means to experience the reality without any bias/prejudice, most of your reality is tainted by what you have done in the past and what might happen in future. Meditation allows you to remove the concept of time, and experience the preset.

Once that happens, you start seeing things that previously weren't visible. Then meditation changes it's meaning.

>>39598378
>>39598420 Continued
And yes you are onto something. It's not gooning though. The exact moment of orgasm is meditation, at that moment both your unconscious and conscious mind forgets about the notion of time.

>>39587317
>how to get started with meditation
eat neem leaf
meditation mode : activated

>>39598420
>>39598416
do people start to meditate with the promise of achieving a pleasurable state of being?

even if you fail and give up before getting there, you still get the kick from trying and overcoming something unpleasurable

gooning might be pleasurable for the body in the moment, but its very much not so in other contexts

>>39598457
as the old saying goes :
you don't try and meditate; you simply find yourself in meditation

>>39598462
> the promise of achieving a pleasurable state of being
The original reason was always curiosity. There is an old tale about the origin of Tantra. In India a group of people were climbing the Himalayan mountain's, and they saw a guy who was sitting completely still on a rock with barely anything covering his skin. They tried to talk to him, but he didn't respond so they waited for him to wake up. But he didn't. Months passed by, and he was still sitting without any source of food. That group of people later became his disciples.

TLDR; Curiosity. You have an intrinsic need to see what happens if you meditate. There is no other motive. Just experience.

>>39598557
curiosity runs on dopamine loop, just like infinite scrolling

>>39598557>>39598462

no, meditation is a tool to achieve something, either samatha or higher knowledge

>>39598890
Nope, the original motive was always curiosity. That's how we learn to walk, to move our feet, to think, etc. Meditation is just inner exploration. It's an adventure you don't know what you may find.

> Samatha or Higher Knowledge
- remember word is not the thing
- the word "tree" is not the same thing as the actual thing
These words are useless.

>>39598890
gooning is a tool to achieve something

>>39598957
yes gooning is a tool utilized by your enemies for your destruction

>>39598990
Why would I have enemies?

>>39587317
if you are struggling with back pain and posture problems while sitting, try working out your back.

i the realization meditation was telling me to lift; my body was unfit to meditate

maybe obvious to some but i noticed by accident after doing seated rows for a couple of weeks its easier to maintain my position while meditating

>>39588668
>355 KB
> Many people say that you can "Be in meditation while doing anything" but in my personal opinion this is extremely hard to pull of because the majority of people think and analyze what they are doing 24/7 and most of them don't even realize it, in other words they don't directly experience what they are doing and only do while being hypnotized by the ego and its thoughts/emotions.
this is why to tackle the breath first
by the time you master it and make it highly efficient, you have a way to harness the energy that creates random thoughts before they manifest as such

>>39590597
>Treat your thoughts like leaves floating down a stream you are sat in front of - don't worry about where they came from, don't worry about where they're going, just observe them
this is the worst meditation advice ever
it just furthers thinking with no effort to stop it
its 100% a recipe to spin your wheels and make 0 progress in meditation

>>39599101
hes right. you arent thoughts you the observer of them, practice being the observer and they eventually stop, when theyre gone youre left with the pure awareness, practice being the awareness, and youre free

The jhanas are well mapped by now. The gurus of the buddha managed to get up to 7 and 8th but nobody know how they did it. Once the jhanas are mapped, and the siddhis are developed, there's really no surprise and no curiosity left. It's not like samadhi is super mysterious and since it only tells you about samasra, it's intellecually and emotionally just intrinsically uninteresting.

>>39590640
>Extra Step: Dedicate less than 20 minutes to it and open a thread complaining about shit not working.
kek

>>39598262
Is the final form of vipassana like open monitoring meditation in which you just take notice of anything which pops up in your awareness (be it thoughts, sensations, emotions e.t.c.) without clinging on to it?

>>39587317
Buddhist meditation requires attaining Right View first. The Buddha didn't praise all kinds of meditation, just Right Meditation and Right View is the sole basis on which one discerns what is Right Meditation and what isn't

>>39598398
Really good and simple guide.
Meditation is a package: It's stillness, it's being aware of thoughts without being hypnotized by them, it's calming the breath, it's conquering the mind.

>>39597469
They are.
The newb buddhists flooding /x/ are retarded if they think vipassana and samatha are the only two types of meditation.

>>39597274
>Shamatha is simply concentrating in one point or element, undivided attention.
It is focusing on the breath. Which causes the mind to get bored and turn introspective which leads to processing deep personal insights. Among other things.

> And vipassana is simply the "soft examination" and observation of many points or elements.
Vipassana is scanning the body, which is essentially teaching a person how to relax, and how to feel, and how to let go. When a problem comes in real life, their ego has learned to just relax, let go, and start feeling again, and ignore the psychological pain.

>Using thoughts instead is easier and better for vipassana
But then it would not be vipassana. It would be something else.

>>39598378
Meditation is just learning to focus your attention on a set of exercises or things to concentrate on. As many things and exercises there are to concentrate on, so are there numbers of meditations to practice. Each has different fruits.

>>39598390
A newb learning it is very, very boring.
Once you break through it becomes amazing, and can lead to great pleasure and peace.
Sort of like playing an instrument, when you compare a person cluelessly picking up an instrument for the first time, and compare to a master of that instrument.

>At the most basic level, meditation means to experience the reality without any bias/prejudice
This is just buddhist newbie dogma.
There are many different schools teaching different philosophies behind their system of meditation. They dont all have the same goal.

>>39600608
>But then it would not be vipassana. It would be something else.
Vipassana and shamatha are just meditative practice that are defined by the examination of various objects of meditation, or the concentration upon a single object of meditation, respectively. It has nothing to do with the breathing. The breathing is just the "popularized" object of meditation for both methodologies. You can practice vipassana with the rain droplets falling on you, the air hitting your body, thoughts...etc. Utilizing body scanning for vipassana es just a method, with that method you're examining the different sensations in the body, that's all.

For shamatha the same, if you're concentrating on a candle flame, a specific feeling, a mental image, a sigil, an apple, as long as you're concentrating on a single, isolated element with undivided attention, that's shamatha.

>>39600662
what about deeznatha

>>39600700
Dunno, ask your sister.

>>39600662
Can you explain how one would do vipassana on their thoughts, and vipassana on rain drops?

>>39600858
Vipassana is the examination of various sensations and their impermanence, meaning how they're constantly changing. Everything is considered sensations, the raindrops hitting your body, the thoughts, breathing, a chair....etc.

The point of practicing vipassana is to sharpen and expand the range of awareness when perceiving sensations. If you practice vipassana with the breathing, at first you might be able to identify a handful of different sensations conforming your breathing, but as the practice goes on you'll end up identifying and perceiving more and more sensations conforming the breathing, dozens, hundreds... Practicing vipassana increases the amount of information you're able to examine in the sensations you interact with and in those you're conformed of.

Shamatha on the other hand focuses on cultivating stability, like holding a ball on the tip of your finger, it's hard, but the more you do it the more easily you will stabilize the ball, and you'll be able to stabilize it for longer. Shamatha and vipassana are both meant to be practiced, not just one of them.

>>39600915
>expand the range of awareness when perceiving sensations.
I dunno.
I got the goenka vipassana training, and to me, vipassana of the goenka style, is about learning how to feel through doing body scans.
An over-active studious mind learns that they can focus just as much awareness on their feelings, as they are used to spending on their thoughts. And focusing on feelings produces relaxation and pleasure. So they develop a safe haven of pleasure they can always access. And many positive effects on training the ego to let things go.

>>39601041
>i dunno
I'm telling you. It's cool that you used body scanning as a method for practicing vipassana, you could've practice it while wiping your ass and it would've been as valid within the vipassana framework. Maybe the extreme example makes it easier to understand, i've already explained what it is though.

>>39601055
I still do not understand how to practice "vipassana with thoughts" or "vipassana with raindrops".
Focusing on totally different things, leads to totally different fruits.

>>39601055
>you could've practice it while wiping your ass and it would've been as valid within the vipassana framework
This would be a body scan, which is valid within the goenka framework, although he generally skips over the genital scans kinda because its ackward.
But your teaching seems like something totally different, that would lead to totally different fruits.

>>39601076
I've told you what vipassana is, and what is used for primarily. What is it that you don't understand exactly? It seems like you just have a different understanding of what vipassana is, and that's why it doesn't make sense to you.

Why do you think body scanning is used sometimes for vipassana? Because it easily gives access to a wide variety of sensations, and that's the point of vipassana, to break down sensations into smaller ones through a soft examination of them. This increases the range of one's awareness, where you once were able to identify, let's say, 10 different sensations, through the practice of vipassana that number increases.

>>39601130

Explain the process of doing vipassana on the thoughts.
Which school of meditation teaches to do vipassana on the thoughts?

>that's the point of vipassana, to break down sensations into smaller ones ...
This is what I already said. It teaches you to feel.

>>39601130
>Why do you think body scanning is used sometimes for vipassana?
Goenka vipassana IS body scanning.
Which school is teaching to do vipassana on the thoughts?
There is a very specific of the brain that deals with body sensations that is activated and developed from goenka style vipassana. A person learns to root out fear, aversion and craving towards bodily sensations by meditating on them. If one were to seek sensations outside of their body, it would not activate this same area of the brain, which is why I keep saying its a different meditation.

copy & pasted reply from a diff meditation thread;

Months it took me, At my peak I was meditating between 1 - 2 hours. But its also how you grasp it, like some anon said your not supposed to go into it with some weird focus on something while meditating, go into it completely blank and "observe" what comes up...

It is a muscle you have to train, a dicipline no matter which "type" of meditation you go through. At a certain point your body will adapt to the different trance and different brain waves you go through. At the same time visualization is very important mind = all = mind that is a big realization youll need to produce further results. Once you get the visualization down (think artist) everything will follow...

Also a big pro tip I can give yall is meditate before going to sleep, youll either meditate and go to sleep or youll meditate and slowly shift into a lucid dream. Both these result in lucid dreams one just faster than the other.

Good luck.

>>39601147
Vipassana is about developing understanding/insight into impermanence, suffering and non self, through the observation of reality. Reality is conformed of sensations, that includes thoughts.

The specific methodology of practicing vipassana on thoughts is in various schools, like thai forest buddhism, Sayadaw's or zen. That's besides the point, it doesn't matter if a school utilizes a certain methodology or not, if they don't use it it doesn't mean it's "wrong". Vipassana can be practices with anything, anywhere at any time, sensations can be engaged with through every sensory channel and they can be observed and examined, and if you do it without being attached to them, only being aware of their impermanence, then you're practicing vipassana.

To practice vipassana on thoughts you simply need to observe them as they arise, like i've said around 10 times in this thread, without sticking to them and letting them flow, observing how they change.

>>39601202
>Vipassana can be practices with anything
I dunno.
This whole "vipassana on your thoughts" thing just sounds like a totally different meditation, with different fruits.

>To practice vipassana on thoughts you simply need to observe them as they arise without sticking to them and letting them flow, observing how they change.
>or zen
Well I wouldn't call this vipassana, but you do you.
Observing the thoughts leads to different fruits than observing the body sensations. One leads to insight into mind. The other leads to insight into feelings.

>>39601235
Look, vipassana isn’t defined by where you direct your attention, it’s about how you observe reality to gain insight into impermanence, suffering, and non self. Reality includes all sensations, whether they arise in the body, the mind, or external phenomena. I don't think it can be explained clearer than this.

If goenka’s body scanning works for you, great, but calling anything outside of that "not vipassana" is like saying a hammer is the only tool that can build a house. Don’t mistake your method for the entirety of the practice.

>>39601269
Thanks for sharing

> it’s about how you observe reality
Yes. Watching your thoughts after regular readings of buddhist philosophy will yield different insights than if one had primed their mind with alternative philosophies.
A nice yogic saying is "the yogi makes union with the object of his meditation". So by priming the mind with concepts like suffering, impermanence, craving and aversion, it naturally leads to insights into them. But they are far from being the only things to meditate on, or the only desirable fruits of meditation.

>Don’t mistake your method for the entirety of the practice.
On most /x/ threads asking meditation, we get a bunch of comments from buddhists who seem to think only buddhist meditation is valid.

>>39601287
Vipassana isn’t about priming with philosophy, it’s about direct observation of reality, revealing universal truths like impermanence and non self. These insights arise naturally, regardless of object. Observing thoughts, body, or anything else points to the same truths when done with awareness and detachment vipassana’s goal is insight, not attachment to a specific method or fruit.

>On most /x/ threads asking meditation, we get a bunch of comments from buddhists who seem to think only buddhist meditation is valid.
This is because buddhism has a monopoly on "pop meditation", at least in the west. It's more ignorance than arrogance.

>>39601310
>Vipassana isn’t about priming with philosophy
I think some of it is. I don't think I would have significant insights on impermanence, or similar concepts, without being primed for it.

>it’s about direct observation of reality
Yes

>These insights arise naturally, regardless of object
I believe this is true for some concepts, like non-self. I'm more skeptical of some of the others, that they would be revealed like a blazing sun of glory as the result of prolonged meditation, without being primed for them in scriptural readings.

Example of Priming: Buddhists like to focus on suffering. However if they focused on finding the joy in all things, they would also find it. They might even declare it as a universal truth, that there is also a tiny sliver of joy in everything, and you just have to learn how to see it.

>vipassana’s goal is insight, not attachment to a specific method or fruit.
What you focus on is what you gain insight on.
Permanence or impermanence.
Self or non-self.
Suffering or joy.

>>39601343
Priming can guide attention, but vipassana is about seeing reality as it is, beyond concepts. Impermanence isn’t a "focus", it’s an observable fact in every sensation, thought, or feeling, its realization is inevitable through vipassana. Joy, suffering, permanence...etc, are subjective filters. Vipassana doesn't use those, it just cuts to the nature of all phenomena, which is basically arising, passing, and beyond control.

Insights aren’t imposed by scripture, they’re discovered through direct experience, whether you're "primed" or not.

>>39601390
The big metta guys, who spread loving kindness, destroy suffering faster than some of the other methods. Where you focus is where you go.

>>39601390
>Insights aren’t imposed by scripture
But are you so sure that "impermanence" is one of the biggest insights yielded from these meditations, rather than being a result of priming from buddhist philosophy?
Because I hear non-religious westerners (including my parents) saying things like that all the time that "it won't last". Most people realize the impermanence of this life just by living it, without having to meditate.

>>39599101
You're the olfactory anon right?
I agree with you that taming the breath is important but that anon gave good advice, surely not "worst meditation advice ever".
I mean, thoughts WILL come when you sit to practice and this is a good way to treat them: Indifferently and without caring where they came from, then you return to meditation.

>>39601500
People intellectually grasp impermanence, sure, but through vipassana it's revealed on a visceral, experiential level. It’s not just "life won’t last", it’s directly observing every sensation, thought, and emotion arising and passing away in real time. That depth of insight transforms how you relate to suffering and attachment, that's the point of it. Without meditation most people know impermanence but still cling, resist, and suffer.

>>39601500
I feel a bit bad about continually shilling Thanissaro, but I really like what he has to say on the topic of the "Three Perceptions"/"Three Marks of Existence" which include impermanence, or, as he believes it's better translated as, inconstancy, which "implies not only that things end, but that they change even as they’re continuing, even as they last. They’re unreliable and unpredictable."

In Thanissaro's interpretation, the three perceptions aren't mystical insights that can only be obtained by meditation, but rather they're just especially useful things to keep in mind about phenomena in order to reduce clinging to them.

"So when we’re exercising our discernment and applying the three perceptions to whatever’s coming up in our awareness, we’re passing a value judgment as to which actions are worth doing and which actions are not worth doing, which ones are worth the effort and which ones are not, seen in the light of the quest for genuine happiness. The perceptions are designed to raise your standards so you won’t keep craving things that will make you suffer. When you come across something in your practice, you judge it. If any of the three perceptions apply, then it’s not what you’re looking for."

"Now, there are some things that are stressful and inconstant, but they lead to your long-term welfare and happiness. Virtue and concentration, for instance, require effort to maintain them, but because they’re essential to the path to the end of suffering and stress, you hold on to them for the time being. You wait until they’re fully developed and have performed their functions before you let them go. This means that, as you progress in the practice, you have apply the three perceptions selectively primarily to things that would pull you off the path, until you get to the very end. That’s when you apply the three perceptions across the board."

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/uncollected/ThreePerceptions.html

All these anons doing named meditations techniques meanwhile I just sit there and enter a trance that lets me visualize life force and manipulate it.

Yall going too hard for something thats very individualist, one meditation might not work for someone but it works for you.

>>39587317
Sit. Breathe.
Keep sitting. Keep breathing.
Keep breathing while doing other things.
Then die. And maybe continue breathing after.
Or not.

>>39601196
meditation is the exact opposite
you filter out the bad state of mind and bad sensory inputs and you cultivate the good ones

and lucid dreams are not meditation, they are meaningless entertainment.

>>39602929
Looks like someone hasnt scratched the surface yet

>>39602929
There's such a thing as dream yoga. Also, meditation on stimuli that induce "bad states of mind" and working to understand that you don't have to be in that state of mind is a useful practice.

Just sit and don't follow any thought, just be there sitting and also relax your body and breath as time goes on, don't conceptualize the process I just described for that kills meditation.

>>39587387
i find it strange the idea that 'you are the watcher/awareness' as if you are NOT also the thoughts. sure, you can see that thoughts arise spontaneously and that breathing is spontaneously, but the strange thing to me is identifying yourself with the awareness only, excluding the other things that compose yourself, like those thoughts and the feelings, etc.

>>39605862
You don't "identify yourself with the awareness" because that is also a thought/idea to be watched.

That's how I see it at least, it's strange, it's like you are everything but you are also nothing at the same time.

I've trained myself in mediation to completely detach myself from anything mentally. It's hard to explain. This causes me a sense of pressure kind of above eyebrows between them. Anyone also experience this?

>>39608361
That could just be brain cancer

>>39608361
Third Eye. Next time when you meditate, focus on that spot and try to maintain that attention

>>39587317
Theres a docu called "the legend of atlantis" it speaks about (among other things) how the essenes were early christians who believed in reincarnation.

>>39596130
I find that shamatha and vipassana are complimentary. When I'm trying to reach a deep state of concentration and some mental blockage is in the way, applying insight practice to that blockage helps with clearing the way to deeper concentration.

>>39598378
The biggest difference is that meditation increases your energy and clarity of mind while gooning lowers it.

why is depersonalization seen as a good thing?

>>39595273
>you should let your mind wander at first
frickin morons coming here telling people how to waste their time

>>39598462
>do people start to meditate with the promise of achieving a pleasurable state of being?
dont conflate goals and outcome-byproducts

>>39599077
checked
the body must be prepared and conditioned in order to have the most fruitful meditations

>>39599139
>practice being the observer and they eventually stop
there's a difference between cultivating the conditions for the outcome and simply hoping the outcome might happen at some point
it might be months or years
it might be having anything at all happen, ever
I had some dumb bitch tell me once that breathwork was useless, she spent 20 years on it and got nowhere
I laughed at her and told her that it was obviously her practice lacking in some crucial aspect as opposed to breathwork itself being somehow unable to produce meditative fruits

>>39599256
>It's not like samadhi is super mysterious and since it only tells you about samasra, it's intellecually and emotionally just intrinsically uninteresting
this is like watching a virgin discuss aspects of sexual intercourse

>>39599973
the reason this is cultivated is because when the spiritual light arises for real, any perturbations will kill it.
with practice, one can gain the ability to sense the subtle precursors of such perturbations and deal with them as they begin to arise, precluding their arising, returning to firming the spiritual light.

>>39600100
>it's being aware of thoughts without being hypnotized by them
this is bad advice
there's nothing to be gained by merely being aware of a thought
recognizing means immediately ceasing and returning to the training

>>39601579
>I mean, thoughts WILL come when you sit to practice and this is a good way to treat them: Indifferently and without caring where they came from, then you return to meditation.
but you augmented what that anon was saying, you properly mention returning, though its very key to also include that it be done immediately as soon as a deviation from practice is noticed.
if you're just watching 'em go....bruh...waste of fkn time, big time
this is a super important keypoint here
I'm only a pain in the ass about it when its really important and will have direct impacts on the quality of the practice

>>39605862
>i find it strange the idea that 'you are the watcher/awareness' as if you are NOT also the thoughts. sure, you can see that thoughts arise spontaneously and that breathing is spontaneously, but the strange thing to me is identifying yourself with the awareness only, excluding the other things that compose yourself, like those thoughts and the feelings, etc.
you're missing the core of the buddha's teachings
there wont be anyone else here that will be able to tell you this from experience,
random thoughts that arise are an energetic blowoff mechanism that does something like re-zero the conscious and subconscious. sort of like a leap year day keeps the calendar consistent with the earth's motion around the sun. animals randomly wagging their tails is just about the exact same mechanism, just with a different type blowoff valve since they do not have a ruminating mind to burn that leap day.
they are relative jibberish spat out by your brain, their content will be a mix of your habits and experiences
clear away the clutter and make everything efficient enough and when the random thoughts completely cease to manifest at all on a day to day basis, you too can come to understand this on an experiential level.

>>39611301
being a stoic is based

>>39611420
They've provided their reasoning, i don't see yours.

>>39611640
read the rest of the thread, then
letting the mind wander and not immediately returning to practice is the biggest way to waste your meditation time there is
humans are habitual creatures
the brain's neural networks built upon habit and experience
when high efficiency states are required for the spiritual light to manifest, doing things that preclude high efficiency is merely a way to preclude oneself from achieving the level of conditioning required to manifest the spiritual light
breddy simple

You just do it, man. You realize that your thoughts are the river, and you are the swimmer, and you get out of the water.

>>39587317
>so meditation seems to be good for brain and mood, I should try it.
>sit down on a mat. not lotus or shit like that, just legs crossed.
>okay, now stop thinking.
>stop thinking is thinking about stop thinking.
>stop thinking is thinking about stop thinking about stop thinking...
>CPU usage: 100%
>manual breathing: activated
>stop thinking about stop thinking about stop thinking
>back hurts
how the fuck you meditate without thinking faggy stuff like breathing light or stop thinking or whatever?
shit's impossible

>>39611721
when the awareness is fully engaged with an activity, it simply becomes a fact that the energy is utilized well and thusly there is no energy remainder building up that needs to resolve itself by popping off a random thought
when the body is in good harmony, things are efficient, the nerves calm, the awareness present...this is eventually all that's required to maintain an ongoing random thought free living.
but of course if the training isnt kept up, then the efficiency falls, and the random thoughts return
go draw a bath, lay back in it so that the water's against your eardrums
note how loud your breath is and how much you sniff at the air while breathing
now figure out how to breathe completely silently while there
you have to use your guts to breathe in order to bring the flow of air beneath the threshold of turbulence
once you figure this out, carry this to seated meditation
now that you have something concrete, you try to reproduce what you learned with the water against your ears
try to execute a perfect breath, over and over

>>39601579
and yes

>>39611689
But the point there is to practice vipassana with thoughts until the nada sound pops up and then switch to shamatha on the sound. I don't see anything wrong.

>>39611782
>I don't see anything wrong
this is a terrible place to start. OP asked about how to begin meditating. beginning with this is a side path to nowhere for the vast majority of people.
the path and fruits thereof are just not intellectual at all
it cannot be probed by intellectual means, you can think decently about things you've already experienced but extrapolating on an intellectual basis...nah, that's why I joked about a virgin discussing aspects of sexual intercourse
this can only really be understood by experience
so the proper method is to set the conditions for the experience to happen, not sit there thinking about what the experience might be, or letting your brain blather on about what its habits and experiences are. utterly fruitless.
I teach things that produce results, but they require work in order to obtain those results
letting your brain blather on is not work
you want to cultivate long chains of ungapped awareness, this is the opposite of thought trains.
veritably, the spiritual light emerges from these long chains of ungapped awareness
so if you're not getting there, then you're not really making much real spiritual progress
object oriented things like focusing on a candle arent going to do much for a beginner
its best to worry about attaining the spiritual light before worrying about any of these other refinement techs that tend to just send beginners down a side path that they will have difficulty emerging from

>>39608361
>I've trained myself in mediation to completely detach myself from anything mentally

How did you manage this? I think this is the first step before one can do some serious focusing on 1 thing and only.

>>39611873
OP wants to meditate, thoughts are the easiest object for vipassana and nada is the easiest object for shamatha, it's actually a perfectly acceptable method of meditation. The whole point of meditation is to derive experiential insight from it. You seem to think certain methods of meditation provide certain fruits.

What is this fruit you're talking about that's gatekept by your methods? It all comes off as preferential elitism on methodology, just like the goenka dude obsessed with body scanning.

>>39611939
I had a good chuckle a while back when someone referred to me as having brute force hacked samahdi
its not entirely wrong
spiritual light emerges when you do things correctly
its a little different when your focus is on your gut vs when your focus is at the niwan
nothing's gatekept here, except insofar as there's basically nobody around who has taken anapanasati to such a level as there being a burst of brilliant spiritual light emerge in the niwan that accompanies this ridiculously high efficiency state that becomes a veritable restorative energy bath every evening. the spiritual light coming like clockwork every single day. samahdi is the closest word to what I experienced.
its just these simple breath & awareness concepts taken farther, its just that almost everyone does not put in enough work, or the right work, to get there.
I made it happen a dozen chunks of practice-time over my 20+ years of cultivation, I watched the same signposts go by with each immersion
by chunks of practice time I mean creating the gung & efficiency to do it and maintaining it for months or years until something comes along and fucks it up. stress and shit will do it, divorce will too. then you have to start back on the ground floor and build your gung back up.
I accomplished these things early on and didnt go for more for over 3 years in the beginning. took me a year to figure it out and then a further 3 months to make the light appear, not that I ever intended on making such things happen, its all just natural byproducts of proper practice.
the foundation serves as the basis for more advanced things
I've had more than one accomplished person tell me they wish they did all the initial focus that I did, because later on they've had other things to focus on and they felt it limited how deep they were going, not having done this exceedingly well from the getgo.
>experiential
is the key word
without the proper focus and technique, the experiences simply have low probability

>the experiences simply have low probability
like tending towards zero probability
when the light manifests, its the most delicate thing ever
the slightest perturbation and poof its gone
this is why long chains of ungapped awareness are so important I just cant even stress this point enough
everything extends from there
if you dont get there...you basically have this glass ceiling you cannot get past

>>39612037
Cool story bro. Sounds like you've had quite the epic journey of "proper practice", congrats on brute forcing the way into samadhi, but none of that actually addresses what I said. That the method is practical and accessible for beginners, vipassana on thoughts to stabilize awareness, thoughts are even more accessible than breath, then shamatha on the nada sound for focus, once the nada is there it becomes the easiest object to keep shamatha on. You’re overcomplicating things with your ""niwan spiritual light extravaganza"". Beginners don’t need 20 years of esoteric flexing, they need something simple that works now.

Also, you keep poking on "proper focus" like it’s some secret sauce only you can cook with. The reality is, meditation is experiential, and different methods suit different people. Your way clearly works for you, but it’s not the one true path.

>everything extends from there
neural quiescence resultant from tons of apananasati
habituate anapanasati thoroughly like it is your profession
0 turbulence in the airways
proper emphasis on gut motions, roll inhales and exhales seamlessly into one another
get a long session at the end of every day, 1-4 hours
get a short session in a couple times a day, after morning routines, after work time
get a minute or 5 wherever you can find it
take a moment every chance you get
cultivate long chains of ungapped awareness, returning immediately at any deviation
keep. the. focus.
once the breath is relatively mastered, continue by the experience of heartmind
the heart will speed up and slow down along with the breath, heartmind is the way past
once the heart & breath are well harmonized, then the stage is set for the great stillness
from the yang of efforts to the yin of the great stillness,
emerges the spiritual light as yin again gives way to yang
but as the universe is probabilistic, one can only arrange the conditions
so arrange them well

>>39612164
>thoughts to stabilize awareness, thoughts are even more accessible than breath
and you dont even realize why this is cringe
>Beginners don’t need 20 years of esoteric flexing
nope that's why I mentioned this basically took me 15 months to first accomplish it
those who listen to my teachings and heed my words should have the benefit of being able to accomplish it more quickly because I'm relating all of the troubleshooting I had to do to accomplish it
>Also, you keep poking on "proper focus" like it’s some secret sauce only you can cook with
this is retarded to say when I'm basically telling you how to arrange tinder so as to best burn
>it’s not the one true path
there are of course many paths up the mountain
some are easier, some are harder
some get up there quickly, some never make it up there at all

be back later

>>39587317
why would you meditate?

>>39611433
>>39598378
both are illusory goals you fools :) there is no difference. both bodies shall perish.

>>39612193
You're misrepresenting every point to preach your way as superior. For example, calling thoughts "cringe" as a focus for beginners is just you imposing your biases, thoughts are accessible and natural starting points. You also keep reframing my comments to position yourself as the enlightened gatekeeper of truth.

Meditation is about results, not ego driven philosophical gymnastics. Different paths work for different people and your anecdotes don’t make your way the way. You're twisting this whole convo into a pedestal for yourself, it’s tedious and unproductive.

No one needs to climb your mountain.

>>39612232
to be free

>>39612638
tf do you think you are right now?

but no one will stop you on making that imaginary prison a bit cozier using tools of "your choice".

>>39612310
>is just you imposing your biases
ok zoomer
>Meditation is about results
that's why I'm telling how to obtain them in a very unequivocal way
>No one needs to climb your mountain
core teachings of the buddha, pal
enough outta you trying to make this about me instead of ways up the path

Has meditation improved your life?

>>39612869
Anon, you a comedian or a monk? This was never about you until you made it about you. So take your mountain, your tinder, and your "spiritual light", and have fun preaching it to people who still have the patience for your ego fueled drivel.

You’re not offering "unequivocal ways to results", you’re just packaging your personal practice as gospel and twisting every reply to feed your superiority complex. You’ve ignored the actual discussion to preach about your accomplishments while waving the Buddha around like a prop to justify your arrogance. I'm bored of you, please spare me more of your bullshit if you're not gonna directly engage the topic at hand with clear points instead of jerk off rants.

>>39610308
The pressure becomes too much to bear. Could it be from something else? What happens when I focus on that spot?
>>39611926
>How did you manage this? I think this is the first step before one can do some serious focusing on 1 thing and only.
For me I started with focusing on breathing. Initially the challenge was to quiet the mind by letting thoughts pass. Now I can instantly quiet my thoughts this way by only focusing on breathing. Then while meditating one day, I tried taking it one step further by not focusing on the breath either. This is how I get to the state of pure awareness or being. No thoughts, judgements, perceptions or anything part of the ego. The problem now is when I meditate it causes immense pressure on my forehead that gets me to stop. I want to see what's past the horizon.

>>39613460
theres no need to seek opening of the 3rd eye prematurely. things open up from the center outward in this regard, the 4rd eye is but a conduit to the wisdom eye of the niwan
be sure to be able to maintain focus on the lower dantien. being too much in the head is no good if it gets too intense like that. any practices dealing with the upper dantien should always be very gentle and light, there's no muscles to move up there so a mental approach as if they were a muscle to flex does not produce good outcomes.
always be sure to balance this work with copious amounts of stillness so as to settle the energies properly

>>39612905
Yes

>>39613752
>theres no need to seek
absolutely agree, but there is also no choice
>things open up from the center
this is an illusion, there is no center, all words, thoughts, techniques following this illusion are meaningless as well.

it's chasing a goal just like any other "human activity". so called enlightenment is as much work as staying alcoholic.

>>39615867
> so called enlightenment
I think you are mixing your terms. Enlightenment and exploring the limits of your body are completely different things. Meditation gives you a flashlight to explore the darkness, when you explore you find many things. Third Eye, Levitation, Remote Viewing, etc are just stuff that you find in the unexplored territory of your body.

All of this has nothing to do with enlightenment. It's basic curiosity. People who want enlightenment or escape from the samsara like Buddhists are retarded.

Why would you want to escape from something when you haven't even seen it completely? These people are trying to reach the destination without enjoying the journey.

Curiosity is what drives a man. I wanna see what's in the abyss, I want to explore it. Getting attached to the first piece of treasure is called material attachment, there are still stuff to explore.

Enlightenment is a useless word, when you haven't even explored your own world yet.

Levitation, Third Eye, Mind Control, etc are not side effects of enlightenment. These abilities are normal human abilities that needs to be trained and found through exploration. They have nothing to do with enlightenment.

>>39613460
following the breath naturally leads to the jhanas so jsut do that

>>39587317
you can't meditate unless you feel good/are peaceful. this is just how spirituality works. its fickle, it's based on mood. you cannot pass to a higher state of consiousness unless you are happy.
>but i'm never happy
that's right, you are fucked.

you should probably ask yourself why you are meditating, to what end? because you trying to meditate is likely pointless anyway.

>>39615867
>this is an illusion, there is no center, all words, thoughts, techniques following this illusion are meaningless as well.
>it's chasing a goal just like any other "human activity". so called enlightenment is as much work as staying alcoholic.
sometimes I wonder how novices navigate reading garbage like this by other novices

>>39616756
>Third Eye, Levitation, Remote Viewing, etc are just stuff that you find in the unexplored territory of your body.
>All of this has nothing to do with enlightenment
more ignorant garbage
>Enlightenment is a useless word, when you haven't even explored your own world yet.
ah, I see, you're assmad about a word
>They have nothing to do with enlightenment
they are byproducts of the path
your posts are like reading the words of a virgin who's never touched a woman discussing eating pussy
wouldnt know where the clit is or that hey the hole is all the way down there, lmao
I have to put these things in sex terms so that the uncouth may understand them

>>39617209
>>39617209
> makes a retarded analogy
> realizes he sounds retarded
> I have to put these things in sex terms so that the uncouth may understand them
fucking kek

>>39617269
see, you appear to have understood it when put in crass terms
mista siddhis have nothing to do with enlightenment
fkn hilarious
cultivate for real sometime, perchance you put in enough effort over time you might learn something
but as you already have everything, I suspect you're going exactly nowhere
now stop shitting up these threads with your ignorant musing and then attacking people that correct you

>>39616756
>>39617187
Seekers discard the simplicity of ‘what is’ and cherish the illusion they have to arrive there.
They overhear the simplicity of the message and turn it into something difficult and complicated.

>>39618132
'what is' is not simple, the goal is to see how it is conditioned and suffering, which is hard to see because people assume that ''what is '' is inherently good

>>39618291
>'what is' is not simple
Very good! It is indescribable. It simply is! (for no one)

There is nothing wrong with seeking for whatever goal or trying to describe "what is", yet it is futile. I know it can be very exciting, also there is nothing wrong with it and nothing that will stop the seeker because in the end it is simply "what is", in a story you could say wholeness seeking wholeness (so how could that work? It's futile :)

>>39587317
>>39595316
>DO NOT LET BUDDHISTS PREACHERS TELL YOU THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY
Before running, you have to learn walking.
Before walking, you have to learn crawling.
Before crawling, you have to learn to moving your arms and feet.

Focusing on the breath is the first one Buddhist kids learn and this is because those are the foundation and it is like in martial arts a castle without good foundation always fall at the first wind.

>>39598398
Where is the next page?

>>39620198
>0077
Thanks bro.

I have a hard time understanding what is supposed to happen during meditation. Nothing happens and I feel like I just wasted time.

>>39620230
Yeah it's hard, one second let me find the thing that made everything click for me.

>>39620230
https://files.catbox.moe/hktb98.cbz
Here, read this. Every single line changes it's meaning when you become better at meditation. Read it again.

>>39620369
Thanks! Will do.

>>39598398
>>39620198
What's the source on that, friend?

>>39620429
Liber Null, I would recommend reading the first chapter, and then jumping straight to the chapter about Gnosis. Don't waste time with sigils.

>>39620506
https://files.catbox.moe/yzocf2.pdf
Here's the link.

>>39620506
>>39620547
Thanks. I'm at the point where I can certainly sit still for half an hour with no movement other than involuntary body twitches, but I still have problems with thoughts. I'm not sure what's with my breathing, it's... extremely shallow, but not necessarily very long breaths. It's like, bare minimum breathing rather than full deep breaths.

>>39620761
Breathe into the spot about an inch below the belly button and straight in towards the spine, slowly, deeply

>>39620761
NTA but you are on a good path, realize that thoughts just want to drain you for your attention so don't give them any, do this everyday, and without straining your mental or physical aspects of being just try to deepen and relax your breath more.

>>39620929
>>39621036
Thanks. Is there any downside to meditating multiple times a day?

>>39621054
Not at all.
You can even try being meditative all day long. Just become aware of what is happening in your reality.

>>39620198
just remember, the mage with no internal power is impotent

>>39620230
>I have a hard time understanding what is supposed to happen during meditation. Nothing happens and I feel like I just wasted time.
understand that this cultivation is not a waste of time
if you have this perception that if nothing happens then its a waste of time, you're setting yourself up for failure
regulate until real regulation is achieved
that is, regulating without regulating
this means you have trained your body well enough that it remembers, and remembers very well
train multiple times a day for this, for it is important to set the habit in order for the muscle memory to be well programmed
its basically a lurk 2 years before posting sort of thing
dont expect shit to happen, ever, just train yourself and trust that with good training, the fruits emerge
the better you master breath & awareness...anapana...and sati...
the more easily you will build gung
with gung comes the ability to do things
health type outcomes are first
achieve a 30 sec breath avg and the first rumblings of things will begin
achieve a 45 sec avg and your metabolism should spark up like you just finished a new month of workouts
achieve one minute avg and the great stillness is close by
achieve a minute fifteen avg and the spark of spiritual light is bound to happen
the more solid your practice, the sooner these things come
all of this is from my own personal experience, put to the test a dozen times over....reduce time a bit for later immersions should your practice fail for some reason like you dont keep it up or you drank too much over a few days or your wife's a cunt

>>39620761
cultivate long chains of ungapped awareness

>>39613752
Do not attempt to open your third eye or activate kundalini energy

People dont know what the fuck they are talking about with this shit

Leads to psychosis and delusion

>>39621054
you'd best be doing it multiple times a day if you want good solid progress
get 20-30 min after morning stretches/exercises
get 20-30 min after work
get 1-2...3....4 hours before bed, but after bathing and brushing theeth and shit
grab a couple min at every opportunity
grab a moment every time you think of it
this is a sure path to success

>>39621600
checked
the stillness is key to be able to withstand it
it is absolutely prerequisite

>>39606694
>>39606778
Appeal to authority really doesn't help these situations, anons.
It's like quoting bible verses as some kind of proof- shit doesn't mean anything to anyone outside of your circle.

Why on earth would you want to follow the buddha's teachings anyway?
Monks have that stick with it all have smoothbrain by the time they're older, and have regularly done incredibly stupid things historically.
There's still a dozen self immolations yearly over in tibet, as if this will do something.

ignore all the schizo babble from above Op.
You just OOOOOOHMMMMM
Until you become a OOOOOOHHMMer

I read all this thread and I can say one thing:

Nearly all of you are right, even the ones who are arguing between themselves.

"Meditation" is just a word, what most people mean when they refer to this word is a different state of your consciousness, a state of stillness, calmness, higher awareness, happiness and deeper realizations.

How you achieve that state? You find it inside of you, you find stillness and calmness inside of you and you kinda of cultivate it, sitting still helps, making your breath deeper and slower helps, becoming aware of the myriad of thoughts taking away your focus helps, many other things can help.

>>39621714
If you're having realizations you're not meditating, you're just thinking.
It's really awful trying to pry knowledge about controlling your nervous system from religious freakazoids who find god every 2 seconds.

>>39621741
Sorry but realizations WILL come whenever you like it or not.
Of course it's up to you to sit and contemplate them (not meditating) or keep going in meditation.

>>39621765
Every time someone comes to me with a "deep realization" it's either entirely bullshit, or incredibly basic like "be kind to one another" or "more money more problems".
None of you ever come up with anything actually interesting or useful, and it leads me to believe these "deep revelations" are a consequence of idiots thinking for the first time in their lives.

>>39621822
I agree, when put into words most of those realizations sounds like basic Facebook quotes posted by my aunt but when you actually realize them during meditation it's like a whole experience which shakes your whole being which can't put into words.

>>39621667
>Monks have that stick with it all have smoothbrain by the time they're older
Do they have smoothbrain at a higher rate than other older people? At a glance there's a lot of stuff saying monks have slower brain-aging than average, but they also live longer, and the smoothbrain is liable to come for everyone eventually if they live long enough. So you might have a situation where it seems like there are a lot of dementia'd monks even if being monks actually made them considerably less vulnerable to that.

>>39587317
test

>>39621892
The smoothbraining seems to come on earlier from research I check.
Practicing not-thinking for extended periods of time is super deleterious to thought.
>>39621883
The truth is, they're just not that profound. Just like the insights people gain on drugs or in prayer.

>>39621892
That said, I have had the thought that if I were to live a full monkish lifestyle in pursuit of enlightenment, I would want to maintain some decently intellectually challenging hobby like math or writing to keep me grounded and confirm that I wasn't stupifying myself.

>>39621955
Yeah I'm going to do the reddit thing and request a source for those claims because, as said, at a glance I saw a lot of the opposite of what you're saying.

I will so though that I'm sure some ways of doing meditation might be detrimental, and that maybe some traditions aren't very good about making sure people are doing it a beneficial way rather than a detrimental way. In line with that I don't think "practicing not-thinking" is a good characterization of how proper meditation should work. In my understanding, not thinking should always be a side effect of simply having very developed tranquility and focus on the meditative object, not a result of active total thought-suppression. Maybe some kinds of thoughts you should actively suppress in meditation, but certainly not all of them.

>>39622025
I don't have one on hand, this was a 20 year old study of tibetan monks.
A school which very much practiced the thought obliteration, and where a lot of definitions came from.

Though I'm looking at some more modern research and it's interesting that a lot of these guys are having the opposite effect.

So I think one should avoid any kind of no-thought state, that's not tranquility, that's shearing your own brain off.

>>39621955
>Practicing not-thinking for extended periods of time is super deleterious to thought.
dont be retarded
the ability to willfully think is not impacted at all whatsoever
its the random unprompted ones that disappear with good enough training

>>39622025
>Maybe some kinds of thoughts you should actively suppress in meditation, but certainly not all of them.
while in meditation, suppress all of them
otherwise, its contemplation

>>39622047
what you think is irrelevant in this particular matter
you are quite simply naive on this subject

>>39622251
>>39622267
yeah, the random unprompted ones should continue happening, and you just dismiss them.
If they stop, that's really bad.

>>39622047
>one should avoid any kind of no-thought state
I think it's fine if it happens naturally, just don't force it as if you were tightly holding your brain shut to avoid thinking the same way someone might tightly hold their eyes shut to avoid a bright light. When you meditate you should feel comfortable and alert, ideally becoming both more comfortable and more alert than whatever your baseline is. The mind should naturally slow down at the same time, however, at least subjectively, giving the opportunity to observe how it works more closely.

>>39622257
As said I think mostly not-thinking is something that naturally happens with deep meditation, not something you should force. The idea is to calm the mind by paying attention to, e.g. the pleasant rhythmic sensation of the breath, and dealing with distractioning thoughts mostly by reasoning with them until they stop bothering you on their own rather than by actively shutting them out, if that makes sense.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations5/Section0029.html
>You analyze unskillful thinking and you try to replace it with skillful thinking. As the Buddha said, once the mind has settled down with the skillful thinking, you can then bring it back to the breath, bring it back to contemplation of the body, whatever your frame of reference, so that you can deepen the concentration.

>>39622393
>distractioning
Kek. I assure everyone that any brain damage my writing may indicate the presence of is partly why I'm so interested in Buddhism in the first place, not the result of early-stage meditator's dementia. It's a preexisting condition.

>>39622257
no, in 1st jhana there is thinking and pondering

>>39621822>>39621883

Useful to achieve what?

>>39618886
>>Very good! It is indescribable. It simply is! (for no one)
No, the jhanas are perfectly describable

>>39618886
>>There is nothing wrong with seeking for whatever goal or trying to describe "what is", yet it is futile. I know it can be very exciting, also there is nothing wrong with it and nothing that will stop the seeker because in the end it is simply "what is",
no, the goal is insights about what is, and this has nothing to do with simplicity
and wholeness is the cliché fantasy of enlightenment by non-enlightened people

so start reading the texts and practice them

>>39621199
>>39621606
nta but are there any exercise methods that pair well with the meditative exercises in liber null? yoga or something? i’m probably overthinking it

>>39623450
>No, the jhanas are perfectly describable
any object is describable. I was saying that in reality there is no subject - object relationship. nothing to "relate" to at all actually. that is indescribable wholeness. that is sitting in front of a screen and typing this comment.
>so start reading the texts and practice them
already did that in my "story", it's all a practice/work. jhana, bakti, karma.. great stories and great places to put in work, but overall just a never ending cope. never unconditional. enjoy your ride. or don't. we can't really choose. we aren't really here. it all starts with the assumption/feeling that I AM here and now. No animal or plant has this type of story creation going on. It's the root of all illusory pleasure and suffering. As long as this feeling is assumed to be the truth, the illusory cage can only be decorated with practices and copes.

>>39587317
I'd say before sleep. Just lay in bed with eyes closed, even out breathing. You in your more relaxed than, so why not then direct that concentration inwards and see what happens. I do that often, never considered it as mediation but as personal duty to myself and the spirit of exploration.

This is also how I believe you can achieve out of body or distant vision, that is if those possible.

>>39622271
>If they stop, that's really bad.
its an achievement to make them stop
if a random thought arises while the light of samahdi is manifested, it destroys samahdi
its something any advanced meditator must do

>>39622393
>dealing with distracting thoughts mostly by reasoning with them until they stop bothering you on their own rather than by actively shutting them out, if that makes sense.
anti habits do not dispel habits or prevent them from recurring
only a totally different habit can replace a habit
ignoring them and returning to practice is the habit to reinforce that produces the opposite

>>39623411
I would encourage you to deepen your understanding of the words you think you know
"The jhana factors
Vitakka: applied thought, initial thought, mental application. The application of the mind to the object; directs the mind to the object; mounts the mind on to the object."
this does not indicate thinking and pondering at all

>>39623790
as I mentioned previously
the mage with no internal power is impotent
train the physical body
train the breath
train the mind

Why is it the secularists will push meditation as a means to focus your thoughts and reduce stress, and the spiritual inclined will push meditation as a means of finding enlightment or even astral travel.

>>39624580
>oooo I want these outcomes
basically
focused thoughts and reduced stress are ground level tier outcomes
enlightenment is a top tier outcome

>>39620506
>Don't waste time with sigils
this is similar to telling a 4 year old not to worry about those power tools, they cant wield them yet
just dont try to use substandard or morally questionable ways to "grow up faster," they arent worth the price

>>39621822
hah, I told the energetic roots of how random thoughts form, if you dont think that's interesting or useful, that's on you for being unable to recognize

>>39624653
> sigils
> power tools
I don't think you know what you are talking about.

>>39624819
all analogies fall short of reality
if you are unable to understand that sigils are tools that can be used to do things, then I dont think you know what you're talking about

>>39624834
Tools and power tools are different things. But I get what you are trying to say. I just don't find sigils any interesting.

>>39625019
well, those tools require power
they wont have much unless they have a bunch poured into them
the vast majority of people dont have this kind of power built up at all

>>39624544
If you want to stop being distracted by hunger, the most immediately effective way to do that is by eating, not by trying really hard to ignore the stomach rumbles. And listening to especially nagging thoughts until you understand where they're coming from and then countering them with thoughts or other actions (if necessary) that resolve them is in my view more like eating, while just blocking them out is more like ignoring the stomach rumbles. They stop arising because whatever emotional turbulence was providing their energy has been dealt with.

I mean I guess you could meditate with the explicit purpose of training yourself to stop thinking entirely, but why would you? It's not like thoughts are the direct root of all suffering or anything, at least not in my understanding. The root would be clinging, craving, and ignorance/delusion. Thoughts are, to some extent, just another sensory input.

>>39625070
bad analogy, you're not going to die if you stop thinking, but without superlative adiyogi level achievement, you will absolutely die if you stop eating.
>listening to especially nagging thoughts until you understand where they're coming from
there's a difference between understanding the root of personal dilemmas vs understanding the root mechanism of how random thoughts manifest to begin with
personal dilemmas are absolutely something that has to be dealt with,
but that has more to do with simply settling oneself
and is practically a separate issue than dealing with the mechanism of how random thoughts manifest to begin with
I described the mechanism here
>>39611541
only by proper conditioning of the body & focus of awareness can the root be dealt with

>>39587317
sit down comfortably
close eyes
breathe
let thoughts come and go as they may
keep doing that until the backlog of your mind is clear

>>39625253
>let thoughts come and go as they may
its one of the most crucial errors of this day

>>39625274
if you try to force your thoughts away you're failing in the fundamentals, let your mind tire itself out and the stillness comes by itself

>>39625288
>if you try to force your thoughts away
thoughts are habitual
you dont replace a habit with an anti habit
you introduce a new habit
how much clearer can this be made?
this is why the instant one realizes he's thinking something
i.e. the realization comes that he has deviated from practice
the solution is to immediately return to practice
there's no "trying to force thoughts away" as if such a thing even makes sense
if one is still battling with thoughts, then its most likely that one has not mastered anapanasati,
in which case one should simply immediately return to regulating the breath as soon as he catches his error
and do this as often as is required
eventually the habit energy of anapanasati overtakes the habit energy of letting random thoughts wander around until they lose their potential
make no mistake these random thoughts find their root in the senses
the conscious and subconscious refresh rates do not wholly resolve into one another, leaving a slight remainder
the less efficient the process is, the more quickly the remainder builds up
and once the threshold value is reached, the potential has sufficient force to jump to upper brain centers,
where it resolves the energy discrepancy by manifesting a random thought
by restraining the senses and keeping the awareness, this energy remainder is kept to a minimum
and with good training is kept to 0
I know this sounds nit picky, but I am being adamant about this for very good reason
I dont want people reading this to be wasting their time
if one wants to achieve real samahdi and have real achievements in meditation,
this is simply a very, very important keypoint
return, immediately!

>>39625352
i have this samadhi where in my waking life i have a very light dynamic thought pattern underneath all my thought and meditation, should i get rid of this or leave it?

>>39625363
>i have this samadhi
>where in my waking life i have a very light dynamic thought pattern underneath all my thought and meditation
this doesnt make sense
perhaps another word is required, it should not be samahdi though

>>39625374
you can have samadhi while you're washing dishes, eating, even screwing. it doesn't leave you. it's just like my thought that guides me so i don't bump into things. i don't have random thoughts in my head. it's just the most basic consciousness underneath my meditation that guides me so i don't bump into things. don't dispute that i have samadhi, it's just jealousy. perhaps you weren't the one to ask, and you don't really know as much as you try to seem so

>>39625413
>you can have samadhi while you're washing dishes, eating, even screwing. it doesn't leave you.
well I can just say that you have some entirely different idea of what samahdi is
its sort of meme worthy, as if just paying good attention equates to samahdi somehow
it does not
>don't dispute that i have samadhi
well you kinda have to say something that indicates you have any experiences that would equate to samahdi
having personally had the experiences of the spiritual light arising,
what you describe is light years short of what I'm describing
so take your own advice and dont be jealous
or butthurt that what you're describing doesnt correlate highly to any definition of samahdi
and consequently someone with the actual experience just kinda laughs it off and says yeah not even close, sorry
samahdi only arises if a lot of conditions are met, and
>it's just like my thought that guides me so i don't bump into things
sorry my guy this is chuckle worthy and not samahdi at all

>>39625463
wow you're an idiot. i think it was just my skillful means asking you so you could reveal this to us. thanks for formatting your posts like that so we can ignore them

>>39625475
sad, many cases
those who are intelligent enough will heed my words, put them to practice, and make gains
those who fool themselves into thinking they've made accomplishments when they have not will forever spin their wheels
me and my buddies laughed a long time ago when his car was stuck in the snow and he floored it and the speedometer went to 95 mph
we didnt say OMG we're going 95mph!
we were smart enough to know we were going precisely nowhere

another day in the meditation ego war trenches

>>39625637
yeah, we have some people saying no effort is required, or I can think all I want and its somehow equivalent to manifesting the spiritual light...then they get all assmad and say its ego driven when they are told these views are not just flat out wrong but entirely counterproductive
surely the intelligent reader will have little trouble navigating the separation of wheat & chaff here

>>39625653
What is this 'manifesting the spiritual light' according to you? It doesn't seem to be a widely recognized phrase in the context of meditation.

>>39625686
>It doesn't seem to be a widely recognized phrase in the context of meditation
samahdi is definitely widely recognized, albeit so very few have been able to achieve it that it winds up being the number of people who have not achieved it and written about it vastly outnumbers the people who have achieved it and written about it.
I'm writing about my experiences in my own words in the most accurately descriptive terms I can muster
there is quite simply a brilliant spark of light that arises when 4th jhana level midbrain focused samahdi manifests
its just where you eventually work the awareness, to the seat of the soul, where the soul veritably attaches to the body
when this light arises, it is so shocking that the first time it happens, it will autodestroy, there's no way anyone can keep that light manifested the first time or three it happens. you want to jump out of your seat and yell and laugh it is so amazing. it is one of the most amazing things a human being can experience, words completely fail.
one must learn how to catch and hold its arising, this is a skill in and of itself.
it takes time between occurrences, at first
but once one learns to catch its arising and keep it manifested, before long it comes every day
the air as a sweet sparkly glowy liquid, the moment of time lasting as one moment for the entirety of the light's presence
you dont get sick, your body is healthy
I have not had a cold or seasonal allergy in...18 years now
yin and yang roll back and forth into each other
from the yang of one's efforts comes the yin of great stillness
the great stillness comes from the long chains of ungapped awareness
long chains are possible from restraining the senses
it forms the basis for the spark of spiritual light to emerge from that great stillness as yang springs forth from the depths of yin
I accomplished this by rigorous breath and awareness training, many times a day over long periods of time
not too long, first time, 15 months start to spark

>>39625609
yeah i'm going precisely nowhere

>>39625653
i was asking if a thought process that exists very subtly and below all my waking meditative state is kosher or not, you obviously haven't grasped what i'm explaining yet. it's also not when i'm sitting only when i'm going about my daily actions. anyway i think i will eradicate it but it will be hard

>>39587317
I'm very bad when it comes to meditation

>>39625686
this is why I dont bother quoting sutras or the words of others, I have my own direct experiences that I can put into modern language and include anatomical details unknown to most prior generations.
this process is pretty simple
although not necessarily easy, just insofar as one is able to be focused and diligent about the work and keep at it, carrying it forth toward its logical conclusions

>>39625825
nah you were equating it with samahdi, and I just said it isnt. with this post you're reframing it a bit in more palatable terms
keeping the awareness is great, it is a prerequisite for samahdi

>>39625845
no i absolutely wasn't equating it with samadhi, i said in my samadhi i ADDITIONALLY have a subtle subconscious thought process, and i am wondering if it should be eliminated. i have awareness with no random thoughts at all thruout the day, i only use my inner voice when i consciously will it. is it really that hard to believe that after 15 years i'm in samadhi? i just feel i'd literally bump into things if i eliminated this thought process. it's that basic. can you answer the question, or maybe just say you don't know?

>>39625867
whatever i slayed it like in the Platform Sutra

>>39625825
>a thought process that exists very subtly
perhaps you could try explaining this concept a little further
to me, thoughts are different than awareness
thoughts utilize the energy required for meditative phenomena to manifest
this is why if you're sitting there pondering, it is spinning your wheels because you're just burning up the available potential required for real things to take place,
and since this available potential needs to reach certain thresholds in order for certain things to happen,
it just winds up being that by consuming this energy, one precludes himself from real meditative happenings.

Start by the beginning and then go forward until you reach the end, then stop.

>>39625878
yeah it's not really a thought. it's more like an awareness, below consciousness and meditation, of a non-semantic narrative of my mental activity

>>39625808
>you want to jump out of your seat and yell and laugh it is so amazing
This sounds like 1st Jhana, which is described as being characterized by rapture and happiness, not 4th Jhana.

>>39625836
You use a lot of random-seeming terms from different spiritual traditions for for someone who claims to be only describing their personal experiences.

>>39625867
>i said in my samadhi i ADDITIONALLY have a subtle subconscious thought process,
ok, yeah this is where I said you're wrong, because thought processes do not take place concurrent with samahdi, hard and fast stop on that aspect. the reason for this is that samahdi and thought utilize the same fuel and samahdi only manifests when the fuel tank is full in that regard.
and its at odds with this:
>i have awareness with no random thoughts at all thruout the day, i only use my inner voice when i consciously will it
while that's a solid level to achieve...
I have high levels of skepticism for people coming here claiming to have ascetic-master-cave-dweller levels of skill
anyone claiming they can be in samahdi and go about daily activities while in samahdi is quite frankly full of shit
>is it really that hard to believe that after 15 years i'm in samadhi?
given that it only took me 15 months, time isnt really quite so much a factor as how much one is able to arrange the conditions
my skill only lacked in that I did not leave society and I perturbed and destroyed my gung a dozen times over in various ways and I have had to keep rebuilding it.
I dont believe you've attained samahdi because of how you write about it, with contradictions that you dont perceive are contradictions. this simply tells me you wish you attained it enough that you are making extrapolations. I dont mean to offend you by saying that, I'm just calling balls & strikes here, your words just dont tell me you've accomplished it. I would like to hope you wont be mad and offended by that, but...usually people who say they have but havent just wind up being as such.

>>39625917
>a non-semantic narrative of my mental activity
I cant figure out if you're just being too wordy
awareness is as such
but when you write narrative of my mental activity, there's the deviation that doesnt make much sense with the words you're writing...like this post made good sense until you wrote that and it facepalms the whole post

>>39625926
rapture and happiness come long before what I described
and besides, the faintest blip of the 4th jhana isnt residing in that state. its just a flash in the pan, which is precisely what one's first glimpses will be
deconstruct as you may
refer to writings as you may
you cling to certain words here or there
and miss the moon for the finger

>>39625926
>You use a lot of random-seeming terms from different spiritual traditions for for someone who claims to be only describing their personal experiences
well I come from no tradition in particular, so there's that
I've trained several disciplines and only kept some

>>39625975
i think you're starting to get it, it's not meditation, that's the problem i'm pointing out. it's a non-semantic, non-meditative thought-process below my "awareness," which helps me not bump into things. maybe a better way of asking my question is, if the mind is void, how do you not bump into things? is there a koan about a monk who bumps into things, or something?

>>39625963
>your words don't tell me you've accomplished it
well, the only reason i'm writing my words is because i have accomplished it. i have samadhi, and in addition there is this subconscious willy-nilly narrative underneath everything.

i just heard the line,
>Wind died away
>And I feel all the words
>Led by a gentle illusion

as i wrote this, maybe this should help

>>39625993
>and miss the moon for the finger
and with that, i can precisely smell your level of achievement, which is indubitably no greater than mine

>>39626047
>i just heard the line,
>>Wind died away
>>And I feel all the words
>>Led by a gentle illusion
yeah no, not at all
if you've got this narration going all the time
and you think this can overlap with samahdi concurrently
you're just quite simply mistaken
being aware of physical motions and activities requires no narration
and yep I'll tell you quite directly that this narration is problematic and will absolutely positively most definitely keep you from attaining samahdi
this is part of why I say certain fundamental misunderstandings can be a barrier to deeper progress

>>39626075
it doesn't really overlap with samadhi the samadhi is above it and dominates my pleasure

>>39626088
>it doesn't really overlap with samadhi the samadhi is above it and dominates my pleasure
not gonna argue with you about where you're wrong anymore
that one gave me a good laugh though

>>39626151
well if you actually want to have compassion and are not just an asshole i'd love to hear where i'm wrong? i feel you are just as a hopeless case

>>39626216
>i'd love to hear where i'm wrong?
then you'll have to re-read all the posts where I described the ways in which you are, for I've already told you a handful of times
I'm sorry you have some wack low bar idea of samahdi that isnt correct
you'd do best to just get that word out of your lexicon entirely

>>39626246
yeah well just to knot up your tight panties some more i will tell you i can also attain nirvana at any time, but i don't because i have the bodhisattva vow. leaving now

>>39625808
>>there is quite simply a brilliant spark of light that arises when 4th jhana level midbrain focused samahdi manifests
perception of light is not 4th jhana
perception of light is a famous samadhi in buddhism, and it has nothing to do with the fantasy of a soul that all non-enlightened people push dogmatically
https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=3681


you really should get an education

>>39625808
>when this light arises, it is so shocking that the first time it happens, it will autodestroy, there's no way anyone can keep that light manifested the first time or three it happens. you want to jump out of your seat and yell and laugh it is so amazing. it is one of the most amazing things a human being can experience, words completely fail.
you keep saying this and 1/ the first time is irrelevant 2/ buddhist know perfectly well in advance since they actually listen to the mapping given byt he buddha

also it's not the most amazing thing since nirvana is the most amazing thing.

So learn buddhism and actually get deep in meditation

>>39626588
>I'll treat this one aspect you mentioned as the entirety of the experience
the brilliant spark is but one aspect
>also it's not the most amazing thing since nirvana is the most amazing thing.
thats why I wrote it was one of the most amazing things
you would do well to read more thoroughly and not ascribe so much of your own impressions upon my words
but then again here you just appear to be another inexperienced person griping that some words I write equate with certain things if you just cut and slice half of my words out, and with all that cut out, sheesh you're just wrong
you are playing with words, give a real critique

>>39626588
and besides, you are getting away from the reason I'm posting, to teach here on ways to accomplish fruits
instead of focusing on my instructions, you have semantic garbage gripes about things I stated were later on down the path
this is just typical poisoned buddhism that's process and word obsessed
>noooo this one way it was written somewhere proves this word or two you wrote is false
you dont even realize how you act

>>39587317
I like to sit and ponder about the inescapable fate of my life, i.e., I'm going to die and I don't know when.

>>39625808
>restraining the senses

What do you mean by that? You mean that one should not use his vision, hearing e.t.c. during meditation?

>>39628639
correct
the idea is to deny amplitude-potential to the cranial nerves and target quiescence for their various functions
the vagus nerve ties the internals together, and herky jerky breath motion will cause amplitudes in the vagus nerve just as sniffing at the air stimulates the olfactory nerve
these functions use up more energy than you'd think, but you are only able to tell after you've quieted them. the energy potential that does not get used by their firing in meditation is a part of what gets built as gung, just a bit each day.
to refine this so that the nerve system transforms its resonant mode from yang to yin is a milestone that's great to achieve
this is written in high level terms purposefully

>>39628639
>the energy potential that does not get used by their firing in meditation is a part of what gets built as gung, just a bit each day.
this is a sort of power adder, achieving physical depth with this
some dont want to deal with the body for various reasons
bottom line if one is searching for a solid foundational method, this is what is being targeted by achieving pro level accomplishment with implementing things in this way.
quiescence is imbued at the neurological level in a targeted way, leading to less fighting to have the mental capital to spend just on awareness.
taming the breath is awareness training
when this is trained properly, rigorously, targeting the habit energy by regular repetition, what is obtained is the fortitude of awareness as well as the streamlining and efficiency of the body...that's the foundation
I'm purposefully not teaching anything more
just the foundation
many different houses may be built upon a strong, solid foundation
then a lot of these other methods will bear good fruit, when given a strong foundation

>>39628639
another way to look at it is...the energy equation changes a bit as certain levels are accomplished
there's a good particle physics probability experiment that details this in a cool way, it would be too pedantic to type it all out here.
but the jist of it is that if you consider these forces interacting, when they are out of harmony, anything out of phase will detract + cost more mentally to regulate, there was some low level output like multiplying the amplitudes.
the next phase is when everything gets to be in harmony, but individual events can be discerned, add the squared amplitudes
but when some aspect obscures the individual events, the equation changed to adding the amplitudes and squaring their absolute value. when you've regulated the body until it is so well trained that you dont really need to pay much attention to executing a very well refined breath that hits all the aforementioned targets.
its like this with meditation, we're in a quantum mechanical universe after all
not that humans are close to solving the universe's mysteries, kek

>>39628639
>What do you mean by that? You mean that one should not use his vision, hearing e.t.c. during meditation?
caveat: other things that "arent strictly meditation" that are other cultivation practices. those other active things need to be balanced with stillness anyway, so its just why achieving stillness through breathwork is just such a good age old foundational method.
there's just levels to its refinement and as I've achieved minute and a half breaths, I'm teaching how to do it

>>39629431
>this is written in high level terms purposefully
So, taking into account your idiosyncratic use of many terms, what I'm hearing is that you've deliberately decided to speak so as to not be understood. Interesting move.
>>39629542
>individual events can be discerned, add the squared amplitudes but when some aspect obscures the individual events, the equation changed to adding the amplitudes and squaring their absolute value.
Yeah.

just so this thread is complete
it is beneficial to time the motions of the breath structures based on the motion of the perineum
all structures rise and fall in harmony, hitting the most potent points concurrently, gracefully, seamlessly
learn to transition the inhales and exhales smoothly into one another
support the exhale with the front of the abdomen
roll into the next breath without sniffing at the air or otherwise buffering the incoming air with your nose, sinuses, etc, anywhere air touches, keep the onus on the diaphragm, this is important for the amount of gung built in your session
the water against the eardrum trick is good to utilize to learn how to breathe silently
its pretty key to learn how to breathe silently, earplugs are a decent feedback tool also
work past heart rate variability with the concept of heartmind, this brings the heart in line with the low breath rate
after a while it gets to just be an awareness game of keeping those long chains of ungapped awareness
eventually the motions will be obscured completely as a stage of One Breath is achieved
your body remembers, but you dont need to be concerned if you're breathing in or out
because you are just paying attention, keeping the awareness
once this becomes almost entirely an awareness game, perturbations in the dynamic of the niwan will lead to the generation of random thoughts
it is important to identify these perturbations as precursors to the energy potential getting out of control and leading to a thought
re-firming the focus can bring it back in line, but the precursors need to be seized upon quickly by the awareness.
this winds up only needing to be done periodically as the energy varies just a bit
but the better the physical training, the less variation you get.
the above insights were from while the spiritual light was manifested, where it became possible to perceive the subtle energetic perturbations of the niwan
its such a sublime energy bath

>>39629643
do they really not teach vocabulary anymore? sorry, I grew up playing scrabble. if physics aint your thing then you can disregard it, it isnt crucial knowledge, just some cool side shit.
if I speak in this way, its not to confuse you
it is to help, but if you dont want to think a little bit about the undertaking here, then...I can only help so far
only you can get there on your own
sometimes when depth gets discussed maybe that can be confusing, which is why I'm just putting things in rather general high level terms instead of using all the buddhist terms that I never really bothered learning because I was practicing instead. then you wind up with the buddhist pains in the ass coming along that will disagree with whatever your interpretation is, so this is partially just me cutting them off at the pass and using entirely my own terminology for a whole bunch of stuff.
if it makes the reader think a bit...I'm kinda in agreement with pai mei there, fuck 'em, think a bit. it will lead to a deeper understanding for those that get through it all. you've got the internet to look shit up.

>>39629579
>"arent strictly meditation"
This is your dogmatic doublethink causing cognitive dissonance.

Sit on the corner of your mattress, smoke a pack and have a shot of whisky at hand

>>39587317

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

>Thrown away by society; called worthless, ugly, useless..... and any other number of things.....

And yet, he too may achieve Nirvana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPE7eaR_XxM

and to who's truth does he owe any allegiance....?

Remember, every seat of consciousness is the beginning of a new everything, moment to moment through which the only existence which is, exists; time itself defined only by perception relative to manifestation in change in state; without which only nothingness would be, as time is instantaneous without a mind to perceive rate of manifestation of change in state, the mind is all. Existence itself, which we perceive an illusion made of nothingness from the beginning of everything. Memories are not stored; but rather conjured in the moment from nothingness. The brain does not exist as your center, as when it rots, you proceed forward into eternity.

>>39630558

>Ita
to be (of animate objects); to exist
>chi
the manifestation of the energy/state of

うち は
"we are"
"while one is in a state of doing/being."

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

>>39629742
if you don't want to be mocked, then don't use buddhist methods while ending spouting non-sense

>>39630153
no it isnt
it is simply a matter of people using meditation to refer to damned near anything so long as its done with mental focus
meditation is the cultivation of awareness
when someone asks how do I meditate, they arent asking how can I activate my fkn kundalini or how do you do lower dantien breathing
they are asking how can I sit and attain stillness

>>39630754
having nazi buddhists mock me is kinda like having kindergartners mock me
now get back to studying your sutras, you're not doing real cultivation

>>39632097
>meditation is the cultivation of awareness
It's the deliberate focus of awareness, and that can be done many ways, for many reasons.
I am very confident the things you don't want to accept are only dismisses because your own tradition disclaims them.
>when someone asks how do I meditate
And when someone says God, they can only possibly mean Protestant Jesus.
Your mind has been closed by arrogant exclusivism.

Can meditation help me with my anxiety?

>>39632137
>y-you can do it ANY way you WANT
you might as well have just came out and announced you're a zoomer

>>39587317
Say Jesus save me

>>39632139
anxiety is a habit
kill it

>>39629431
>>39629466
>>39629542
Great posts, thank you.

>>39632381
you are welcome fren

>>39632406
Sorry if I'm being a pain in the ass but can you describe the process one should take for the "heartmind" part which you referred to?
Where does this heartmind step comes into play? Before one experiences samadhi? Or after?

>>39632572
np at all, legit question
this step comes into play after your breathing is well regulated but the heart is not fully in there and regulated along with the breath. the heart experiences something dudes like damo have called heart rate variability HRV, what happens is the heart begins to get slower and in time with the breath but it speeds up on the inhale and slows down on the exhale.
to get past this stage you basically have to keep the awareness at your heart while you are working on harmonizing it with the breath. almost like you have a pair of hands coming out of your spine that you cradle the heart with, keeping close watch over it. this merging of heart and mind takes place and the idea of heartmind never made much sense to me either until I experienced this.
you basically use that tech for that portion until the heart is harmonious with the breath and keeps on slowly without speeding up or slowing down.
def before samahdi manifests, that wont happen if things arent harmonious and smooth

>>39632644
Thank you again, you share wonderful and lots of info in this thread.

I too have always felt that calming outting in stillness both the body and the breath should be the first step of anyone, and this comes from someone who used to think that the body and breath are "mundane" things which should be ignored totally and everything is mental and I ended up wrestling with my thoughts during all my sits without even realizing it.

I am now in the stage in which I can sit for at least 30 minutes and I watch as my breath tries becoming deeper and slower, my diaphragm is extremely tight in some parts and it can get hard taking deep slow breaths but I get better each day.
Thank you again once more.

>>39633220
good stuff, keep up the training
I always have time for questions from people on the path who are genuinely curious and want to learn
you can perhaps try some exercises to stretch the diaphram
exercise can help also, cardio, running, elliptical