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Ok, continuing from my last "my practice" post-
Meditation Style: samatha
Tradition: Buddhism
Sub-Style: Theravada school, Thai Forest tradition
THE INSTRUCTIONS
First, pick an object to serve as the focus of your meditation.
The Buddha provided forty options, which vary in their ability to enable jhana and in the level of jhana which can be reached with them. Each also has qualities that make it better or worse for certain personality types or intellects, and this enabled a senior monk to custom-fit a meditation practice for each of his disciples.
The objects are, in brief: four elements, represented in material objects; four colors, in the form of colored circles; light; space; ten kinds of foulness in the form of contemplation of ten kinds of decaying corpse (yum); eight recollections of Buddhist principles; mindfulness of the body; and mindfulness of the breath.
Kids, if you’re gonna try this stuff at home, go with a colored circle (the sutras say white or a primary color) or the breath. They’re simple, and for this reason they’re also maxed-out in their jhana-obtaining capacities. The breath is most convenient, in my opinion; for the circles, you actually need a physical one to look at for the early stages of the practice. Breath is more portable. Breath is also the object the Buddha himself used to initially reach the jhanas. As I understand it, once you’ve developed powerful samadhi with one object, the others are easy, just as a weightlifter can lift any heavy object just as easily as the barbells he trained on.
When I say “breath,” the actual object I’m describing is the tactile sensation of the breath at the nostrils. Some teachers say the sensation of the rising and falling of the abdomen is good; some say it’s too coarse. Some say that you can focus on the overall “feeling” of breathing without specifying a bodily location; some say it’s too coarse. Most teachers say that you should NOT follow the progress of the breath through your body, but rather find a spot where the breath generates a sensation and hang out there. Pretty much all teachers say that the nostrils are good, so that’s what I use simply to avoid controversy.
I’ll use a blue circle as the example for the rest of this thread, maybe interrupting that every now and then to talk about the breath. Anyway, the actual instructions:
You sit with your back straight and unsupported. I’ve recently strained my knees, so I’m sitting in a chair until they feel better. A chair is fine. So is cross-legged or kneeling (it can be good to buy a little meditation bench to keep your butt off your calves). As long as your back is straight and vertical, you’re good—lying down isn’t recommended, as it’s very easy to fall asleep.
You direct your attention to the object and rest your mind on it. You don’t really want to think about it, just observe it. Try not to generate inner commentary about the blue circle, like “hm, it’s a dark shade of blue,” or “it’s about 9 inches in diameter” or “I’m looking at a blue circle” or “Why the hell did they cancel Arrested Development” or anything else. Just observe the visual sense perception of the blue circle. Some teachers call this “bare attention.”
But at the same time, and I think this is important, you don’t have to beat yourself up when other thoughts come into your head. When you notice you’ve been carried away on a train of discursive thought, just go back to the object. A lot of hack meditation instructions involve trying to only think about one thing, trying to suppress other thoughts. As far as I can tell, that can’t be done by force. Trying not to think about something has the opposite of the intended effect and is usually pretty frustrating. It’s counterproductive. One metaphor likens the mind to a lake, the movement of attention away from the object to an item dropped into the lake, and stray thoughts as ripples. Trying to forcibly suppress the thoughts is like trying to smooth out the ripples with your hands. Relax about the ripples and keep your focus on learning to stop dropping crap into the lake. Stray thoughts are inevitable unless you’re already one-pointed in your meditation, so don’t sweat them. Turn away from them (without berating yourself) when they intrude, gently but firmly returning to the tactile sensation of the breath or the visual sensation of the circle. If you do this, the thoughts will begin to slow down and eventually stop on their own.
I know this whole thing could have been encapsulated by saying “Sit with your back straight, keep your attention on the sense perception of the object, and don’t worry about stray thoughts but return to the breath promptly when they intrude.” Just felt like being thorough and putting the extra info up.
Next time: stages of attainment, or what’s supposed to happen to your noggin after doing this stuff for a while. The practice sign, access concentration, the counterpart sign, and the bliss states of jhana. |
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