Quotes concerning why to practice.

[zazeniac]

Jul 19, 2023 12:57:27 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Jul 19, 2023 10:40:33 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

The last two paragraphs seem to contradict the first one. Perhaps I missed something. RM used to say that formal meditation, a sitting regimen, was for novices whereas SI was for more advanced seekers. In my view, any practice that draws attention away from mental objects is meditation including ATA, kin hin, zazen, insight, mindfulness, self remembering, SI, focus on I AM, dzogchen, knitting, mantra, even prayer, etc. To be politically correct, I'll say they don't cause, but portend awakening.

The purists be dawned. 😁   Peace.

Agreed. I assume that SI stands for self inquiry; is that correct?

Yes, all of these activities seem to be highly correlated with the occurrence of spiritual experiences/events and realizations.

Sitting meditation usually allows one to go deeper and enter NS whereas ATA-T and most other meditative activities pursued while awake and doing ordinary daily activities do not. Ramakrishna is the only character I've heard about who apparently could fall into NS while walking around. He would suddenly freeze like a statue and remain motionless for a period of time before snapping out of it. During a decade of Zen activities and retreats I can't remember anyone ever mentioning samadhi, much less NS. It was almost exclusively discussed in books.

Out of curiosity do Soto teachers talk about shikan taza as a particular meditative activity? My understanding is that shikan taza is the primary form of meditation for Soto practitioners. I doubt that a beginner could even do it because it requires an extremely settled mind.

Never heard it mentioned in the Zendo. We all got the same spiel about how to sit,  beginners and long time practioners. Follow the breath. Don't worry if you forget. Just let the thought go and return to the breath. Almost anything was fine. Just not falling asleep. The kiusaku was there to wake you up. Shikan taza sounds interesting. I asked one of Reverend Matsuoka's disciple priests about it recently via email. He blew me off. Told me to go to a Zendo and ask. Not really interested. I actually rarely sit nowadays. It feels good once in a while to disappear.

I just remember to stay present or return to the present. It's a form of ATA. But so is SI, with an aide(question). So is mindfulness. Self remembering. 

Yes, SI is self inquiry. 

[stardustpilgrim]

Jul 19, 2023 10:40:33 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

Jul 16, 2023 14:17:12 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

"The practice of sitting meditation, said Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is the only way. Only the practice of sitting meditation, as taught by the Buddha himself, could lay the groundwork for an authentic understanding of the Buddha's teaching. If people could sit, and keep sitting, without looking for results, a gap could be created in ego's defenses, and unconditional awareness could begin to shine through. But ego furiously opposes unconditional awareness. And its key strategy against meditation's assault is spiritual materialism. If meditation can be tied to ambition, the heart of its power of liberation is gone.

From the beginning Trungpa Rinpoche fought a pitched battle against spiritual materialism. ...The teachings given here on basic meditation--shamatha and vipashyana, mindfulness and awareness--provide the foundation that every practitioner needs to awaken as the Buddha did". from the introduction by Sherab Chodzin, 1994 Text from two seminars given in 1974.

"The topic we will be dealing with in this seminar is mindfulness and awareness, which is the basic heart of the Buddhist approach. ...The practice of meditation is the way, the only way. Without that, there is no way in and no way out. The practice of meditation is the way of unmasking ourselves, our deceptions of all kinds, and also the practice of meditation is a way of bringing out the subtleties of intelligence within us. ...

Meditation is the way of realizing the fundamental truth, the basic truth, that we can discover ourselves, we can work on ourselves. The goal is the path and the path is the goal. There is no other way of attaining basic sanity than the practice of meditation. Absolutely none. ...

Let us discuss the term meditation at this point. When we talk about the practice of meditation, was are talking about a way of being. Unfortunately, the term meditation is not quite an adequate translation of the Sanskrit term dyhana or samadhi. ...According to Buddha's philosophy there is no verb "to meditate". There is just a noun, "meditation". There is no verb meditating. You don't meditate, but you be in a state of meditation. ...Meditating is not a part of the Buddhist vocabulary, but meditation is".

Meditation is a noun that denotes that you are being in a state of meditation, already. pages 4-6
from The Path is the Goal, A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation, Chogyam Trungpa 1995

The last two paragraphs seem to contradict the first one. Perhaps I missed something. RM used to say that formal meditation, a sitting regimen, was for novices whereas SI was for more advanced seekers. In my view, any practice that draws attention away from mental objects is meditation including ATA, kin hin, zazen, insight, mindfulness, self remembering, SI, focus on I AM, dzogchen, knitting, mantra, even prayer, etc. To be politically correct, I'll say they don't cause, but portend awakening.

The purists be dawned. 😁   Peace.

No contradiction. The first paragraph makes a distinction between ego trying to meditate, and true meditation. Ego trying to meditate Trungpa called spiritual materialism. The first paragraph is from the introduction , thereafter it's Trungpa himself. She says that ego is fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness, which is what meditation is, meditation is unconditional awareness. So all ego can do is submit. If ego tries to meditate this isn't meditation, but laughter's story of the thief pretending to be a cop. So, basically, there are two states, being-in-ego otoh and being meditation OTOH ("already").

Of course I picked these quotes out of about 4 pages, they fit perfectly my view. In the last paragraph Trungpa Rinpoche tells us what meditation is. It's to be in a state outside of ego, superseding ego, which he calls a way of being. Ego will always be fiercely opposed to meditation (because meditation is a kind of death for ego).

And this fits perfectly Dogen's: "Practice is enlightenment, enlightenment is practice" ("the goal is the path and the path is the goal").

I should stop there, but, it seems to me (a foremost complaint), ND keeps the bathwater instead of throwing it out (keeps the baby and the bathwater). IOW, this distinction is crucial. IOoW, it's important to notice that we can keep shifting between being-in-ego and meditation as a way of being. And so it's important to remain in meditation as a way of being. (At least it is for sdp).

[ouroboros]

Jul 19, 2023 12:57:27 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Jul 19, 2023 10:40:33 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

The last two paragraphs seem to contradict the first one. Perhaps I missed something. RM used to say that formal meditation, a sitting regimen, was for novices whereas SI was for more advanced seekers. In my view, any practice that draws attention away from mental objects is meditation including ATA, kin hin, zazen, insight, mindfulness, self remembering, SI, focus on I AM, dzogchen, knitting, mantra, even prayer, etc. To be politically correct, I'll say they don't cause, but portend awakening.

The purists be dawned. 😁   Peace.

Agreed. I assume that SI stands for self inquiry; is that correct?

Yes, all of these activities seem to be highly correlated with the occurrence of spiritual experiences/events and realizations.

Sitting meditation usually allows one to go deeper and enter NS whereas ATA-T and most other meditative activities pursued while awake and doing ordinary daily activities do not. Ramakrishna is the only character I've heard about who apparently could fall into NS while walking around. He would suddenly freeze like a statue and remain motionless for a period of time before snapping out of it. During a decade of Zen activities and retreats I can't remember anyone ever mentioning samadhi, much less NS. It was almost exclusively discussed in books.

Out of curiosity do Soto teachers talk about shikan taza as a particular meditative activity? My understanding is that shikan taza is the primary form of meditation for Soto practitioners. I doubt that a beginner could even do it because it requires an extremely settled mind.

I've got some thoughts on this.

Even though samadhi is often translated as translated as something like 'concentration', I've come to consider that it may simply refer to the effortless alert attention aspect of ATA-T. So the first A.

In SDP's quote here the author refers to "unconditional awareness", which is what we might talk about as pure undifferentiated awareness (PUA). Again it is a natural spontaneous alert and attentive state- aka samadhi. So PUA is essentially what samadhi/concentration points to. Which means that the first A in ATA-T is essentially samadhi, right.

It's basically a meditative state.

And possibly such second nature to you that you don't even make the connection between it and what they're promoting as/to 'practice'.

So I'm suggesting that samadhi, pure undifferentiated awareness (PUA), and the first A in ATA- are all pointing to the same thing, which is effectively meditative in nature. And that it's what they mean by meditation which SDP's author talks about as "a way of being". In talking about meditation he's trying to point to 'your first A'. Perhaps read the passage again with that in mind.

This samadhi is also prerequisite to the 'gently guided' forms of meditation such as vipissana, which could be envisaged as a variation of ATA+T (mindfulness). Vipassana (insight meditation) would also include SI and such-like. The basis of which again, is this samadhi- aka effortless alert attention.

Accordingly, NS would arguably be the 'purest' form of samadhi, i.e. without content. Simply known as PUA or pure samadhi. It's the natural state, the substratum of Being itself, absent extraneous overlay.

...

To elaborate, if you look at the etymology of the word samadhi, it talks about "coming together" or "integrated". It's also generally associated with focus or one-pointedness. Basically it infers a unifying process. Now, coming from the direction of CT perspective it's easy enough to relate to this conception. I think you will understand what I mean when I say, relatively speaking ATA+T is actually a more unified state than the consensus trance monkey mind mode of operation. So it's one up on the samadhi scale. -T would be two up and so on. And this perceived unification is akin to a concentration, right, if you think about it. So this is what samadhi usually refers in that sense, especially in regard to vipissana etc. Basically a coming together/unification/concentration of states. Or at least that's how it generally seems to be conceived and portrayed approaching the situation from the perspective of the mundane (CT perspective).

 But that doesn't really work with NS does it, because there is no coming together or unification of states as such. NS is pure samadhi. It's basically the cessation of the more surface level states that I've been talking about. Whether it be thought (+T) or even sensory perception (-T). Hence, my conclusions prior to ...

[zazeniac]

Jul 19, 2023 14:33:58 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Jul 19, 2023 10:40:33 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

The last two paragraphs seem to contradict the first one. Perhaps I missed something. RM used to say that formal meditation, a sitting regimen, was for novices whereas SI was for more advanced seekers. In my view, any practice that draws attention away from mental objects is meditation including ATA, kin hin, zazen, insight, mindfulness, self remembering, SI, focus on I AM, dzogchen, knitting, mantra, even prayer, etc. To be politically correct, I'll say they don't cause, but portend awakening.

The purists be dawned. 😁   Peace.

No contradiction. The first paragraph makes a distinction between ego trying to meditate, and true meditation. Ego trying to meditate Trungpa called spiritual materialism. The first paragraph is from the introduction , thereafter it's Trungpa himself. She says that ego is fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness, which is what meditation is, meditation is unconditional awareness. So all ego can do is submit. If ego tries to meditate this isn't meditation, but laughter's story of the thief pretending to be a cop. So, basically, there are two states, being-in-ego otoh and being meditation OTOH ("already").

Of course I picked these quotes out of about 4 pages, they fit perfectly my view. In the last paragraph Trungpa Rinpoche tells us what meditation is. It's to be in a state outside of ego, superseding ego, which he calls a way of being. Ego will always be fiercely opposed to meditation (because meditation is a kind of death for ego).

And this fits perfectly Dogen's: "Practice is enlightenment, enlightenment is practice" ("the goal is the path and the path is the goal").

I should stop there, but, it seems to me (a foremost complaint), ND keeps the bathwater instead of throwing it out (keeps the baby and the bathwater). IOW, this distinction is crucial. IOoW, it's important to notice that we can keep shifting between being-in-ego and meditation as a way of being. And so it's important to remain in meditation as a way of being. (At least it is for sdp).

It seemed "sitting" is different than a "state outside the ego" which you can do standing on your head. But perhaps I'm being too literal which is often the case. I get the point now upon further reflection  and agree. Especially concerning spiritual materialism. Been there. Done that.

[stardustpilgrim]

Jul 19, 2023 16:59:37 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

Jul 19, 2023 14:33:58 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

No contradiction. The first paragraph makes a distinction between ego trying to meditate, and true meditation. Ego trying to meditate Trungpa called spiritual materialism. The first paragraph is from the introduction , thereafter it's Trungpa himself. She says that ego is fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness, which is what meditation is, meditation is unconditional awareness. So all ego can do is submit. If ego tries to meditate this isn't meditation, but laughter's story of the thief pretending to be a cop. So, basically, there are two states, being-in-ego otoh and being meditation OTOH ("already").

Of course I picked these quotes out of about 4 pages, they fit perfectly my view. In the last paragraph Trungpa Rinpoche tells us what meditation is. It's to be in a state outside of ego, superseding ego, which he calls a way of being. Ego will always be fiercely opposed to meditation (because meditation is a kind of death for ego).

And this fits perfectly Dogen's: "Practice is enlightenment, enlightenment is practice" ("the goal is the path and the path is the goal").

I should stop there, but, it seems to me (a foremost complaint), ND keeps the bathwater instead of throwing it out (keeps the baby and the bathwater). IOW, this distinction is crucial. IOoW, it's important to notice that we can keep shifting between being-in-ego and meditation as a way of being. And so it's important to remain in meditation as a way of being. (At least it is for sdp).

It seemed "sitting" is different than a "state outside the ego" which you can do standing on your head. But perhaps I'm being too literal which is often the case. I get the point now upon further reflection  and agree. Especially concerning spiritual materialism. Been there. Done that.

This is the indicated way to look at your question, which I didn't even see in my response, I didn't see your question, because it's inbuilt. Sitting meditation is a beginning, a starting minimum. I'm not a musician, and you can find examples everywhere. You basically have to crawl before you can walk ("First you have to row a little boat". I'm going to change that to sail, as sailing into a wind is more difficult to learn than rowing into a wind). Learning the guitar, you have to learn chords, and then practice them. Piano, you learn notes, the black and white, and then combining them into chords. This is 'sitting practice'. Organ is more difficult as you play notes with the feet also, right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot, all doing something different. In all sports you have to learn certain skills, and you practice. You practice the essentials in order to be able to play in a game. I take this to be what the introduction quotes mean, the meaning of sitting meditation. But then you take the meditation into life, that's what the ultimate goal is. But you can't play a symphony unless and until you have mastered all the necessary notes. And sitting meditation means little unless you take it into life.

IOW, CTR didn't mean to stop in any sense with sitting meditation.

[zazeniac]

Jul 19, 2023 18:17:08 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Jul 19, 2023 16:59:37 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

It seemed "sitting" is different than a "state outside the ego" which you can do standing on your head. But perhaps I'm being too literal which is often the case. I get the point now upon further reflection  and agree. Especially concerning spiritual materialism. Been there. Done that.

This is the indicated way to look at your question, which I didn't even see in my response, I didn't see your question, because it's inbuilt. Sitting meditation is a beginning, a starting minimum. I'm not a musician, and you can find examples everywhere. You basically have to crawl before you can walk ("First you have to row a little boat". I'm going to change that to sail, as sailing into a wind is more difficult to learn than rowing into a wind). Learning the guitar, you have to learn chords, and then practice them. Piano, you learn notes, the black and white, and then combining them into chords. This is 'sitting practice'. Organ is more difficult as you play notes with the feet also, right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot, all doing something different. In all sports you have to learn certain skills, and you practice. You practice the essentials in order to be able to play in a game. I take this to be what the introduction quotes mean, the meaning of sitting meditation. But then you take the meditation into life, that's what the ultimate goal is. But you can't play a symphony unless and until you have mastered all the necessary notes. And sitting meditation means little unless you take it into life.

IOW, CTR didn't mean to stop in any sense with sitting meditation.

Essentially what RM says as well about formal practice sessions.

[zendancer]

Jul 19, 2023 14:39:15 GMT -5 ouroboros said:

Jul 19, 2023 12:57:27 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Agreed. I assume that SI stands for self inquiry; is that correct?

Yes, all of these activities seem to be highly correlated with the occurrence of spiritual experiences/events and realizations.

Sitting meditation usually allows one to go deeper and enter NS whereas ATA-T and most other meditative activities pursued while awake and doing ordinary daily activities do not. Ramakrishna is the only character I've heard about who apparently could fall into NS while walking around. He would suddenly freeze like a statue and remain motionless for a period of time before snapping out of it. During a decade of Zen activities and retreats I can't remember anyone ever mentioning samadhi, much less NS. It was almost exclusively discussed in books.

Out of curiosity do Soto teachers talk about shikan taza as a particular meditative activity? My understanding is that shikan taza is the primary form of meditation for Soto practitioners. I doubt that a beginner could even do it because it requires an extremely settled mind.

I've got some thoughts on this.

Even though samadhi is often translated as translated as something like 'concentration', I've come to consider that it may simply refer to the effortless alert attention aspect of ATA-T. So the first A.

In SDP's quote here the author refers to "unconditional awareness", which is what we might talk about as pure undifferentiated awareness (PUA). Again it is a natural spontaneous alert and attentive state- aka samadhi. So PUA is essentially what samadhi/concentration points to. Which means that the first A in ATA-T is essentially samadhi, right.

It's basically a meditative state.

And possibly such second nature to you that you don't even make the connection between it and what they're promoting as/to 'practice'.

So I'm suggesting that samadhi, pure undifferentiated awareness (PUA), and the first A in ATA- are all pointing to the same thing, which is effectively meditative in nature. And that it's what they mean by meditation which SDP's author talks about as "a way of being". In talking about meditation he's trying to point to 'your first A'. Perhaps read the passage again with that in mind.

This samadhi is also prerequisite to the 'gently guided' forms of meditation such as vipissana, which could be envisaged as a variation of ATA+T (mindfulness). Vipassana (insight meditation) would also include SI and such-like. The basis of which again, is this samadhi- aka effortless alert attention.

Accordingly, NS would arguably be the 'purest' form of samadhi, i.e. without content. Simply known as PUA or pure samadhi. It's the natural state, the substratum of Being itself, absent extraneous overlay.

...

To elaborate, if you look at the etymology of the word samadhi, it talks about "coming together" or "integrated". It's also generally associated with focus or one-pointedness. Basically it infers a unifying process. Now, coming from the direction of CT perspective it's easy enough to relate to this conception. I think you will understand what I mean when I say, relatively speaking ATA+T is actually a more unified state than the consensus trance monkey mind mode of operation. So it's one up on the samadhi scale. -T would be two up and so on. And this perceived unification is akin to a concentration, right, if you think about it. So this is what samadhi usually refers in that sense, especially in regard to vipissana etc. Basically a coming together/unification/concentration of states. Or at least that's how it generally seems to be conceived and portrayed approaching the situation from the perspective of the mundane (CT perspective).

 But that doesn't really work with NS does it, because there is no coming together or unification of states as such. NS is pure samadhi. It's basically the cessation of the more surface level states that I've been talking about. Whether it be thought (+T) or even sensory perception (-T). Hence, my conclusions prior to ...

I totally agree that the word "samadhi" is pointing to a state of unity, and even people lost in the concensus paradigm periodically enter states of unity when they become so involved in an activity that the usual reflecting activity of mind ceases. We could also call this a state of "flow" because the sense of time, space, and selfhood are temporarily absent. Artists, musicians, and elite athletes are often cognizant of flow (of being "in the zone"), but even those people who haven't had deep mystical experiences of flow often become so involved in what they're doing that they are in a state of samadhi without recognizing that it's a different state than when they're distracted or not really into whatever they're doing.

I think of the first A in ATA-T as simply the act of attending, whether one is attending thoughts or one is attending sights, sounds, smells, etc, or a particular activity. If the attentiveness upon a particular activity is relatively intense, then samadhi is usually the result.

Nirvikalpa samadhi, from my POV, also involves a "coming together" or "psychological and somatic unification" because the process of unification can be somatically felt during the onset of NS. It literally feels as if the body/mind organism is consolidating, freezing into something like a solid block of ice, or solidifying in some strange way, prior to the "falling off of body and mind."

The term "unconditional awareness" would certainly apply to NS, but it could also apply to simply looking at the world, as it is, without ideation because that kind of direct looking would not be dependent upon any conditioned ideas about what is being looked at.

The "problem" that seekers struggle with is the idea that there is a "me" who periodically goes into and out of samadhi when the truth has nothing to do with a "me." Although it feels as if there's a "me" who periodically becomes one-with whatever is happening, that's just part of the CT illusion.

[zendancer]

Jul 19, 2023 14:33:58 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Jul 19, 2023 10:40:33 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

The last two paragraphs seem to contradict the first one. Perhaps I missed something. RM used to say that formal meditation, a sitting regimen, was for novices whereas SI was for more advanced seekers. In my view, any practice that draws attention away from mental objects is meditation including ATA, kin hin, zazen, insight, mindfulness, self remembering, SI, focus on I AM, dzogchen, knitting, mantra, even prayer, etc. To be politically correct, I'll say they don't cause, but portend awakening.

The purists be dawned. 😁   Peace.

No contradiction. The first paragraph makes a distinction between ego trying to meditate, and true meditation. Ego trying to meditate Trungpa called spiritual materialism. The first paragraph is from the introduction , thereafter it's Trungpa himself. She says that ego is fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness, which is what meditation is, meditation is unconditional awareness. So all ego can do is submit. If ego tries to meditate this isn't meditation, but laughter's story of the thief pretending to be a cop. So, basically, there are two states, being-in-ego otoh and being meditation OTOH ("already").

Of course I picked these quotes out of about 4 pages, they fit perfectly my view. In the last paragraph Trungpa Rinpoche tells us what meditation is. It's to be in a state outside of ego, superseding ego, which he calls a way of being. Ego will always be fiercely opposed to meditation (because meditation is a kind of death for ego).

And this fits perfectly Dogen's: "Practice is enlightenment, enlightenment is practice" ("the goal is the path and the path is the goal").

I should stop there, but, it seems to me (a foremost complaint), ND keeps the bathwater instead of throwing it out (keeps the baby and the bathwater). IOW, this distinction is crucial. IOoW, it's important to notice that we can keep shifting between being-in-ego and meditation as a way of being. And so it's important to remain in meditation as a way of being. (At least it is for sdp).

All of this might be true if such a thing as ego actually existed, but I'm with RM who told a seeker, "There is no such thing as ego." The word "ego" is just a word that points to self-centeredness or self-referentiality, but there is no such thing; it's just an abstract idea. ITSW, there is no ego that is "fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness;" in a sense it's just a straw man.

I read Trungpa's book when it first came out. It has several good pointers and describes what one often sees in groups of people who become attached to meditative practices. That's the reason that Zen teachers tell students to meditate "with no gaining idea" and to NOT check on one's progress. One of the unspoken goals is to give up the habit of intellectual reflection about whatever is happening.

[Deleted]

Jul 19, 2023 18:17:08 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

And sitting meditation means little unless you take it into life.

You won't have to because it will happen by itself. The deep silence of samadhi in sitting meditation will to some extent integrate into activity once you get up off the floor. Rinse and repeat.

[stardustpilgrim]

Jul 20, 2023 9:32:59 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Jul 19, 2023 14:33:58 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

No contradiction. The first paragraph makes a distinction between ego trying to meditate, and true meditation. Ego trying to meditate Trungpa called spiritual materialism. The first paragraph is from the introduction , thereafter it's Trungpa himself. She says that ego is fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness, which is what meditation is, meditation is unconditional awareness. So all ego can do is submit. If ego tries to meditate this isn't meditation, but laughter's story of the thief pretending to be a cop. So, basically, there are two states, being-in-ego otoh and being meditation OTOH ("already").

Of course I picked these quotes out of about 4 pages, they fit perfectly my view. In the last paragraph Trungpa Rinpoche tells us what meditation is. It's to be in a state outside of ego, superseding ego, which he calls a way of being. Ego will always be fiercely opposed to meditation (because meditation is a kind of death for ego).

And this fits perfectly Dogen's: "Practice is enlightenment, enlightenment is practice" ("the goal is the path and the path is the goal").

I should stop there, but, it seems to me (a foremost complaint), ND keeps the bathwater instead of throwing it out (keeps the baby and the bathwater). IOW, this distinction is crucial. IOoW, it's important to notice that we can keep shifting between being-in-ego and meditation as a way of being. And so it's important to remain in meditation as a way of being. (At least it is for sdp).

All of this might be true if such a thing as ego actually existed, but I'm with RM who told a seeker, "There is no such thing as ego." The word "ego" is just a word that points to self-centeredness or self-referentiality, but there is no such thing; it's just an abstract idea. ITSW, there is no ego that is "fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness;" in a sense it's just a straw man.

I read Trungpa's book when it first came out. It has several good pointers and describes what one often sees in groups of people who become attached to meditative practices. That's the reason that Zen teachers tell students to meditate "with no gaining idea" and to NOT check on one's progress. One of the unspoken goals is to give up the habit of intellectual reflection about whatever is happening.

Spend a few hours watching Dr. Phil and then tell me ego doesn't exist. Watch the 6:30 national news on ABC, CBS or NBC and tell me ego doesn't exist. Go back and read the Effortlessness thread and tell ego doesn't exist. Watch the news reels from the Vietnam War, or WWII and tell me ego doesn't exist. You need a new definition for doesn't exist. Because ZD has solved the problem doesn't mean it's solved for the whole Earth. The fact that we live in the best of all possible worlds doesn't mean ego doesn't exist. The fact that ego is a temporary problem doesn't mean ego doesn't exist. If ego didn't exist we wouldn't need any rules of conduct here on ST's. I could write one sentence and be permanently banned, just for telling the truth.

[Deleted]

Jul 19, 2023 14:39:15 GMT -5 ouroboros said:

Even though samadhi is often translated as translated as something like 'concentration', I've come to consider that it may simply refer to the effortless alert attention aspect of ATA-T.

The 19th century European scholars translated samadhi as concentration and that seems to have stuck. That's how the dictionaries define it, but samadhi is not concentrated effort in order to try and maintain a state.

Samadhi is an effortless and choiceless self sustaining state of non-dual awareness brought about by an intention or indeed what you might call effort in the form of attending to the actual or to I or to an object such as a mantra, or to breath which is just another object. But that attending or noticing dissolves into a self sustaining state of silence. It is concentrated one pointedness but without the concentrating.

It's like launching a glider. A bit of work but then the air currents just take it away and it remains effortlessly in flight without having to do anything more.

[ouroboros]

Jul 20, 2023 9:20:38 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Jul 19, 2023 14:39:15 GMT -5 ouroboros said:

I've got some thoughts on this.

Even though samadhi is often translated as translated as something like 'concentration', I've come to consider that it may simply refer to the effortless alert attention aspect of ATA-T. So the first A.

In SDP's quote here the author refers to "unconditional awareness", which is what we might talk about as pure undifferentiated awareness (PUA). Again it is a natural spontaneous alert and attentive state- aka samadhi. So PUA is essentially what samadhi/concentration points to. Which means that the first A in ATA-T is essentially samadhi, right.

It's basically a meditative state.

And possibly such second nature to you that you don't even make the connection between it and what they're promoting as/to 'practice'.

So I'm suggesting that samadhi, pure undifferentiated awareness (PUA), and the first A in ATA- are all pointing to the same thing, which is effectively meditative in nature. And that it's what they mean by meditation which SDP's author talks about as "a way of being". In talking about meditation he's trying to point to 'your first A'. Perhaps read the passage again with that in mind.

This samadhi is also prerequisite to the 'gently guided' forms of meditation such as vipissana, which could be envisaged as a variation of ATA+T (mindfulness). Vipassana (insight meditation) would also include SI and such-like. The basis of which again, is this samadhi- aka effortless alert attention.

Accordingly, NS would arguably be the 'purest' form of samadhi, i.e. without content. Simply known as PUA or pure samadhi. It's the natural state, the substratum of Being itself, absent extraneous overlay.

...

To elaborate, if you look at the etymology of the word samadhi, it talks about "coming together" or "integrated". It's also generally associated with focus or one-pointedness. Basically it infers a unifying process. Now, coming from the direction of CT perspective it's easy enough to relate to this conception. I think you will understand what I mean when I say, relatively speaking ATA+T is actually a more unified state than the consensus trance monkey mind mode of operation. So it's one up on the samadhi scale. -T would be two up and so on. And this perceived unification is akin to a concentration, right, if you think about it. So this is what samadhi usually refers in that sense, especially in regard to vipissana etc. Basically a coming together/unification/concentration of states. Or at least that's how it generally seems to be conceived and portrayed approaching the situation from the perspective of the mundane (CT perspective).

 But that doesn't really work with NS does it, because there is no coming together or unification of states as such. NS is pure samadhi. It's basically the cessation of the more surface level states that I've been talking about. Whether it be thought (+T) or even sensory perception (-T). Hence, my conclusions prior to ...

I totally agree that the word "samadhi" is pointing to a state of unity, and even people lost in the concensus paradigm periodically enter states of unity when they become so involved in an activity that the usual reflecting activity of mind ceases. We could also call this a state of "flow" because the sense of time, space, and selfhood are temporarily absent. Artists, musicians, and elite athletes are often cognizant of flow (of being "in the zone"), but even those people who haven't had deep mystical experiences of flow often become so involved in what they're doing that they are in a state of samadhi without recognizing that it's a different state than when they're distracted or not really into whatever they're doing.

I think of the first A in ATA-T as simply the act of attending, whether one is attending thoughts or one is attending sights, sounds, smells, etc, or a particular activity. If the attentiveness upon a particular activity is relatively intense, then samadhi is usually the result.

Nirvikalpa samadhi, from my POV, also involves a "coming together" or "psychological and somatic unification" because the process of unification can be somatically felt during the onset of NS. It literally feels as if the body/mind organism is consolidating, freezing into something like a solid block of ice, or solidifying in some strange way, prior to the "falling off of body and mind."

The term "unconditional awareness" would certainly apply to NS, but it could also apply to simply looking at the world, as it is, without ideation because that kind of direct looking would not be dependent upon any conditioned ideas about what is being looked at.

The "problem" that seekers struggle with is the idea that there is a "me" who periodically goes into and out of samadhi when the truth has nothing to do with a "me." Although it feels as if there's a "me" who periodically becomes one-with whatever is happening, that's just part of the CT illusion.

I would use the phrase [bare] attention, specifically when there is content, such as ATA+ or -T, but I still see that attention as merely a coarser variation of pure awareness, i.e incorporating those additional states.

I can certainly grok flow in terms of unification and was toying with the phrase, a 'harmonising' of states in order to describe the situation after I wrote last night. So basically, ATA+T is a more harmonised, (or flow) state than 'CT monkey-mind modus operandi' for example.

But attention only really works at those coarser 'unified' levels for me, and really attention is merely a coarser variation of PUA, incorporating those more surface level states. They're still classified as samadhi though.

However, personally I think the notion of unification or flow becomes problematic at NS level which is basically PUA absent, well, anything else really which could involve a coming together or unification. Yet, again it's still classed in terms of samadhi …

I can understand the "somatically felt during the onset" aspect to which you refer though. But if once more we consider the etymology of the phrase 'Nirvikalpa' they talk of two roots; ni meaning without, and vikalpa meaning conception. And then the samadhi part is basically intended to signify PUA which experientially speaking, is effectively all that remains at that stage. So the etymological rendition would be '"without conception awareness'  .... and the awareness is the samadhi part. I say what's implied by conception includes all coarser states such as direct sensory perception (-T) and thought (+T) etc. I say the somatic sensations during onset you describe are actually the cessation of those extraneous states in action. The cessation of 'movement' is expressed as cold, btw.

[ouroboros]

Jul 20, 2023 11:43:50 GMT -5 @satch said:

Jul 19, 2023 14:39:15 GMT -5 ouroboros said:

Even though samadhi is often translated as translated as something like 'concentration', I've come to consider that it may simply refer to the effortless alert attention aspect of ATA-T.

The 19th century European scholars translated samadhi as concentration and that seems to have stuck. That's how the dictionaries define it, but samadhi is not concentrated effort in order to try and maintain a state.

Samadhi is an effortless and choiceless self sustaining state of non-dual awareness brought about by an intention or indeed what you might call effort in the form of attending to the actual or to I or to an object such as a mantra, or to breath which is just another object. But that attending or noticing dissolves into a self sustaining state of silence. It is concentrated one pointedness but without the concentrating.

It's like launching a glider. A bit of work but then the air currents just take it away and it remains effortlessly in flight without having to do anything more.

Yeah that's basically where I'm coming from. In terms of intent, meditation is effectively about creating the space ... 

I'd say there are variations depending on the goal. But ultimately samadhi is effectively the natural state.

Just that commonly folks mindsets are disjointed and distracted, hence practice is required.

[andrew]

Jul 20, 2023 11:37:40 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Jul 20, 2023 9:32:59 GMT -5 zendancer said:

All of this might be true if such a thing as ego actually existed, but I'm with RM who told a seeker, "There is no such thing as ego." The word "ego" is just a word that points to self-centeredness or self-referentiality, but there is no such thing; it's just an abstract idea. ITSW, there is no ego that is "fiercely opposed to unconditional awareness;" in a sense it's just a straw man.

I read Trungpa's book when it first came out. It has several good pointers and describes what one often sees in groups of people who become attached to meditative practices. That's the reason that Zen teachers tell students to meditate "with no gaining idea" and to NOT check on one's progress. One of the unspoken goals is to give up the habit of intellectual reflection about whatever is happening.

Spend a few hours watching Dr. Phil and then tell me ego doesn't exist. Watch the 6:30 national news on ABC, CBS or NBC and tell me ego doesn't exist. Go back and read the Effortlessness thread and tell ego doesn't exist. Watch the news reels from the Vietnam War, or WWII and tell me ego doesn't exist. You need a new definition for doesn't exist. Because ZD has solved the problem doesn't mean it's solved for the whole Earth. The fact that we live in the best of all possible worlds doesn't mean ego doesn't exist. The fact that ego is a temporary problem doesn't mean ego doesn't exist. If ego didn't exist we wouldn't need any rules of conduct here on ST's. I could write one sentence and be permanently banned, just for telling the truth.

All experience is real, even when its structured on an illusion, or founded on a misunderstanding.

The odd thing about suffering, is that it can be intensely awful beyond what any words can convey, in the moment, but with hindsight, it can often seem like....'but all I had to do was see through it'. In truth, I think this 'seeming' is also artificial...if it could have been seen through at that time, it would have been.

[inavalan]

Jul 20, 2023 12:58:08 GMT -5 andrew said:

Jul 20, 2023 11:37:40 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

All experience is real, even when its structured on an illusion, or founded on a misunderstanding.

The odd thing about suffering, is that it can be intensely awful beyond what any words can convey, in the moment, but with hindsight, it can often seem like....'but all I had to do was see through it'. In truth, I think this 'seeming' is also artificial...if it could have been seen through at that time, it would have been.

All experience is subjective. Not only that what each one experiences is subjective, but his recollection of past experiences is also subjective: it isn't what he experienced.

EDIT: The suffering that one recalls now, is created in the present (the point-of-power) for current purposes, shaped by current beliefs and expectations. That suffering may have been, or not have been experienced. What matters is only that now it is recalled as such, and it needs to be intuitively interpreted now, as deeply as one's current ability permits.