I’ve only read through the intro and the first chapter in the book store. I t looks great, but like you, I think(maybe a bad thing) long and hard before adding another book to my already overflowing shelf. I do struggle with my love for reading and trying to not fill my head with ideas about experience.

Al

I have not read Wake Up Now. It is sitting on my shelf along with many other unread books. I stopped reading books about a year ago. I feel like I have more than enough (too much, really) intellectual understanding, compared to experiential understanding; these days, I’m more interested in letting the awakening process unfold on its own and following the desires of the heart. And in the last year, the heart has not called me to read books, probably because I read way too many books prior to that. That said, I’m curious, if you’re reading it, what, if anything, you’re getting out of it.

Damian

I liked that post alot.

Have you read “Wake Up Now” yet?

Al

I liked your post.

I particularly like your contrast between “choiceless awareness” and “true meditation.” I never got the equanimity you seemed to have gotten from “choiceless awareness,” but I did find that way more “stuff” came up during “true meditation.” When I stopped manipulating the mind (not to mention the body), even to try to make it more acutely aware, all kinds of repressed “stuff” came into my consciousness. And as I allowed the process of complete non-control to continue, the “stuff” seemed to pass through me and become fully “metabolized,” so that it became no longer trapped inside (this process continues with more “stuff” on a daily basis). It can be scary, I imagine, if one doesn’t realize that it is a normal, healthy part of the spiritual awakening/growth process, and if one has not realized that one’s judgments are just judgments. But if one is properly prepared and is ready to let go of control completely, it can be–in my experience, at least–the most liberating thing in the world.

Damian

Joshua’s point about how can awareness be bad reminds me of what Albert Ellis, a therapist about as far from mindfulness meditation as you can get, said about how he had to disabuse people of their judgmental attitudes before he could help them by disabusing them of their unrealistic ideas about themselves. If I think it is awful, unacceptable, to harbor any hateful feelings, and I then suddenly start practicing mindfulness meditation and become aware of my sometimes all-too-human hateful feelings, this may not prove to be a step toward long-term improvement.

On mindfulness meditation as involving manipulation: my favorite form of meditation from my Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction courses is “choiceless awareness,” where one just lets oneself notice whatever comes up, without getting lost in thought any more than one must. This seems non-manipulative enough. However, after doing this kind of meditation for a couple of years, I have started wondering whether the very peaceful state I usually get into this way may be less useful than if some more “stuff” came up during the session so that I would have something more to process.

Equanimity is great, and it does carry over to a good extent to the rest of life, but I’d also like more troublesome stuff to deal with while I am in a mindful mode to deal. So I may try something more along the lines of “True Meditation.” I particularly like the idea of assuming whatever posture feels right at the time. I think much of the value that mindfulness meditation could have for westerners is missed due to some teachers’ thinking that eastern ways of sitting on the floor are somehow an important aspect of the practice. I do find that sitting (on a sofa) meditation leads to characteristically different results than lying (in a bed) meditation and I do find both quite valuable and both usually more or less pleasurable.

Thanks for the chance to think and talk about these matters.

I really value you’re insights and experience. I think the teachings between Shikantaza and True Meditation are the same except fot the posture thing. In all honesty this could merely be the Japanese influence and its cultural trappings(with regards to Shikantaza).

Al

Your thoughts about positioning the body make some sense.

I should say, however, that in my experience, falling asleep is not a problem to be fixed. In fact, I spent years trying to stop myself from falling asleep during mindfulness meditation. I tried sitting up straight, I tried standing up, I tried walking around, I tried opening my eyes, etc., and nothing seemed to help. It was always a struggle, and it always caused suffering. When I discovered “true meditation,” I stopped trying to stop the body from falling asleep. I meditated lying down and allowed myself to fall asleep if and when the body was inclined to do so. Lo and behold, I felt so much better. I realized that the sleepiness was not an obstacle to be overcome, as some mindfulness teachers had suggested (sloth and torpor, some of them derogatorily call it). Instead, it was simply a sign that the body needed to rejuvenate, and when I allowed it to fall asleep, rejuvenate it did.

There is this idea amongst many mindfulness meditators and teachers, I’ve observed, that if we control the mind and the body enough, we’ll get into some special state. While this may be true, in some cases (and come to think of it, there were rare instances in which I did feel quite peaceful during and immediately following mindfulness meditation), I haven’t observed it to have a lasting effect. The first enlightened teacher I sat with, a Buddhist monk named Ajahn Jumnian, said some monks (such as himself, before he was enlightened) could become extremely peaceful doing long hours of concentration meditation year after year, but then when something untoward would happen to them, they would often explode with rage. And as I wrote in an earlier comment, I regard mindfulness meditation as essentially a complex form of concentration.

When I began practicing true meditation, I found that the distinction between “time spent meditating” and “time not spent meditating” dissolved. Now it feels like I’m meditating 24/7, and it happens naturally, because you don’t have to be sitting in quarter-lotus, half-lotus, or full lotus (or on a bench or in a chair) to let go of control and allow everything to be as it is. In fact, to truly let go of control and allow everything to be as it is, you have to allow the body to do what it wants, whether it be lying down, falling asleep, standing on its head, or gorging itself with pizza. This, unlike mindfulness, has allowed rage (and every other emotion under the sun) to arise and to pass through me, to start to reveal the natural, ever-present love and contentment underneath.

Damian

You’re correct, very few instructions are given other than how to position the body. This varies from teacher to teacher though. In general you are told to just sit there and everytime you notice yourself drifting off to far, straighten up.

I value Adya’s True Meditation disc as it was my gateway into meditation. The problem for me was that when I let my body do whatever it wanted to I just fell asleep. Every single time I sat down to floow his method I was passed out in 5 minutes. I think for many people there is a reason for this. If the spine is held in a neutral position the autonomic nervous system tends to not veer to far towards the parasypathetic or the sympathetic. It stays balanced. I’ve personally recieved more help form Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up as well as works by other Soto Zen masters. Their works tend to be much less spiritual.

Please don’t get me wrong. I like Adya’s teachings on meditation, I just don’t think his path with regards to his other teachings are for me( or the “little me”

Al

Very interesting…

In Adya’s true meditation, he says allow your body to sit (or stand, or lie down, or stand on your head) in whatever position it is inclined to be in, and do three things: (1) Let go of control. (2) Allow everything to be as it is. (3) Ask yourself the question, “What am I?”, recognize that anything the mind comes up with is false, and feel the body. (I personally never found the “what am I?” questioning helpful–I asked Adya about this and he told me that the only purpose of such questioning is as a means to the end of letting go, and if you’ve already discovered who you really are and can let go directly, then it’s better to do that.)

Anyway, my question to you, Al, is: Are these instructions or something similar given in Shikantaza or Zazen? I heard that oftentimes no instructions are given in these practices.

I also recall Adya saying he understands the idea behind concentrating on the breath to quell the mind before practicing “true meditation.” The problem is, he said (as I recall), that most people never get beyond focusing on the breath to practice true meditation. (And, incidentally, I would argue that mindfulness meditation is really just a more complex form of concentration practice, as one is still controlling the mind to focus on particular objects–whether it be a sensation, a feeling, or a thought–rather than letting go and allowing the mind do whatever it is naturally inclined to do.)

Damian