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[Guest guest]

> Anybody on this list has experience in Vipassana Meditation? What does the

> author mean below ... "mental vacuum ... state like dreamless sleep is to

> be avoided???"

 

He means that you have forgotten to note the flow of the arising and

dissolving of whatever phenomena is occuring, moment by moment. The student

is sitting there kind of blank, perhaps even cultivating this state, kind of

like blocking. Like all states this is impermanent -and so when it

occurs,and after you have noticed it, and you will, you note it, and then

you note the next arising coming into bare attention. Its also called dull

mind. It can be cultivated as avoidance of anything arising. Mind can get

into states of tranquillity very calm and pleasant - mind gets attached -

but no insight happens here, this state is not dynamic. So -a waste of

time. "Thinking mind" or monkey mind" arises all the time, we seem to

cultivate it, and one notes this, but this gradually subsides and body

relaxes. Mindfulness or Sati is cultivated in order to directly see for

oneself into the impermanence, suffering and no-self within all phenomena.

Nothing is "me" or "mine". From this seeing directly into, mind drops

clinging, grasping and identifying with. This developing insight occurs in

stages or nanas. If you were practicing with this teacher, and he is a good

one, you would have interviews with him and tell him what is occuring in

mind, what is arising. You would proceed stage by stage through experiences

of insight, very much a concretely experienced "path".

 

The knowing mind arises with an object and disappears with the object. So,

there has to be the knowing mind present in Vipassana. The knowing aspect is

a faculty of consciousness and can be cultivated. Only ordinary

concentration or awareness is needed for vipassana, but what is began as

"ordinary" gets stronger with practice -just like learning to play tennis.

 

"In the ultimate analysis, our only source of information, our only working

tool for coming to grips with the universe is, precisely, our total organism

- the body with its five senses, and the mind that operates in and through

it. This is why the Buddha said: 'It is this very fathom-long body, with

its perceptions and with its mind, that I make known the world, and the

arising of the world, and the extinction of the world, and the path leading

to the extinction of the world.'

 

Hence, in the Buddha's teaching, insight meditation exercises are oriented

on the body: beginning with its most obvious bodily perceptions and moving

on, through mindful observations of all kinds of sensory and mental

processes, to comprehend both the physical and then mental aspects of the

total organism, to achieve the liberating insight into the radically

impermanent and impersonal nature of the processes that make up what we

think of ordinarily as our "self" and the world of this self's desires."

>From (Tranquillity and Insight - Amadeo Sole-Leris)

 

It is important to be "clearly comprehending" in this practice, getting the

basics correctly - so if I can further assist, let me know.

 

Joyce

 

 

"In the wordless observation of the breath, there are two states to be

> avoided: thinking and sinking. The thinking mind manifests most clearly as

> the monkey-mind phenomenon we have just been discussing. The sinking mind

> is almost the reverse. As a general term, sinking mind denotes any dimming

> of awareness. At its best, it is sort of a mental vacuum in which there is

> no thought, no observation of the breath, no awareness of anything. It is a

> gap, a formless mental gray area rather like a dreamless sleep. Sinking

> mind is a void. Avoid it.

>

> Vipassana meditation is an active function. Concentration is a strong,

> energetic attention to one single item. Awareness is a bright clean

> alertness. Samahdhi and Sati--these are the two faculties we wish to

> cultivate. And sinking mind contains neither. At its worst, it will put you

> to sleep. Even at its best it will simply waste your time."

[Guest guest]

Hi CD!

>Anybody on this list has experience in Vipassana Meditation? What does the

>author mean below ... "mental vacuum ... state like dreamless sleep is to

>be avoided???"

 

He means don't lose the conscious focus... control the focus, keep it

tight... if you let it just widen out, you'll drift into sleep (and not

meaning dreams).

>"Concentration is a strong,

>energetic attention to one single item. Awareness is a bright clean

>alertness. Samahdhi and Sati--these are the two faculties we wish to

>cultivate. And sinking mind contains neither. At its worst, it will put you

>to sleep.

 

Love,

Dharma