RE:Joyce/Best book on meditation, free!

[Guest guest]

Thanks Joyce for this detailed reply. I posted this to four and you

seem to be the only one experienced in Vipassana. You have my respect!

> 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

 

 

________________________________

Love makes the heart laugh.

I wish you Love.

CyberDervish

``````````````````````````````````````````````

[Guest guest]

> Thanks Joyce for this detailed reply. I posted this to four and you

> seem to be the only one experienced in Vipassana. You have my respect!

 

O goodie...do I get a prize? Actually, you can go onto "dhamma-list"

(-) easily, its public -a Thera list. Theres a western

doctor/monk on list, lives in Nepal, good for questions -his name is Bhante

Dhammapiyo. Triple Gems list also good - and if you can find the list from

Suan Mokh and Buddhadassa Bhikkhu -also excellent.

 

 

Very good for vipassana is "The Experience of insight" -by Joseph Goldstein.

 

Metta -Joyce

>

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

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