Har&Mol/practice

[Guest guest]

Dear Joyce,Thank you joining in onto this rather subtle and

interesting subject of therole of attention and thought in the

process of meditation. Thank you alsofor your long exposition of the

traditional mindfulness practice.Before I get to the main aspect of

this posting, let me just say that IMO,this path leads the

practitioner first to a stabilisation of thought via theagency of

attention and will around a pre-determined object of attention.It

really does not matter what this object is, or whether it may be a

movingkind of attention, like sweeping through the body. The aim

here is todevelop the ability to pay attention to things in a clear

way, unencumberedby the interference of thought.It is then proposed

that such one-pointedness will lead to a complete stableposition of

the interaction between attention (as the observer) and theobject (as

the observed). They have called this state Samatha.The main purpose

of reaching this stability of consciousness is to have aclear mind

which can have Insights (Vipassana) into many aspects of ourbeing as

well as the nature of experience, reality etc.The ultimate purpose of

Vipassana is to come the clear understanding thatthoughts, and

especially the I - thought is a transitory phenomenon,appearing and

disappearing with all other perceptions.This is what I understand of

this practice as it is mostly taught around theworld.

Please add to this if you will.

In a way, the above is the ' cold ' practice and does not include the

extremelyimportant aspect to which you so correctly pointed - the

content ofconsciousness. My understanding is that this practice has

an elaborate wayof dealing with the psychological factors present in

the practitioner, whatyou called the content of consciousness. The

purpose with this is toprepare the practitioner on a very wide base

to deal with the viscitudes oflife outside of meditation.This brings

me to what I really wanted to agree with you. Meditation

cancertainly take place in a vacuum, and will undoubtedly show

results. But itis my experience that for many, despite the blisses,

insights, clarities ofperception, moments of oneness and so on, if

the psychology is not attendedto as a PARALELL process, and very

ofetn as part of meditation practice,transformation will be slow and

for ever hampered by the deeply rootedpsychological stuff we carry

with us from very early. This psychologycannot be by-passed in the

spiritualising process. All has to be attendedto, and by all I mean

everything which is hampering the revelation of thenon-dual

condition. We can move right to the heart of the meditationprocess,

but if we are still emotional and psychological cripples, ourefforts

are very likely to be of little use. I- consciousness lies

deeplyembedded in the entire phsyche, and has to be seen and

transcended at alllevels of our being lest we mistake our search for

psychological securityfor the spiritual path.Love Moller