The Goal is the Path

Instead of recognizing that the training is the indivisible unity of path and fruition and that this fruition is present as a natural possession, the basic straying is to believe that the path is the training, while the fruition will be attained at another point...

The basic straying is to regard the emotion to be discarded and the training as separate and so to use the training as a remedy against the emotion. Whenever a thought moves or when encountering a difficult situation, the temporary straying is (to believe that) one can only be composed in meditation after the difficulty has been overcome...

Instead of recognizing that the training is the indivisible unity of means and knowledge and that all phenomena are the essence itself, the basic straying is to generalize with a conceptual focus that they are devoid of self-nature. Rather than putting the training to use, the temporary straying is to generalize by wanting to recreate a past experience. Or, it could be to believe that meditation should interrupt thoughts: "I am dissatisfied with the present state. I must create a better one later!"

Dakpo Tashi Namgyal

How to Engage Creative Ideas/Intuitions that Arise Spontaneously in Meditation, In Meditation.

One of the things that people say about meditation is that you shouldn't buy into the content of your thoughts. Instead just be a witness to them - watch them arise and pass away. The ironic thing about this instructions is that becoming present and still leads to the arising of creative thoughts and new ideas. Almost without fail, I will be sitting there and some great idea pops up, maybe an observation that I want to tell somebody about, an academic research idea, or even an idea for a blog post. My first instinct is than to immediately try and flesh it out in my mind, but of course, then, I am not meditating any more. I haven't really seen anybody talk about this or discuss what to do (with the exception of Jason Siff. He wrote a book Unlearning Meditation which I am hoping to read). I guess a strict Buddhist perspective would be to see it for the emptiness that it is and let it go immediately. Since I also must live and act in the world, hopefully skillfully, I have preferred a middle ground where I allow the idea to marinate for around a minute, and then let it go with faith that it will be available later when I might think and act on it. Usually this marination doesn't involve much rational thought, it is more of a feeling out of the idea, gaining an intuitive understanding. 

Recent Contemplation on Death

One interesting side effect of meditation is that there seem to be a lot of aha! moments. Some of them are terrifying, and some seem like they should be terrifying, but are actually liberating. One such experience (of the latter sort) recently occurred during meditation. I was doing my usual thing, scanning and investigating sensations in consciousness. Sometimes when I am doing this, there is a flash of very visceral intuition: "actually there is no self here, there is an organism, carrying out its chain of conditioning, but actually, wow, there is nobody home." What was different about this particular episode was that the specter of death came up in my consciousness, the recognition that this organism's days are numbered. I imagined my own death, and probably for the first time not one bit of fear came up. Because there was nobody there to die.

For me, this was only a passing insight, but for those who have become "enlightened", this is a permanent and not just intellectual realization. In the words of Kalu Rinpoche:

We live in illusion
And the appearance of things.
There is a reality:
We are that reality.
When you understand this,
You will see that you are nothing.
And being nothing,
You are everything
That is all.

Questions and Experiences on the Meditation Path

Just thought I would post some links to threads I have started on the meditation forum, Dharma Overground. In my experience, everybody who gets into meditation inevitably has many questions and doubts, ups and downs. It helps to be part of a forum of practitioners who can empathize and give you technical advice. Here is a sampling of reports and questions that I have had...and some responses by people much more experienced than me.

my meditation practice log
Fear of Losing my "Soul"
What Actually Happens in the Brain at Stream Entry?
Free Will and the Problem of Consciousness
Experience of intense weight/compression, feeling like a rock like orb
Is "feeling present" what access concentration is?
Am I advancing quickly or have I barely begun?

10 Meditation Techniques that I Have Found Helpful

In the past year I have gotten into meditation and have experimented with a number of techniques. While there is great value in going deep with one method, I have also found value in becoming comfortable with many, having many tools in the toolbox, so to speak. Over time it becomes natural to switch among them, to mix and match, even in the course of a single sit. Here is the list of boiled down techniques and tips that I wish I would have had from the beginning.


1. Just settling down, being present, abiding in awareness

• Just sit there and don't try to accomplish anything.
• If you get distracted or lost in thought, don't worry, because you are not trying to accomplish anything.  
• Enjoy the space that you are giving yourself to just be as you are. To abide in reality as it is. If you aren't enjoying it, don't worry, because you are not trying to accomplish anything.
• There is nowhere to go, there is nothing to do, you are already here. 

2. Mindfulness of the breath

• Whenever it occurs to you, notice the sensations of the breath
• If you get distracted for a moment or for a long time, don't worry about it, just come back to noticing the breath
• Don't try to hard, don't strain, don't beat yourself up. Whenever it occurs to you, just nudge your attention gently towards the breath. 
• Instead of straining, just try to generate interest. Isn't it interesting that such a simple thing, this expansion and contraction, has always been with us, keeps us alive?

3. Concentrating on an object

• Pick something, anything, that seems relatively stable or predictable and keep your attention on it.
• If your notice that your attention has wandered, gently bring it back to the object of concentration
• When you notice that your attention has wandered, you are already back, getting frustrated or angry with yourself is not helpful. 
• It doesn't matter how many times you wander or how long you wander. Each time you come back to the object of concentration, you are building concentration muscle. Think of it as weight training, it takes many reps. 
• Popular objects of concentration include: the breath (see #2); an external object (flower, rock, candle flame); a constant or repetitive sound, a mantra (internally repeat a 1-3 syllable sound over and over again); the feeling of attention or presence; the feeling of being a witness; a positive feeling such as calm, joy, love, tenderness, or peace. In this last case, it might help to start by remembering a situation that evoked this feeling.

4. Metta/Loving Kindness

• Start by remembering or visualizing a situation or person that evokes positive feelings such as calm, joy, love, tenderness, peace, compassion, etc. 
• Allow yourself to soak in this feeling for a while, allow it to expand and envelop your whole being.
• Now apply this feeling to yourself. Wish yourself happiness, contentment, joy, and loving kindness. If you are self critical have compassion and forgiveness for yourself. 
• Now apply this feeling to the people in your life that you love. Wish them the same things that you wished yourself
• Now apply this feeling to people in your life that you don't particularly care for, or even those that you might actively dislike. Finally, apply this feeling to all of humankind.

5. Choiceless noting

• Either out loud or using a mental label, simply note the most immediate sensation in your awareness.
• By noting objects in consciousness, you are objectifying and dis-embedding from them. This can be incredibly liberating. 
• Here is an example of a sequence of labels one might use: feeling, feeling, itching, anxious, feeling, thinking, thinking, calming, hearing, hearing, dryness, itching, self awareness, thinking, planning, planning, itching, anxious, warmth, pleasant...
• Don't worry about finding the "correct" label. Also don't worry about diversity, if the same label keeps coming up again and again, that's fine.
• If trying to find the correct label is tripping you up, over time it might be useful to develop a vocabulary for common or subtle sensations when you are not meditating. 
• If you find yourself getting distracted by thoughts or difficult emotions, just note them: thinking, distracted, angry, restlessness, craving...etc. Think of every distraction as fuel for mindfulness. 
• Go at a speed that feels natural. For some people this will be 1 note every 2-5 seconds, and for others it will be 1-3 notes per second. With practice you might pick up speed, but this will happen naturally, no need to force it or attain a certain speed
• If you start noticing faster than you can label, than switch down to mono-syllables to tag experience. For example: dat, dat, dat.....  or hm, hm, hm......
• If even mono-syllable labeling starts to seem cumbersome, slow, or to be a needless filter on experience, than it has finished serving its purpose. Feel free to drop it and switch to choice-less noticing (see #7).

6. Structured noting

• Similar to #3, but decide beforehand on the noting framework to use. There are countless ways to do this. Here are some examples.
• Just note the general senses: feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. You might also add thinking as the "6th sense". 
• Shinzen Young's schema: "feel in" for any emotion, "feel out" for any non-emotional physical body sensation, "see in" for mental images, "see out" for external sights, "hear in" for internal dialogue, "hear out" for external sounds, "...rest" if you notice the absence of feeling, hearing, or seeing, and "gone" if notice the the disappearance of a sensation. 
• Noting the "Three Characteristics": In Therevada Buddhism the meditator tries to notice that all sensations are 1) impermanent, 2) unsatisfactory, and 3) impersonal (or not self). One can note aspects of these. For 1) notes can include "arising", "passing", and "gone". For 2) notes can include "clinging", "craving", and "aversion". For 3) notes can include "empty" and "not me".
• Simple Noting. For example, one can just note "thinking" every time they catch themselves thinking. Or they can just note whether the current sensation is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. 

7. Choice-less noticing/open awareness

• This requires some degree of prior concentration. If you feel distracted or you are getting lost in thought (which is different than noticing thoughts), try one of the previous methods first. 
• Become receptive to the whole field of awareness. Pay attention to whatever seems to take precedence in any given moment. 
• Try to break larger sensations and feelings (aggregates) down to their energetic components. Notice that all sensations are impermanent and impersonal. They are just empty energy blips flickering in and out. 
• When you do this, distinctions of inside/outside, me/not me, pleasant/unpleasant etc. will start to fade away. Let them fade.
• If you get distracted, instead of switching to another method, you can also try just tapping into the insight that "you" are not actually in control of anything. Thoughts arise on their own, sensations arise on their own, even intentions arise due to prior conditions. 

8. Body scanning

• Pay attention to the sensations in the body
• It is easiest to start with one body area at a time, taking a few minutes with each. For example, start by feeling the hands, than the arms, than the feet, than the legs, then the lower core, than the upper core, than the head, than the whole body at once. 
• Don't try to manipulate or amplify the sensations. Just allow yourself to feel what you in fact feel. If you don't feel something strongly or at all, that's fine, just keep your attention there anyway. 
• If you find yourself getting distracted, note the distraction (e.g. "thinking") than return to scanning. 

9. Experimenting with boundaries

• In #7 I mentioned that certain dualities in your experience might start to fall away. This can also be cultivated directly. The point is to recognize that consciousness is one, there is only the unified field. Here are some techniques for doing this:
• Look out at the world (or close your eyes and listen out) and notice that it is outside of yourself. Now imagine that it is actually inside. 
• Close your eyes and contemplate the feeling of time. Investigate: How do you know that time is passing? What sensations are associated with the passing of time, what internal images or memories or emotions contribute to this feeling? 
• Close your eyes and imagine a scene from your childhood, remember how it felt. Remember the sense of being alive, remember the sense of being present at that moment. Now image a scene within the past few years and do the same. Now open your eyes and notice the feeling of being present now. Investigate: Isn't it always the present?
• Try to find your mind. Where is it in the field of experience? A thought arises, is that your mind? If yes, how can something that arises and vanishes be your mind? Notice that, as a matter of experience, there is no mind, it is empty, their are only objects in consciousness. 
• Open your eyes and imagine that your don't have a head. It shouldn't be very hard because you can't see your head (just part of your nose and maybe eyebrow, and without hands you cannot feel your head (you can only feel sensations). It might help to try pointing your finger and looking at various objects. Finally, point your finger back at your head. What is it pointing to? As a matter of experience, you can only see the finger pointing, not the thing it is pointing to.  

10. Self Inquiry

• This is similar to #9, but the boundary is the sense of self. 
• Ask yourself, "who am I?". Notice the thoughts and sensations that arise. Ask yourself, "to whom do these thoughts/sensations arise?". If the answer is "to me?", ask yourself again, "But who am I?". 
• There are countless variants to this. Other questions include: "where am I?", "who is hearing this sound?", "who is seeing?", "who is feeling anxious"...in fact, whenever you notice any feeling at all, you can turn it around and inquire to who/what/where/why the feeler is. This can be done at any point during the day when your attention isn't immediately occupied. 
• If you inquire and nothing comes up, that is good, just abide in the emptiness/oneness. Don't try generating thoughts/sensations that don't arise spontaneously
• You can also use affirmations and negations. An example of an affirmation is: "I am" or "I am not separate from the universe". An example of a negation is: "I am not my body, I am not the sensations that arise, I am not my thoughts". 

Free online resources that I have found immensely valuable:

Daniel Ingram's pragmatic dharma book
Shinzen Young's Five Ways manual
Shinzen Young on mindfulness 
Kenneth Folk's 3 speed transmission:  Here and here
The Dharma Overground, an online pragmatic meditation forum
In depth interviews with "enlightened" people. Although some of them just appear crazy.
Guided meditation by Eckhart Tolle
Guided meditation by Sam Harris

Buddhism, Meditation, and the Baha'i Faith: Part 3

I realize that most people go into meditation looking for stability, happiness, and comfort in the face of their own existence...I have spent many years cultivating extreme experiential instability, careful awareness of the minutia of my suffering and the clear perception that I don't even exist as a separate entity...I can honestly say that these practices are without doubt the sanest thing I have ever done in my life. -Daniel Ingram

The path of insight is not known to be easy. There are said to be many ups and downs - ecstatic bliss and energy one moment and crushing fear and misery the next. There are many maps of this territory, all different on a superficial level, yet all containing many of the same fundamentals. In the words of Ingram:

One of the most profound things about these stages is that they are strangely predictable regardless of the practitioner or the insight tradition. Texts two thousand years old describe the stages just the way people go through them today, though there will be some individual variation on some of the particulars today as then. The Christian maps, the Sufi maps, the Buddhist maps of the Tibetans and the Theravada, and the maps of the Khabbalists and Hindus are all remarkably consistent in their fundamentals. I chanced into these classic experiences before I had any training in meditation, and I have met a large number of people who have done likewise. These maps, Buddhist or otherwise, are talking about something inherent in how our minds progress in fundamental wisdom that has little to do with any tradition and lots to do with the mysteries of the human mind and body. They are describing basic human development. These stages are not Buddhist but universal, and Buddhism is merely one of the traditions that describes them, albeit unusually well.

In this post I will discuss the map, known as the "Progress of Insight", which is originally derived from the Pali cannon in the Theravada tradition, as related by Mahasi Sayada and Daniel Ingram. The part of the map that I will discuss is "1st path" (there are four successive paths) which is basically the road to initial, but not complete, enlightenment, to a point after which insight generates itself automatically whether one practices or not, beyond the "plane of limitation". I will also relate this path to the first Four Valleys in the Sufi tradition, as commented on by Baha'u'llah: Search, Love, Knowledge, and Unity. 

My motivation for doing this is simply to share something that has become a big part of my life. This is my own working model of spiritual development and I will relate some of my experiential reports traveling along this path. 

Buddhism, Meditation, and the Baha'i Faith: Part 2

-Part 1 Here-

And if we turn inward and prove our True Nature, that True Self is no-self, our own self is no-self, we go beyond ego and past clever words. Then the gate to the oneness of cause-and-effect is thrown open. Not two and not three, straight ahead runs the Way. Our form now being no-form, in going and returning we never leave home. Our thought now being no-thought, our dancing and songs are the Voice of the Dharma. How vast is the heaven of boundless Samadhi! How bright and transparent the moonlight of wisdom! What is there outside us? What is there we lack? 
-From the Song of Zazen

The Baha'i Faith is a mystical religion. Baha'u'llah describes the spiritual seeker in the Valley of Knowledge - "the last plane of limitation" - as one who has "passed over the worlds of names, and fled beyond the worlds of attributes as swift as lightning" and has "made their dwelling-place in the shadow of the Essence." 

It is also a practical religion. Baha'u'llah emphasizes the need to be "anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements."

Putting these two things together requires being “in the world, but not of the world” so to speak. This requires a delicate balance and careful integration of the two modes; yet they are each distinct. They are mutually reinforcing but they also develop along different axis.

Somewhat along these lines, in Buddhism there are three types of training which reinforce and integrate with each other, yet are distinct: morality, concentration, and insight. 

Buddhism, Meditation, and the Baha'i Faith: Part 1

So the true goal of meditation is achieved through a dialectical process that alternates between dissolving into flowing nothingness and detecting subtler and subtler instances of solidified somethingness. - Shinzen Young

In my opinion, the Baha’i community is exceptionally well developed in two important ways. 

The first way has to do with thinking about and acting in the world.  It has a comprehensive system of morality - with laws and principles that guide personal conduct and attitude; it has a brilliant evolving mechanism for interacting in the world and trying to make it better - the institute process; it has a universal and unique system of governance; and it is philosophically and theologically rich and modern.

The second is along a mode of spiritual practice: prayer and contemplation. There are countless prayers revealed by Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l Baha, and clear instructions for ideal practice, for example in the long obligatory prayer. The writings are poetic and intriguing and, by both the content and the very structure of the language, evoke positive spiritual feelings, mystical inclinations, and realizations of oneness.