Meditation

[hI-OOPS-CAPS]

I can't imagine many people know about meditation, I always imagined a monk who's always at peace meditating on a mountain top.

Anyway, I went to Thailand to live and work for 1 year and did a 10 day meditation retreat during my time there. There are 2 kinds, concentration and insight. The popular western kind is concentration, you focus on your breath for 5 mins a day and eventually you'll be at peace, or thats how it's advertised. But the type I'll be talking about is Vipassana or insight mainly practiced in south east Asia, leading directly to enlightenment (where suffering is eradicated from your mind). The biggest difference between concentration and insight meditation is insight uproots suffering whereas concentration just ignores the suffering.

When you have mental problems you mightn't know how to deal with them. If you're feeling anxious, rather than deal with it you might just want to sit infront of the television and reach for another bar of chocolate. But if you're ignorant and just accept that then you'll probably get nowhere.

Insight meditation lets us understand the nature of ourselves. My teacher told me, quite a few times, 'anyone can practice, anywhere, anytime.' He means you can bring awareness to the present moment and begin to understand the causes of problems and suffering.

When you familiarise yourself with, for example, anger or laziness or whatever the emotion its influence over you becomes less and less. When you fully understand the emotion you'll realise it exists for a fraction of a second and can never be fluttered by it.

If you're interested in meditation you can check this page out, there are also instructions how to meditate. Although this has nothing to do with religion all the pages about meditation seem to go hand in hand with Buddhism.

http://www.vipassanadhura.com/whatis.htm#a

So if you can resist the typical Facebook browse or crash infront of the t.v for 1 hour then give it a try. (thats 30mins walking then 30mins sitting )

Edited March 6, 2012 by hI-OOPS-CAPS

[1a2bcio8]

It's good to hear that another trials rider meditates. I practice concentration meditation as you call it but I know it as samatha (calm abiding).

I'd like to respectively disagree about your characterisation of samatha meditation. Some denominations of Zen believe that samatha can lead to insight itself and therefore the breath is the only object of meditation; no insight meditation is required. Furthermore, certain Theravadan denominations recognise samatha as an important precursor to insight meditation. If one has not cultivated the various stages of samatha (jnanas) although they may manage to remove the grosser aspects of delusion/defilement (klesa) they are not equipped to handle the more subtle ones because they lack a refined absorption. In other words, you may get quicker results from moving straight to insight meditation, but in the long run you might find that you reach an impasse. It is this process, that included samatha, that the Buddha followed although I wouldn't want to say that everyone should follow his exact path and there probably are other means of moving toward the ending of suffering.

Please don't misunderstand me. I really appreciate that you're attempting to discuss meditation and I agree about the value of insight meditation and meditation in general but I'm not overly keen on what seems to be a relegating of samatha meditation when it is probably just as important as vipsanna.

Anyhow, beyond that I received confirmation today of a three week personal retreat in September. Can't wait.

Do you practice regularly? And how did you find your 10 day retreat?

Edited March 8, 2012 by Ben Rowlands

[totally steaming!!]

I can't imagine many people know about meditation, I always imagined a monk who's always at peace meditating on a mountain top.

Anyway, I went to Thailand to live and work for 1 year and did a 10 day meditation retreat during my time there. There are 2 kinds, concentration and insight. The popular western kind is concentration, you focus on your breath for 5 mins a day and eventually you'll be at peace, or thats how it's advertised. But the type I'll be talking about is Vipassana or insight mainly practiced in south east Asia, leading directly to enlightenment (where suffering is eradicated from your mind). The biggest difference between concentration and insight meditation is insight uproots suffering whereas concentration just ignores the suffering.

When you have mental problems you mightn't know how to deal with them. If you're feeling anxious, rather than deal with it you might just want to sit infront of the television and reach for another bar of chocolate. But if you're ignorant and just accept that then you'll probably get nowhere.

Insight meditation lets us understand the nature of ourselves. My teacher told me, quite a few times, 'anyone can practice, anywhere, anytime.' He means you can bring awareness to the present moment and begin to understand the causes of problems and suffering.

When you familiarise yourself with, for example, anger or laziness or whatever the emotion its influence over you becomes less and less. When you fully understand the emotion you'll realise it exists for a fraction of a second and can never be fluttered by it.

If you're interested in meditation you can check this page out, there are also instructions how to meditate. Although this has nothing to do with religion all the pages about meditation seem to go hand in hand with Buddhism.

http://www.vipassanadhura.com/whatis.htm#a

So if you can resist the typical Facebook browse or crash infront of the t.v for 1 hour then give it a try. (thats 30mins walking then 30mins sitting )

thanks for that man! been wanting to try meditation for a while... didnt really know where to look and what not.

wasnt at the top of my list of things to do, but when i saw this post i thought perfect!

just been reading through the website you posted. going to give it try!

thanks!

"in walking meditation your eyes must be open"

love the heads up haha

[Dave Anscombe]

i meditate often

and practise astral projection

nice to know other riders like this kind of thing

also have a look into dna healing

[hI-OOPS-CAPS]

I'd like to respectively disagree about your characterisation of samatha meditation. Some denominations of Zen believe that samatha can lead to insight itself and therefore the breath is the only object of meditation; no insight meditation is required. Furthermore, certain Theravadan denominations recognise samatha as an important precursor to insight meditation. If one has not cultivated the various stages of samatha (jnanas) although they may manage to remove the grosser aspects of delusion/defilement (klesa) they are not equipped to handle the more subtle ones because they lack a refined absorption. In other words, you may get quicker results from moving straight to insight meditation, but in the long run you might find that you reach an impasse. It is this process, that included samatha, that the Buddha followed although I wouldn't want to say that everyone should follow his exact path and there probably are other means of moving toward the ending of suffering.

Oddly enough, I'd say you get more instant result from samadhi meditation, it's more straight forward. You dont have enough concentration in vipassana and as such dont get the apparent insight or calmness.

Concentration is very important. Before doing vipassana it would be wise to do some preliminary legwork such as counting your breaths to 50 or something like that. It'll help you settle your mind. I find nothing worse than starting vipassana without at least a partly settled mind.

My post might have said meditation is black and white, either concentration or insight. But its like politics, a country isnt either fascist or communist its probably somewhere in the middle.

Buddha had been practicing samadhi meditation as they do in Hinduism for 6 years. When he didnt find the answers he wanted he abandoned that life. When he started out again (with incredibly deep concentration I'd imagine) he found that mindfulness gave him the insight to reach enlightenment.

Do you find you can apply meditation to your daily routine Ben? I couldn't navigate that one when I was doing more samadhi based meditation. I do 1 hour of mindfulness per day. Some days im just too lazy to even think about it however

I took a brief look at dna healing, when I saw 'theta' I can only assume its talking about brainwave entrainment, the lazy mans way to mellowness.