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I read the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing recently and it seemed to be genuinely amazing and I see why Thay loved it. Potentially underappreciated practice guidestone. One thing in it trips me up, though. I'm only really doing the first four of these in a cycle: https://plumvillage.org/library/sutras/discourse-on-the-full-awareness-of-breathing posted:Breathing in a long breath, I know I am breathing in a long breath.
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Nov 19, 2023 22:05
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yeah i read it as you observe the breath and when a breath happens to be short/long, you are aware of that because you are watching. it is not "first i do a long breath, then i do a short breath" put "[when i am]" at the beginning of the relevant lines and it makes much more sense imo
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Nov 19, 2023 22:17
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Achmed Jones posted:yeah i read it as you observe the breath and when a breath happens to be short/long, you are aware of that because you are watching. it is not "first i do a long breath, then i do a short breath"
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Nov 19, 2023 22:31
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The traditional simile is like massaging water into soap powder to make a ball of soap. So the everyday mind and bodily awareness is kind of like dry powder and the breath is the water. You just pay attention to making everything soft and wieldy, perhaps gently massaging it as necessary, like breathing into a bodily or mental tension. The steps will occur naturally along the way. The anecdote about Thich Nhat Hanh discovering the Anapanasati Sutta and feeling like the happiest person in the world is pretty interesting. IMO it shows the real benefit of engagement with things outside of one's own tradition. It reminds me of something that I read about Torei Enji, Hakuin's Dharma heir. He came across a (very obscure in Japan) Sutra which described meditation on the four divine abodes and was blown away by how critical it was and how it wasn't explicitly taught in Japanese Zen, like: "why the hell did nobody teach me this stuff. it would have saved me so much trouble." Of course he attributed it to Bodhidharma lol
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Nov 19, 2023 23:01
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Nessus posted:Is the idea, perhaps, that you just keep going on steadily because any breath could be a long breath or a short breath? Yes.. just breath Anapanasati involves no deliberate attempt to regulate the breath but an effort to fix awareness on it as it goes in and out in a bodys natural rhythm. You can note the length of breath but it is not consciously controlled. It's likely the 'deeper' or more absorbed you are the shorter the breath will become. If you're using counting I would recommend using a number between 5 and 10; by using <5 it's easier for discursive thoughts to arise, by a count >10 thoughts take the number rather than the breaths for their support.
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Nov 19, 2023 23:19
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There's just something exceedingly elegant about focusing on breath imo. Breath is both functional to focus on and has virtually zero drawbacks as an object of focus and its available to everyone at (nearly) all times at no cost. It's probably the fastest and most direct way to pull a wandering or anxious mind back to the body and into the present moment. It also will become kind of a muscle memory you fall back on in especially stressful situations and it's something you can do without getting in the way of whatever else you're doing. Interestingly you can focus on other bodily sensations but most are either less universal, kinda pointless, or allegedly have downsides (eg you can focus on a heart beat, but whenever I've asked about that I've always heard it is discouraged for either vague reasons or potentially being harmful(?)). this might be my own weird thing but sometimes I end up on the sensation of food digesting as another object of focus. That said, breath still seems to be superior on a whole bunch of levels, but I do suggest experimenting around with resting your awareness on different sensations. There's generally a lot more proprioceptive sensation going on than people usually consciously register
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Nov 20, 2023 01:27
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Virgil Vox posted:Yes.. just breath
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Nov 20, 2023 01:41
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Interestingly you can focus on other bodily sensations but most are either less universal, kinda pointless, or allegedly have downsides (eg you can focus on a heart beat, but whenever I've asked about that I've always heard it is discouraged for either vague reasons or potentially being harmful(?)). Hands are good. I think that Beowulf's Ghost said that earlier itt. And Dogen endorses "putting your mind in the palm of your left hand" so there's a credible source right there. Hakuin's "soft butter" body scan meditation is great for physical difficulties, bodily anxiety, or autonomic/self-regulation stuff. It has a lot of similarities to 'crown' stuff in yoga.
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Nov 20, 2023 02:23
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Yeah i've heard it can cause heart rhythm problems or something, but it also seems like something that might be the buddhism equivalent of broscience because it's hard to figure out what actual mechanism of action would cause that.
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Nov 20, 2023 02:36
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Yeah i've heard it can cause heart rhythm problems or something, but it also seems like something that might be the buddhism equivalent of broscience because it's hard to figure out what actual mechanism of action would cause that.
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Nov 20, 2023 02:49
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it's a massive jump from 'can affect parasympathetic nervous system' to potentially causing damage or a disrythmia. I think drat near 100% of people will end up coming back to breath as being the, in almost every way, superior object of focus regardless of what they try and imo it is what should be taught and generally encouraged (which is about as definitive statement as you'll probably ever see me make about anything in Buddhism). I still have no clue what the mechanism of action would be that would cause harm with resting awareness on the heart's beating, but I share the feeling that it's not a great object of focus. I just don't know why I feel that way towards it, which perplexes me. I think it's mostly just that breath seems far better and being too aware of my heart makes me uneasy. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 03:12
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I think drat near 100% of people will end up coming back to breath as being the, in almost every way, superior object of focus regardless of what they try and imo it is what should be taught and generally encouraged (which is about as definitive statement as you'll probably ever see me make about anything in buddhism). I still have no clue what the mechanism of action would be that would cause harm with resting awareness on the heart's beating, but I share the feeling that it's not a great object of focus. I just don't know why I feel that way towards it, which perplexes me. I think it's mostly just that breath seems far better and being too aware of my heart makes me uneasy.
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Nov 20, 2023 03:20
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Yeah i've heard it can cause heart rhythm problems or something, but it also seems like something that might be the buddhism equivalent of broscience because it's hard to figure out what actual mechanism of action would cause that. In my case, it lead me to noticing premature ventricular contractions. Most people have a few every day, but they just aren't noticed. They do feel weird when you do notice them, and I went to the doctor about it. After doing a bunch of tests, it turned out that my heart was perfectly healthy, and they thought it was strange that I noticed them at all. The breath is a good choice because you get several things out of one object of focus. It is a sensation that one can focus on. Unless you are dead you are doing some amount of breathing. It has a clear boundaries for noticing impermanence. You can't just do one never ending steady inhale. It is on the edge of concious control. It happens automatically, but you can control it, but part of the exercise is to give up that kind of control. You can do a fair amount of biofeedback stuff with just the breath too. One I've used to help a few people with anxiety issues is to notice "where" the breath is. For a lot of people it is often in the upper chest. And if you are panicking it will automatically move there. That's called thoracic breathing. But a lot of Buddist text will talk about the breath being closer to the navel, which is abdominal breathing. There is a specific term in Zen for a spot between the belly button and spine that is a "well of breath" of something like that. If you notice the breath is high, and know it should be low, you can can of consciously move it down, then unconsciously keep it there. So in a panic situation, you take your mind off what ever is troubling you and on to your breath, and then use that to undo the high breathing which is a symptom of a panic attack. The heart rate will naturally drop soon after. Just moving your focus to the breath isn't often enough. If the body is still feeling the symptoms of a panic attack, as soon as the mind goes away from the breath, and notices the sensation of a panic attack, the mind will invent a reason to explain the panic. A lot of body scanning stuff has a similar effect. Some times noticing something like a tense muscle is enough to get you to relax it. All of these introductory meditation exercises is to pave the way for more advanced stuff later, but do have the everyday benefit of quickly getting you to state of relaxed focus.
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Nov 20, 2023 07:35
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nice obelisk idiot posted:Hands are good. I think that Beowulf's Ghost said that earlier itt. And Dogen endorses "putting your mind in the palm of your left hand" so there's a credible source right there. Hakuin's "soft butter" body scan meditation is great for physical difficulties, bodily anxiety, or autonomic/self-regulation stuff. It has a lot of similarities to 'crown' stuff in yoga. Compared to the body, the hands aren't all that big. But the amount of brain dedicated to the sensation of the hands is huge. Noticing sensation in the hand is like hitting the broad side of a barn. Along with that, it works with a ton of metaphors. "Putting your mind in the palm of your left hand", is not a big ask because putting things in your hands is very natural. I'm sure a lot of Buddihist meditation exercises based on visualization are also exploiting the fact that a lot of human brain is dedicated to visual processing. Buddhism for dogs would likely start with bringing to mind a familiar smell as a meditation object.
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Nov 20, 2023 07:58
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brb starting buddhism for dogs
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Nov 20, 2023 23:50
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Thus I have smelled,
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Nov 21, 2023 00:03
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kukur tihar was only a week ago
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Nov 21, 2023 04:25
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Has anyone read anything interesting regarding the mechanisms of Buddhist meditation practices? I keep on thinking of how to relate things to brain functionality, like the connection between concentration and insight into ongoing mental processes. I'm not trying to make a claim about the relationship between the brain and the mind here. Just some speculation, but it's been on my mind a bit: I think that there's something going on between the interplay of what's called the extrinsic mode network of the brain (concentration on an 'external' object, task-oriented cognition) and the default mode network (resting, unfocused normal consciousness, integration) when someone is for example working towards meditative absorption. If I had to take a stab at it, it seems like it can help restore normal functioning to the default mode network by suppressing it, and then when attention is removed from the object of concentration, we can process or gain insight into things like suppressed emotions as the default mode network comes back online. I haven't read too much about it, and I wonder if there is anything written by neuroscientists, neurologists etc who are deep practitioners who might have some unique insights, or practitioners who have worked with researchers who have a knack for that kind of understanding. Thanks. nice obelisk idiot fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 18:51
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I have a copy of this book which is pretty much exactly what you're asking about, albeit zen focused https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Brain-Understanding-Meditation-Consciousness/dp/0262511096 I'd be curious if it has been updated recently as the original is 25 years old at this point Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 19:08
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Yeah that's very interesting, thank you. The understanding of the brain has changed massively over recent years and that dude is 98, but that's just about the best starting point that I could hope for. Related to the discussion of the breath and developing abdominal vs thoracic breathing, I started getting into some basic Chan qigong stuff and it's kinda great. Yoga wasn't doing it for me regarding identifying and relaxing physical tensions. As someone who definitely doesn't believe in traditional explanations of what qigong does, it seems to be pretty effective for working on habitual embodied stress, especially at times when sitting seems to be counterproductive.
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Nov 24, 2023 19:30
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nice obelisk idiot posted:Has anyone read anything interesting regarding the mechanisms of Buddhist meditation practices? I keep on thinking of how to relate things to brain functionality, like the connection between concentration and insight into ongoing mental processes. I'm not trying to make a claim about the relationship between the brain and the mind here. This comes with a huge caveat, namely that I haven't read her and am not at all sure about the quality of her work, but not long ago I ran across an interview with Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard neuroanatomist who had a stroke and in the wake of that wrote two books, potentially touching on this, or on related matters: My Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living.
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Nov 24, 2023 21:20
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Great stuff, I'll check that out too. It reminds me of a Thai meditation teacher talking about someone who had complications from brain surgery. He suddenly began to get very angry when his wife did a specific benign thing, because something was physically going wrong. It actually gave him a great deal of insight into how his emotions and thoughts worked, because he could constantly see both the importance of being mindful of them as well as their fallibility.
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Nov 24, 2023 21:56
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nice obelisk idiot posted:Has anyone read anything interesting regarding the mechanisms of Buddhist meditation practices? I keep on thinking of how to relate things to brain functionality, like the connection between concentration and insight into ongoing mental processes. I'm not trying to make a claim about the relationship between the brain and the mind here. Gary Weber has done some talks about this, and has some MRI studies to back it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeNmydIk8Yo In short, meditation does push the brain into the task-oriented network. With enough meditation you can basically be there all the time, or at least be able to consciously choose between task-oriented and default-mode. I guess you could say that one can use the task-oriented cognition to sort of deconstruct the habits found in default-mode cognition. In Weber's case, he has a lot of stuff directed at the "I". Where am I, when am I, etc.
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Nov 24, 2023 23:30
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I've been feeling weirdly defeated about my practice lately. I have been struggling to start up consistent meditation practice, I've been feeling like I'm not improving as a person, and perhaps weirdly, I think about how many other, non-human life forms there are in proportion to humans, and it makes me feel like there's no way I'm going to be reborn as a human, (if rebirth works the way we conventionally think), so I feel almost burnt out. I feel like I'm just some average guy, angry and prone to hate and laziness, who's too ADHD to focus on anything, so I can't help but think "why bother?" Part of this may be that my work schedule doesn't allow me to go to the local Sangha at the times they're actually doing things, and maybe this is part of me examining myself and letting go of the self perception that I'm a good person just because I do the bare minimum, but still, it feels demoralizing.
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Dec 4, 2023 15:58
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I can relate to the constant demoralizing self evaluation that comes with being a practitioner with ADHD. When I was reading Gabor Mate's Scattered Minds (which actually had a Suzuki quote that got me started on Buddhism in the first place), something that stuck out to me was the ADHD proclivity for shame, and how the consistent inability to meet people's expectations deeply sets a neurological connection between guilt and your sympathetic nervous system- meaning that when you feel ashamed, your sensitive nervous system actually starts to respond and attempt to defend you by inducing a numb lethargy. So it seems that part of our karma is our mind and body's relationship to expectations and shame, and how extra painful it is to fall short for our minds. Now that I know about it, I can see it cropping up. I actually think of the voice of guilt in my head as My brain's misguided attempt to help me: "not measuring up Is dangerous! People will hate us! Be disappointed! You can't let this happen!" It wants to help just... Maybe hasn't figured out the best way. To bring it back to Buddhism though, something that my teacher emphasizes to me is our intent. We are all going to fall short, but like the proverb goes: "fall down seven times, get up 8." Even if we gently caress up (and trust me I gently caress up!!!) we are practitioners. I love this sentiment that another poster shared with me over in the UFO thread: Perry Mason Jar posted:Two notions that helped me recently when it comes to practicing: the practice is enlightenment (Dogen); if you meditate, you are a meditator. So from reading your post Hiro, I can see your demoralization and I empathize with it. But I still see that you have the intent, and I think that's one of the most important parts of your practice. You are a meditator.
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Dec 4, 2023 16:30
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TPC is wise. I would also ask how much of a sit are you trying to do daily?
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Dec 4, 2023 17:06
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I'm trying to do 20 minutes after work, lying in bed, because 10 hours in a computer chair makes my back tired. I just have trouble doing it, and I think part of it is not knowing if I should do guided meditation, which meditation to do, and how much leeway I should give myself to be bad at it versus actually doing it and not day dreaming and wasting the time.
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Dec 4, 2023 17:33
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm trying to do 20 minutes after work, lying in bed, because 10 hours in a computer chair makes my back tired. I just have trouble doing it, and I think part of it is not knowing if I should do guided meditation, which meditation to do, and how much leeway I should give myself to be bad at it versus actually doing it and not day dreaming and wasting the time. Remember the wisdom of Jake the dog: being bad at something is the first step to being kind of good at something.
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Dec 4, 2023 17:38
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I've been feeling weirdly defeated about my practice lately. I have been struggling to start up consistent meditation practice, I've been feeling like I'm not improving as a person, and perhaps weirdly, I think about how many other, non-human life forms there are in proportion to humans, and it makes me feel like there's no way I'm going to be reborn as a human, (if rebirth works the way we conventionally think), so I feel almost burnt out. I feel like I'm just some average guy, angry and prone to hate and laziness, who's too ADHD to focus on anything, so I can't help but think "why bother?" Hi friend. It sounds to me like maybe you are wrestling with what Shunryu Suzuki calls "gaining ideas" (https://berkeleyzencenter.org/2022/02/28/no-gaining-idea/). There is the saying that Buddha is three pounds of flax, or a dried turd. So I think it's okay if you are reborn as a millipede, or even as an average guy. All the best.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:21
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Being a bug sounds kick rear end.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:23
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm trying to do 20 minutes after work, lying in bed, because 10 hours in a computer chair makes my back tired. I just have trouble doing it, and I think part of it is not knowing if I should do guided meditation, which meditation to do, and how much leeway I should give myself to be bad at it versus actually doing it and not day dreaming and wasting the time. Another option is walking mediation. You don't need to walk fast or far. Slowly pacing back and forth is good enough. Works on the same principles as breath watching, but instead of the sensation of breathing, it is the sensation of the bottoms of you feet as they leave the ground and touch back down. When you notice you mind has wandered, just bring it back to the feet. Feeling bad about stuff is a very common thing that happens with meditation. In the long term average you are happier, but the short term can be peaks and valleys.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:42
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dont worry about doing it wrong. it's a skill. you'll suck at first. then you get better. i never really liked the plum village guided meditations, even though i like their teachings quite a bit. ajahn brahm has some good guided meditations on bswa.org. being walked through a body scan prior to the "real" sit helped me to get a lot better (read: less bad) at meditation, and it might work for you, too but it might not. who knows, just sit, try not to worry. one thing: i very much like the translation of 'samadhi' as 'letting-go' instead of 'concentration.' you're not trying to pop a blood vessel to make your mind do a thing like you're a psychic in a bad movie, here. you're trying to drop all the self-asssuming, power-wielding, impermanence-denying, emptiness-ignoring junk that the mind gets up to in its day-to-day thought patterns. understanding that my right concentration is not an pushing or a forcing but a relinquishing makes it much easier (for me) to actually do the meditation thing
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Dec 4, 2023 20:18
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On the topic of feeling like you're doing it wrong, something that helps me is approaching it with curiosity. My teacher calls it "seeing what you are up to". For instance when I'm sitting and I get impatient and want to check the timer, that does feel like I am loving up and being impatient, but I try to observe that feeling in my mind and approach it from "why do I want to know? Is there something that I want to get to next? If I'm bored, what does boredom even mean?" That usually brings the sensation back to a value neutral place and I can calm down and return to my breathing. Another thing that I've heard, which honestly makes me laugh, is "opposite thinking, instant suffering!" Good practice or bad practice, at least you're practicing or trying to practice.
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Dec 4, 2023 20:39
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Thank you all, I appreciate the input. It's a long path, and I think I just needed some encouragement.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:30
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Achmed Jones posted:one thing: i very much like the translation of 'samadhi' as 'letting-go' instead of 'concentration.' you're not trying to pop a blood vessel to make your mind do a thing like you're a psychic in a bad movie, here. you're trying to drop all the self-asssuming, power-wielding, impermanence-denying, emptiness-ignoring junk that the mind gets up to in its day-to-day thought patterns. understanding that my right concentration is not an pushing or a forcing but a relinquishing makes it much easier (for me) to actually do the meditation thing  Samadhi is like a relief, like you made that last final loan payment, or that last day of school before summer break, or when you quit that poo poo job and walk out the last time; no more burdens
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Dec 5, 2023 02:08
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taking off a shoe that was on all day and the laces tied a little too tight
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Dec 5, 2023 02:17
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Beowulfs_Ghost posted:Another option is walking mediation. You don't need to walk fast or far. Slowly pacing back and forth is good enough. Works on the same principles as breath watching, but instead of the sensation of breathing, it is the sensation of the bottoms of you feet as they leave the ground and touch back down. When you notice you mind has wandered, just bring it back to the feet. Yeah came in here to say something similar: sitting meditation is just one option. I'm quite partial to Thich Nhat Hanh's recurring suggestions to just, like, do everything meditatively with full awareness of what you're doing. Doing the dishes can be a deeply meditative experience, as can other routine things like cooking or gardening or a great many other things. I'm not trying to disparage sitting meditation because there are a lot of distinct advantages to it, but it's very, extremely not the only way. I think it's also helpful for breaking down the perception many people have that meditation is something you do in a specific time and place versus. I'm partial to the above approach because it's a lot easier to consistently fit into a busy life in a way that sitting for half an hour often isn't. Also on a sort of technique level, the timing of directly after work has got to be rough and is probably going to make it feel more like work or a chore to be done before you can go have fun finally. Similarly, laying down is hard because just as an innate quality of laying down is that the mind wanders very easily and particularly in a dark room you're likely going to be fighting sleep or daydreams. That's not to say it's a bad way to do it, just that it's going to make it difficult. To a certain extent you can modulate the tendency towards sleep by by having more lights on or keeping the eyes more open, but yeah sitting or walking would probably be less of a struggle. For most practical purposes for the vast majority of people, successful meditation (regardless of whether it is sitting or walking or laying down or anything else) is the process of continually bringing the wandering mind back to what you're doing. The wandering itself isn't really a problem, it's just what minds do. It's only really an issue if it wanders so far off that you're waking up 20 minutes later having slept through the whole time or getting so lost in day dreams that you're never pulling your awareness back to your breathing or body or what have you. If that's happening, change up the circumstances to something less conducive to drifting off. god drat that is relatable Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 04:40
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Tea Party Crasher posted:Another thing that I've heard, which honestly makes me laugh, is "opposite thinking, instant suffering!" Good practice or bad practice, at least you're practicing or trying to practice. Move and you are trapped; miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. Turning away and touching are both wrong I like to think of it like pandiculation: the involuntary or semi-voluntary act of stretching, yawning, etc. Housecats do it all the time, especially the very mellow and happy ones. The body and mind want to release tension and stress. Concentration is shifting the mind off of these latent tensions, almost like putting a dog in a crate so it calms down. The rest is just watching it unfold. In fact if one has a lot of physical tension, these kinds of exercises may be very useful vs immediately going for the sitting practice in fixed posture: https://kustomkitgymequipment.com/blogs/news/pandiculation-exercises/ nice obelisk idiot fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 05:34
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A brief unsolicited quasi-rant for anyone newish to or struggling with practice: Don't think that everyone is doing, like, perfect sitting practice non-stop for years and years at a time. People go through periods of more or less practice, most people I'd consider worth listening to about practice related stuff sometimes go for quite long periods without formally sitting. It's mostly just monastics or people very deeply involved in a community in a formal role that are most consistent (though that's not a hard and fast rule, either). There's a reason why the easiest ways to actually have a prolonged consistent period of uninterrupted practice is as part of a community or particularly on a retreat where there simply isn't an alternative. poo poo is just hard to fit in and the nature of life in a society is that stuff will always come up. If you're fortunate enough to have the time and energy to be especially consistent for a while, by all means do make the most of it, just don't feel like a failure if and when life gets busy again, yknow? I mean this earnestly: do what you can and with a particular eye towards what actually feels sustainable to you. Figuring out what you don't mind keeping up with and what fits into your life consistently is, imo, one of the biggest challenges long term. A lot of people like the idea of fancy practices but that's usually the stuff people give up first when life gets hectic. Very few commitments to practice make it past having to take care of a newborn. While time to practice to some extent comes and goes, that core skill of pulling awareness back to the present is generally something that will stick with you even when life gets hectic. When it becomes a habituated skill it starts to infuse an element of practice into whatever you're doing, so long as you're living ethically. That said, if you have the time and energy to be especially consistent for a while, by all means do so: long periods of unbroken practice are a very worthwhile thing to aspire to. apologies for the double post
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Dec 5, 2023 05:40
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It's funny, whenever I feel like I have a strong grip on upholding the 5th precept, I'm presented with an opportunity and immediately find myself bargaining, wanting to grasp and make excuses (to be social, today was stressful, etc). It makes me feel like The idea of mastery is a misleading concept, at least for me. The word mastery evokes this idea of completion, or a set immutable quality. It's early on in my practice to say this but I feel that I'll always be starting again and again, and the real work is consistency that I'll always be striving for
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Dec 5, 2023 22:23
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