If my understanding about this is correct: With mantra yoga, what is minded is the mantra. With TM, the 'mindfulness' of the mantra as a focus is minimised by the technique which reduces greatly the tendency to concentrate or effort.
The idea is contact with something or somewhere you are not, that is with something transcendent to what you currently think you are. With mindfulness, what is minded is the current state of experience, but not all mindfulness methods are focused, with some, if you just happen notice these things going on around you, you don't mind, and focus is minimised. Coming back to the breath much in the same way one handles the mantra in TM serves a similar function in these minimalist concentrative mindfulness methods. Mindfulness assumes that the current state of experience is the reality, that it is immanent and pervasive and not transcendent. In other words, the mantra versions of meditation assume you are ignorant of this, while the mindfulness versions of meditation assume you are already the reality of life and nothing need be done. The POV differences in these approaches can have a significant effect on how one thinks about and approaches 'enlightenment'. That so many attempt and fail at all these approaches indicates that no particular method or philosophy is a sterling example of a single superior approach to resolving the issue. My own experience also indicates that as a practice matures, experiences during meditation undergo long term shifts, so that we cannot assume that it is always going to continue to generally work the way it did in the beginning, when usually we are a bit more invested and intrigued by something new in our lives. For me, TM is not, as Buck would say 'transcending meditation'. There is no longer any hint of the idea or experience of something I would call transcendence now. It was a useful concept when I started out, but now it seems like an ancient myth. TM and mindfulness now are pretty much the same to me. There is a convergence. Barry had posted some time ago a report about research that indicates that natural language metaphors covertly influence reasoning, that is, for example, the way we speak of our approach to this thing we call self-realisation', 'enlightenment', 'god-realisation', warps our mind in a certain direction and this can affect our approach, understanding, and practice to these spiritual disciplines that we currently practise, have abandoned, or bitch about. In my own case I found the continued insistence within TM of reaching subtle levels etc., eventually became a major barrier. I almost forgot why I originally started on the spiritual trek which came about from an experience of immanence, not transcendence. If you think there is a 'self' and a 'Self', rather than a 'Void' and 'no self', this can have a profound effect on experience and interpretation, as can a belief in God rather than thinking there is no such thing as God. My own practices, while initially they were intellectually informed by various Western and Eastern traditions, essentially became atheistic over time, but it still worked out fine. But that this worked out for me does not mean applying the same stance would work for someone with a different temperament, with a different initial set of conditioned behaviours and conditioned thinking patterns. So as to whatever practice you are engaged with, whatever tradition etc., if any, what you hear and how it is presented to you can have a significant effect on the practice as your experience evolves, and can be an aid or a barrier to further progress depending. Because traditions are basically cultural and behavioural ruts, I think it is a liability to put all one's eggs in one basket. A healthy degree of scepticism, curiosity - the will to find out - can become very important, in other words, do not expect enlightenment to be handed to you on a golden platter, without some initiative and independent intelligence on your part. So if the Master, the Priest, the Organisation, or whatever, puts the doggy bowl in front of you and you lap it up unthinkingly, you get what you deserve. This also has relevance to the idea of 'not deluding the ignorant'; because the 'ignorant' are deluded anyway, it really does not matter that much what might be said to them. So hiding a particular view about how 'the enlightened' experience life may not be necessary at all, since no matter what you say it will be misunderstood. There should always be a way to express the full range of human experience in a way the both intrigues and captivates people without the need to hide things from them. As a spiritual organisation ages, its priesthood tends to hold back the gems of useful knowledge about development of experience, kind of as a self preservation issue. If reality is all pervasive, the only thing that is, then how in fact could it be hid? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <LEnglish5@...> wrote : TM isn't a mindfulness practice in any typical sense of the word used by meditation practitioners, and by anyone else, for that matter. ... other than people who just tack it on and say "TM is mindfuless" without thinking things through (I've done this myself, so I'm pointing more fingers inward than outward, here). L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote : On 5/2/2014 9:45 AM, curtisdeltablues@... mailto:curtisdeltablues@... wrote: I am open to Maharishi's perspective that in fact I am so habituated from his practice that I am not actually practicing a mindfulness practice at all. But my experience leads me to believe that I am having a different subjective experience so I am working with what I have. > This becomes very simple when you realize that TM IS mindfullness. Anything can be an object of meditation - a thought, a sound, a mantra or an image or just being aware of breathing in and out. The idea in both is to transcend thinking and to get beyond discursive reasoning. This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus http://www.avast.com/ protection is active.
