On May 29, 2007, at 1:35 PM, Stu wrote:
Bhairitu said
In fact in other systems it's no great crime if
you miss some meditations.
Yes. I wonder if I would not be better served by going to a
different practice. If for no other reason than after 30 years of
this maybe its time to explore some other areas of the brain. I
have really enjoyed reading Sally Kempton's "Heart of Meditation"
where she suggests "playing" with meditation, trying different
approaches. Not taking the darn thing so seriously. Her Guru,
Swami Muktananda wrote a book on the importance of this playfulness.
I agree. It's important to have familiarity with different styles of
meditation experientially--and if you can keep that at the level of
"play" you're already well on the way to success. Ideally there
should be no special division between practicing and not practicing
meditation. As the meditation master Dilgo Khyentse said:
"The everyday practice of the Great Perfection is simply to develop a
complete carefree acceptance, an openness to all situations without
limit.
We should realize openness as the playground of our emotions and
relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.
We should experience everything totally, never withdrawing into
ourselves as a marmot hides in its hole. This practice releases
tremendous energy which is usually constricted by the process of
maintaining fixed reference points. Referentiality is the process by
which we retreat from the direct experience of everyday life.
Being present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by
welcoming the sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut
through the barriers created by habitual emotional patterns.
When we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should
develop the feeling of opening ourselves out completely to the entire
universe. We should open ourselves with absolute simplicity and
nakedness of mind. This is the powerful and ordinary practice of
dropping the mask of self-protection.
We shouldn't make a division in our meditation between perception and
field of perception. We shouldn't become like a cat watching a mouse.
We should realize that the purpose of meditation is not to go "deeply
into ourselves" or withdraw from the world. Practice should be free
and non-conceptual, unconstrained by introspection and concentration.
Vast unoriginated self-luminous wisdom space is the ground of being -
the beginning and the end of confusion. The presence of awareness in
the primordeal state has no bias toward enlightenment or non-
enlightenment. This ground of being which is known as pure or
original mind is the source from which all phenomena arise. It is
known as the great mother, as the womb of potentiality in which all
things arise and dissolve in natural self-perfectedness and absolute
spontaneity."
>
> I wonder if this incessant need to eat, sleep
> and brush my teeth is healthy?
Eating sleeping and brushing are not a great metaphor for
meditation. Eating and sleeping are physiological necessities. We
stop - we die. There is no choice involved here.
Can we equate TM to toothbrushing? Both have benefits to their
habitual practice. On the other hand those who don't brush their
teeth face terrible dental problems eventually. What lies in store
for the millions of people with out a meditation practice? Is it
as bad as gingivitis?
Does anybody else here feel this strong need to meditate after so
many years of habitual practice? Its as if the neural networks
have been redesigned to NEED meditation 2 x a day. Is this healthy?
When one reaches a calm state in meditation, this state, a state
without thought content, can become very addicting. I would venture
that most long-term TMers are in fact, addicted to this state and the
neurotransmitters it triggers.
Addiction, even to meditative states, is not healthy.
