Something I liked

[CFTraveler]

http://www.barrylong.org/statements/meditation.shtml

Sorry, don't know how to describe it.

[SoulSail]

Great article.

I've never been a fan of those Tibetan (and many other) traditions that suggest it takes most of one's life, assuming one lives long enough, to attain liberation through meditation. I have a deep love for many Tibetan practices and takes on The Buddha, but certainly the Buddha didn't teach this lifelong struggle business. It wasn't his experience. I think that's when we see Religion enter the picture and wisdom exit. More, if people like Eckhart Tolle can go from a life of utter misery to utter freedom in one cascading collapse of self overnight, simply by recognizing the present moment as the only moment, and the mind as separate from awareness, then we certainly can hang up the idea of needing to sit our lives away.

I also enjoyed the rest of the article ; )

Thanks for sharing.

[Korpo]

It depends on what you try to achieve and where you are starting from.

I think the role of such lifetimes as the Tibetan ones can be to sort many, many things out from many other lifetimes. It may also be that for the finer and subtler states much more refinement and seclusion is needed.

I say this because I also believe there are multiple stages of liberation. The Buddha's own practices always progress through many phenomena along the way, from the grossest to the subtlest. Buddhism even describes many stages of liberation - once-returners and such.

Eckhart Tolle was not getting there by virtue of practice, but by grace. He was ready to have this experience, though. It was not random. We cannot know how many lifetimes it took for his being to get where he was when it just happened. The fact that he spent two years basically blissed out before doing anything with it makes me think that a lot within had to be processed before the changes could even be halfway processed. I don't think these things happen at random.

When we see the apple on the ground it seems so easy. We never wonder about the decades that it might have taken to season the tree. From the apple we cannot see the process, but it was a process, a complete transformation, and it began long before there was an apple. You cannot tell from the apple what it took to grow it, but within the apple you find the seeds to start the same process anew. There will have to be another growth process to make more apples from this one. Just like the fruit spreads trees, the teachers spread growth and the potential to be there one day, too.

In this sense, everything can happen. Nobody tells you your account in the karma bank upfront. Practicing is usually the best way to see what is possible and what not. It might happen tomorrow. It might take a while.

[LPCF]

As always, people can find different things of value in an article. I agree with much of what is written there but especially like the stress he puts on how essential it is forgive everyone, without exception, if one wants to develop spiritually:

"
The only way to be intelligent and free of these prisoners is to free the lot – now! How dare you be resentful of someone or of what someone did to you? How dare you be so unintelligent? How dare you hate someone?"

Regarding how much meditation is needed to be become spiritually liberated, I think Oliver has made an important point: it depends on the individual and his/her needs and state of development. Life long deep meditation might be necessary for some, but not necessarily for others.

[SoulSail]

I'm in full agreement with LPCF's and Oliver's articulate comments.

More, I think it's important to back up a step and view as much of the meditation terrain as possible--not everyone that takes on meditation is concerned with finding what the Buddha did, or what Eckhart did. Many are happy to settle for less, a little peace of mind now and then would be just fine, thank you. Lower blood pressure? Super! Count me in.

The reasons for meditating are as varied as the number of practices one can choose from.

Me? I'm going for broke. I believe The Buddha pierced very real blockades and stumbled into freedom, and he did so by following a structured approach, a formula that emitted enough feedback for him to refine to perfection, make notes, and pass them all down. And from that perspective, I believe if one's intent is to take up the same goal, he or she must heed the wisdom passed down from those who have also pierced the blockade, whether Tibetan, Irish, or Eskimo. How long enlightenment takes is a secondary matter.

Yet, I find some peculiarities among populations made up largely of Buddhists. One: many worship the Buddha as a God. Two: many don't believe they can attain enlightenment. That's for the Buddha. But he never claimed deity, nor did he suggest the way to freedom was his at the exclusion of everyone else. If you keep going, you'll find that many (impossible to quantify, really) Buddhists devote themselves to meditation and "secret" practices for life (as the author alluded to), yet do so with these fallacies firm in mind. I think that's what the article CFT posted was addressing in that paragraph. We can see the same plot in any religion--you get the bare thing initially, and then many years later you have an onion of ceremonies, formalities, and other hitchhikers. (We're already on thin ice using the term "religion" when we talk about core Buddhism, but I'll keep this short).

If Buddha's example is my guide toward liberation, and I sit in a cave all my life practicing the path, I may find it takes a very long time. The guy next to me may be doing the same thing, only, he's scared witless by his own existence and the unavoidable end of it, so he's praying to the Buddha instead, hoping for mercy. So your points stand: how long it takes is an equation with multiple variables. My variables may not look like yours. I may have more or fewer. We're in agreement there.

Yet, I cringe when I read Buddhist texts that assert how this process WILL take most of my life, as if the author knows this as fact. That's nonsense, right? Such an assertion may be based on his or her experience, but then that's a rabbit trail we would have to unwind in order to understand why he or she's willing to make such an absolute statement in the first place. How messed up was this guy to start with? How lucid?

And yes, Grace may find us first, as it did Eckhart. Who knows? A car reeling out of control may find us even sooner on a dark street when we're texting a friend, not paying attention.

Now, I just realized something here as I type.

I doubt much of what I write is revelation to anyone here. You're smart people. You know all this and more. But I write here for myself mostly, so please just take my input as such and keep your feedback coming. I'm only now waking up in my life and need to pound out these observations as if I were the first to come upon them. Most of this stuff winds up in my journal, your comments included.

Not long after I turned 40, I turned around in my seat and noticed a movie projector behind me, casting light and shadows on the screen up front. This thing was projecting a film I'd confused for reality for all these years. Not once had I considered that there was anything but that story on that screen. I couldn't tell where it began and I ended, because I was the central character. So these days I spend a lot of time disassembling the projector, pulling long ribbons of film across the room so I can see the individual frames...and I suspect I have a long road. I only hope a cave and the rest of what I've got isn't necessary to pull this thing off.

Soul

[CFTraveler]

Soul, I think most of us do that- I sometimes learn from what I write and wonder who really wrote this or that- we're such peculiar creatures that way.
Anyway, I like the dialogue that this theme brought up- interesting and fascinating.

[Korpo]

Hello, SoulSail.

I know what you're saying about the existing practice of Buddhism, and even the historical practice, and I agree.

I will use another example, I came over it when reading a few posts about the Goenka method of vipassana practice. I very soon found also interesting remarks how there were many teachers not believing that attaining jhana was a very achievable goal. The poster also quoted Buddhaghosa, IIRC, the author of a renowned early commentary on the Buddha's teachings, that one in a million or less achieves it. The poster was critical of that attitude, BTW.

Jhana is central to some teachings of the Buddha about meditation. The 4 (or sometimes 8 ) jhanas denote states of consciousness extremely conducive for the practice of insight. They're extremely well-balanced states of concentration. The practice of concentration on a meditation object is training to attain the jhanas. The jhanas themselves then provide the extreme clarity of mind needed to practice insight meditation as the Buddha did - they're tools, just as the microscope is a tool.

In discussions between Buddhists in web forums I sometimes saw this pattern - "Concentration is not meditation." This is a mental body stance - one thing must be either one or the other, black or white. The concentration of jhana is not the ultimate attainment, and hence not insight meditation itself. So the statement is true. But the state of jhana is a wonderful prerequisite to practice insight and work on attaining the highest discernment, which in turn will effect the liberation.

I doubt the Buddha would have described the tools if they weren't needed. He did describe the tools needed for liberation and reminded us to not confuse them with liberation itself. It's interesting to see how it ended up, though, where so many different opinions pop up. The comment about the 1 in a million that attain jhana seems to be the same kind of discouragement you mentioned. Some teach only "access concentration," a state described as being similar to jhana in effect, but easier to attain. And others teach differently. It all depends on what each of them can imagine is possible, I'd say.

My take on Buddhism goes back to the roots. The Buddha asked a central question - how does suffering arise? He then proceeded to understand it, its roots, and the conditions leading to it. Then he unraveled how it could be undone. He described the condition of the human being as he saw it, then he saw it how it could be, and then he laid down how one could be converted into the other.

It doesn't matter how long it takes or what anyone believes about it, really. Only practicing it can tell.

BTW, the Buddha didn't sit in a cave. Yes, he practiced many things during his life, but he found them either unsatisfactory (ascetism) or insufficient (concentration), so he sat down below a tree and contemplated all he knew and pierced the veil. The story of the Buddha's life is not only one of meditation, but of experimentation in many different paths.

[darron]

Did you just make an allusion to the allegory of the cave Soulsail? cause if ya did, you just totally earned some respect points.

[SoulSail]

Did you just make an allusion to the allegory of the cave Soulsail? cause if ya did, you just totally earned some respect points.

Hey Darron,

While I'd like to earn respect points, the cave I spoke about was in relation to the original article posted by CFTraveler; however, I'm all over the Forms business as you can see from my film projector analogies.

No, I'm just another guy, as was Plato, stumbling over the same problems, reaching for adequate analogies. Whoever runs this show must be like a child. Who else could be so endlessly amused watching wind-up toys perform the same stunt over and over?

Soul

[Korpo]

Whoever runs this show must be like a child. Who else could be so endlessly amused watching wind-up toys perform the same stunt over and over?

Or like a parent - so proud to see any of their creations succeed on their own. :D

[SoulSail]

Well said, Oliver.

[darron]

Hey Darron,

While I'd like to earn respect points, the cave I spoke about was in relation to the original article posted by CFTraveler; however, I'm all over the Forms business as you can see from my film projector analogies.

No, I'm just another guy, as was Plato, stumbling over the same problems, reaching for adequate analogies. Whoever runs this show must be like a child. Who else could be so endlessly amused watching wind-up toys perform the same stunt over and over?

Soul

aww, oh well :D

[thedevil]

Meditation just means using your mind. In Buddhism its called mindfulness. Its about being more aware/sentient to the truth as the author stated

Its not even necessary to meditate in lotus position. In actuality you can meditate any where at any time no matter what you are doing. We do things like lotus position or chants because they are like more concentrated efforts. It's kind of like the difference between lifting 50 lb weights vs 10lb weights when you work out. You just gotta do what you know is best for you personally I'd say. I personally like to lay flat on my back but have Aldo been able to achieve tremendous results in my energy work when I am in lotus position.