General Practice Updates

Definitely go check out the "tummo" thread I linked to in the other post.

What do you mean not putting stock in kundalini stuff? Definitely gets really strong if you sit intensively. I suppose there may be people out there who never get any energy going from meditation, but I've never met one yet. If you cultivate it with additional practices it gets quite wild and interesting, and eventually really, really awesome.

ETA: even Christian mystics experience this stuff - they call it "consolations".

I think it's good to have a healthy skepticism toward theories about subtle energies (e.g. kundalini, chi, etc.) and how they related to practice. But, it's a plain fact that this phenomenon is experienced in the body for lots of people. Practice (meditation, yoga, qigong, etc.) seems to awaken our awareness to these energies, as well as give them some kind of boost.

One of the most useful things the energies help us accomplish is to find areas of tension and clinging in the body. That's one way of understanding what is meant by energy "blockages". If we relax into practice and allow the body's energies to work through these blockages/contractions (which isn't always pleasant), the results are wide-ranging. As mind and body are very much interrelated, opening the body is a way of opening the mind.

Also, you're certainly not doing anything wrong (in case you were wondering). The chattering is just a sign of something in your body being worked through. If it arises again, apply mindfulness and equanimity and allow it to do its thing.

Tut tut. Is not the idea of clinging and tension and working through things just as arbitrary an explanation for an actual physical phenomena as the traditional Hindu or Chinese views? It's just based in modern secular Western ideas about how the mind and body work and our favorite terminology. Is there any such thing as "energy" in this context? Who knows.

The fact is, the stuff happens, whatever terminology you wish to use. The fact is once you have "released the blockages" and this imaginary "energy" is moving freely you can read the instructions for pretty much any Hindu or Chinese practice, follow them, and get exactly the results they describe with almost no training (like on first or second try). Results may be described more poetically/metaphorically than western secularists would describe them, but are accurate descriptions of experience.

For example I had "flames shooting out of my palms" the other day. Actual fire flames like the oxygenation of combustible material? No, of course not. But it felt exactly like I was shooting flames out of my palms.

Love ya, just love to roll my eyes over this western secular discomfort with traditional spiritual practices.

"Love ya, just love to roll my eyes over this western secular discomfort with traditional spiritual practices. "

Ah, but! There are plenty of traditional spiritual types who display much discomfort with Western secular explanations. The pot and kettle yell "black!" and point fingers at each other

I say pick the explanation that helps you and others to do the work properly. Of course, that's my Western pragmatic bias talking.

LOL. Touché!

Although... if you went to an extreme of secularism, and decided that awakening, for example, was a neurological change induced by focusing attention on body sensations, in which one then ended up with a loss of the sense of agency....

would that work? it might I guess. would it be satisfying? or would you end up with a sense of disorientation but no context for integrating it into life and wander around wondering what the hell you were going to do now? or would a sense of wholeness, satisfaction and pleasure accompany that, by nature of the neural rewiring, and you'd be able to say "nice"?

who knows I guess. i tend to find it appalling, somehow, like reducing Mass to some guy waving crackers around and drinking wine while making noises with his vocal cords. but that's my bias showing...

"I know where you've been hanging out."

Oooh, busted!

The fact is once you have "released the blockages" and this imaginary "energy" is moving freely you can read the instructions for pretty much any Hindu or Chinese practice, follow them, and get exactly the results they describe with almost no training (like on first or second try).


-ona

Yeah, that's a great point. It's interesting to consider that some folks start out with a deliberate yogic-type practice (yogic meaning visualizations and breathing stuff) which is done as the regular meditation practice in a deliberate way and eventually leads to an energy awakening, while other practitioners may start with a more contemplative approach (non-manipulative attention) and come to an energetic awakening with the results you mention-- being able to apply and experience results with many different yogic systems and practices. I"m more the latter type, but it's always intrigued me that the other route is possible too.

Although in my early twenties I attempted to apply an energetic/visualization/breathing practice that a Vajrayana teacher had presented... with disastrous results! Yack... I really messed myself up LOL! But my experience has been that the spontaneous type stuff like you mentioned Tomo usually turn out quite well if allowed to do their thing as Jackson suggested. I guess this is because it's a self-reorganization of the body-mind system from the inside out rather than an attempt by ego to apply a technique and achieve an energetic result.

But my experience has been that the spontaneous type stuff like you mentioned Tomo usually turn out quite well if allowed to do their thing as Jackson suggested. I guess this is because it's a self-reorganization of the body-mind system from the inside out rather than an attempt by ego to apply a technique and achieve an energetic result.

-jake

Well said.

Yeah, for me it all just happened spontaneously, starting with little shivers and twitches, later turning into scenes from "The Exorcist" and still later into "cosmic orgasms" and this ability to do just about any practice with a few tries.

Not sure it gets that extreme for everyone - I seem to have a propensity for wacky energy stuff - but it's certainly a lovely side benefit of practice. Worth the uncomfortable bits. My strategy was always ride it out, as if sitting in the back of a jeep on a bumpy road. Just let it do its thing while maintaining noting or general awareness, depending on what technique I was using at the time. I did do some additional exercises on occasion outside of meditation to increase the energy flow, and that usually ended up causing additional discomfort short term, but moved things along faster, I suspect.

Once the whole system is greased, as it were, there is no more discomfort at all, only this instant access to really cool bliss states and other fun stuff, and the ability to reduce your need for sleep to about 5 hours a night max.

My impression from talking to a very small sample size of practitoners is using this kind of stuff as a supplement to plain meditation speeds the process quite a bit.

"I know where you've been hanging out."
Oooh, busted!



-awouldbehipster

LOL

In my own case the tensions often arose during dark night periods and then tended to release with a lot of emotional release - fear, grief, anger, etc. That might just be my girly emotional tendencies.

ETA: But it seems not unrelated to the biology of emotions. That is if I am afraid that manifests as adrenaline and certain muscle tensions in the stomach area especially (preparation for fight/flight) and rapid fire imagery (mind trying to identify the danger so it can make a good plan for fight/flight). If I am sad, that tends to create a tension in the chest, then the throat (crying pending), then the sinuses and eyes (tears pending). It can be interesting at certain points to be mindful of how ones body is responding to thoughts, memories and external stuff.

I gave my first dharma talk today. I wasn't planning on it, but our scheduled guest speaker never showed up. So one of the guys who's been sitting at DPX for a while suggested we do a silent 20-minute sit and then was gonna just close up the session, but I raised my hand and offered to give a talk, seeing as how I am scheduled to lead the whole thing on Thursday anyway. I ended up doing a different talk from the one I'll be doing on Thursday, having used my sit (which was thus not terribly good as a meditation) to cobble together some thoughts on anatta. So it was pretty off-the-cuff, but I think it actually went well. Folks came up afterwards and thanked me for giving it, so I think people appreciated it.

Nice! What did you say?

Very cool, Zach.



I don't want to pump-up your ego or anything, but I'm glad you had the opportunity to give a talk, based on what I know about you. I'm biased, of course, but I think the people that participate in this forum (which includes you, of course) have a pretty balanced approach to dharma; both theory and practice. Based on your attitude in our forum, as well as your ability to communicate your ideas and understanding clearly, I'm sure you did (and will continue to do) a fantastic job.



And, I second Ona. Can you fill us in on some of the content of your impromptu dharma talk?

Thanks, man! I really appreciate the kind words.

Basically my talk was some thoughts that I'd cobbled together on anatta; it's an often an underexplored concept so I just wanted to give an overview of the notion and its usefulness.

I established the three marks of existence, of which the third is anatta. Then I spent a little time delineating between no-self and not-self, and drilled down into not-self specifically. I spent some time dwelling on the not-selfness of things that we in the West take to be very much self, like thoughts and feelings. I brought in the Buddhist conception of the six senses, of which mind is the sixth (I made the obligatory joke that the sixth sense is the ability to see dead people; nobody laughed, so I had to go back and just clarify that the sixth sense wasn't actually the ability to see dead people, and that I didn't mind if the joke died, but I didn't want to be disseminating false information. That had them laughing pretty well); so I established a model where instead of being the seat of selfness and total perspective, the mind is just another sense organ, and mental formations are sense objects of the same type as sight and sound. In this way we can understand mental formations to arise and cease in just the way as other sense objects arise and cease; instead of being vehicles for the self, they are just another aspect of the material of experience, which we can attach to or not, which we can flow out to or not.

Then I spent a little time talking about how anatta also helps as a practice technique against the clinging to self-view and identity, or bhava; how we suffer when our conceptions of who we are and our place in the world—our senses of body, mind, occupation, persona, talents—are inevitably challenged or removed from us. How when I fuck up at my job, for instance, I suffer because I fucked up, but I also suffer a little more because that element of my identity which is bound up with my occupation has been threatened. So it's useful and helpful to hold these qualities and attributes of ourselves as not-self too.

Finally I spent just a little time on the no-self part of the equation, just to say that we don't have quite as firm a grasp on the question of the nature of self, and whether it exists or not, as we do on what ISN'T self (at least in the Pali Canon), because—and I've talked about this here a little bit, I think—to me the quality of not-self is an attribute which can be seen in all things and thus used as a practice technique, whereas the question of the existence of self, and, 'if these things are not my self, what is?', becomes more academic—it's a question of fact whose applicability to the material of mental experience is more removed. I brought up the Singsapa Sutta to illustrate this division.

All good stuff, Zach.



I think you and I have a similar appreciation for the teaching of anatta as being more like strategy than dogma. That's why I think "not-self" is a more skillful translation than "no-self".



The way I see it, the practice of simply looking around for a sense of self is usually a huge waste of time. I think it's a misunderstanding and misapplication of what self-inquiry is and how it works (a topic for another discussion, I suppose). But the practice of cultivating attention to what is happening in the present, and noticing the nature of sensory appearances, is a much more productive practice. When one can do this from multiple frames of reference (such as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness), recognizing the marks of existence, and thus gaining insight into clinging, delusion, and the possibility for release... well, that's just good practice, right from the start. It's very difficult to flounder around in waste-of-time land when this type of practice is engaged wholeheartedly.

I agree entirely. It's like what I was saying in the effort conversation—it's not terribly productive to try and direct yourself towards the truth, because the truth lies beyond direction, and direction is necessarily concept that emerges from our deluded, sangsaric perspective. But the practice is just chock full of things that are right in front of you, as long as you cultivate mindfulness, effort, attention, and discernment. And the kicker—the thing that makes the practice WORK—is that the truth, or insight, naturally emerges as you put one foot in front of the other. You don't have to grasp no-self; no-self understanding unfolds within you. Like the sun emerging over the horizon as you crest a hill—you're not walking towards the sun. You're walking the path.

I agree entirely. It's like what I was saying in the effort conversation—it's not terribly productive to try and direct yourself towards the truth, because the truth lies beyond direction, and direction is necessarily concept that emerges from our deluded, sangsaric perspective. But the practice is just chock full of things that are right in front of you, as long as you cultivate mindfulness, effort, attention, and discernment. And the kicker—the thing that makes the practice WORK—is that the truth, or insight, naturally emerges as you put one foot in front of the other. You don't have to grasp no-self; no-self understanding unfolds within you. Like the sun emerging over the horizon as you crest a hill—you're not walking towards the sun. You're walking the path.


-cruxdestruct

well said

True.