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Question about waking meditation

kstep123kstep123
edited January 2010 in Meditation
As far as I know, waking meditation is looking at the world around you and contemplating it's beauty by not engaging the mind. At first I had great sucsess with this. I looked at a tree and saw it for what it really was. Not a tree, but some beautiful nameless creation. I would feel an explosion of energy centered around my heart, I would be filled with joy.

Now when I look at the tree, or a bird, or anything, I feel nothing, even if I see it as beautiful and nameless.

Why does it seem that I've digressed in this aspect of meditation? Shoulnt I be getting better at it, not worse?

Comments

  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    Hi, kstep. I went through something very similar during my first contact with Buddhism. It is a confusion. That kind of peak experience is not what Buddhist practice is concerned with at all. If you chase after such things, you will end up very confused, at best.
  • kstep123kstep123
    edited January 2010
    So your saying I should 'go with the flow' and not try to classify my meditations as good or bad, just meditations?

    Or something of that nature.
  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    For starters, yeah. But also, you seem to be confusing the effects with the method. Where did you learn of this waking meditation idea? It doesn't seem like a very well-defined method.
  • kstep123kstep123
    edited January 2010
    From a series called Conversations with God.

    Good books.

    Maybe you could tell me a little about buddhist waking meditation if there is such a thing.
  • PietroPumokinPietroPumokin
    edited January 2010
    in buddhist meditation practices walking meditation is i think usually walking through a circumscribed path, usually in a circle or back and forth in a straight line, and walking along to your breaths and focusing on them, something a little more systematized then just walking and meditating upon things whether it be your legs moving your thoughts or the things you are seeing around you. both are meditations, but the first one which might have a specific name which i don't know is more intensive. the more general "walking as meditation" is not necessarily very intense, it does not require lots of concentration, though it can be very absorbing, but in my opinion would count as going with the flow rather than entering into something like samadhi. HOPE THAT HELPS
    HAHAHA
  • PietroPumokinPietroPumokin
    edited January 2010
    kinhin, in japanese
    or, the chinese which looks a lot cooler, JINGXING

    but nevermind about going into samadhi.
  • kstep123kstep123
    edited January 2010
    That does help, thank you. I see what I was performing and the Buddhist form are very different.
  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    edited January 2010
    I think you two have confused WAKING and WALKING notice the L

    I haven't heard a specific practice for waking. Of course I don't know that wide a knowledge.
  • kstep123kstep123
    edited January 2010
    Oh Jeffrey is right, you mentioned walking meditation Pietro Pumokin, I was talking about waking meditation.

    It was a concept in a series called Conversations with God, and if you guys haven't heard of it before it was probably invented there.
  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    edited January 2010
    contemplating it's beauty by not engaging the mind.

    Ironically thats similar to how my teacher teaches waLking meditation.
  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    kstep123 wrote: »
    From a series called Conversations with God.

    Good books.

    Maybe you could tell me a little about buddhist waking meditation if there is such a thing.

    This book sounds like a potential source of trouble. It's important to distinguish carefully between the goal, method, effects and results. It sounds like this book has taken an effect of the practice as the method.
  • kstep123kstep123
    edited January 2010
    No the book didn't mention anything about the effects, it was just the method I got from the books.

    EDIT: oh I see, your saying that it's an effect of the practice to see things in such a way. Well if you practiced waking meditation often, maybe you would see all things in that light. If that were true, then what would be the difference between achieving it by sitting meditation or by waking meditation?
  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    No, what I'm saying is, what they're encouraging to pursue in their meditation instructions is commonly an effect of meditation practice. A certain capacity for maintaining attention must be established before that effect can be stabilized in familiar situations. A good instruction in meditation would teach you how to build that capacity.
  • jinzangjinzang Veteran
    edited January 2010
    Positive experiences during meditation are like signposts on the road. They show you're headed in the right direction. But if you get out of your car and hug the signpost, you'll never get anywhere.

    In other words, whatever happens during meditation, good or bad, JUST LET IT GO. Whatever happens is real for one moment only. After that, it's history.
  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    I agree with you, Jinzang. The trouble is, this book is explicitly telling people to hug the signpost.
  • PietroPumokinPietroPumokin
    edited January 2010
    kstep123 wrote: »
    Oh Jeffrey is right, you mentioned walking meditation Pietro Pumokin, I was talking about waking meditation.

    It was a concept in a series called Conversations with God, and if you guys haven't heard of it before it was probably invented there.
    oh.... ha HA
    dear me.
  • kstep123kstep123
    edited January 2010
    I understand how it's teaching an effect, but on the link you provided, when people tried to meditate using effects as methods they had no sucsess, but with this one I had much more sucsess than I've had with sitting meditation. Shouldn't that alone justify it?
  • Subjectivity9Subjectivity9
    edited January 2010
    Kstep,

    I like your self, think that meditation is only a tool. If something works than do it.

    S9 sings, “You might take a plane, you might take a train…la/la/la, but you’ll get there just the same.”

    However, I think one important thing has been said here, which I hope you won’t miss/overlook. The mental and/or physical reactions that come out of any practice ("It's a Trip") are not what you are looking for, as they are short lived at best. We are not, by doing meditation, looking for more of the same, (AKA mental stimulation).

    We are trying to peek below the surface of all reactions, and find something more sustainable and permanently satisfying.

    Everything that comes, sure as heck will go. What is behind, beneath, all of this commotion, this suffering that comes on the tail of pleasures, as sure as night follows day?

    There is absolutely nothing that the mind can get, which it will be allowed to hold onto indefinately. And just bringing it back and back won't work either, as mental stimulation repeated and repeated soon loses its original savor.

    So, that if you manage to get the greatest thing that ever existed, right in your hot little hand, then you can only go on to the fear of losing it, or being finally bored by it, or even the pain, after all of that, of continuing to living without it. Because, it will melt away, one way or another.

    On that happy note I leave you. ; ^ ) Investigation closely. What never leaves you? That my friend is the Ultimate.

    Warm Regards,
    S9
  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    kstep123 wrote: »
    I understand how it's teaching an effect, but on the link you provided, when people tried to meditate using effects as methods they had no sucsess, but with this one I had much more sucsess than I've had with sitting meditation. Shouldn't that alone justify it?

    What you've experienced doesn't count as a success, just a highly unstable effect. You have to keep the goal in mind, which is to develop a highly stable, peaceful awareness.

    It is not too surprising that it had this effect. Looking at a tree and trying "see it for what it really is" is very close to a pointing-out instruction. But that is an advanced practice, and you don't yet have the attentional capacity to stabilize the effects of it. As I said, I went through a similar understanding of meditation a long time ago, and experienced a similar effect. In my case, attaching to that effect was very harmful indeed.
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