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Meditations focused on cultivating pleasant sensations?

GeminiVIGeminiVI
edited June 2012 in Meditation
Does anyone have instructions for cultivating pleasant sensations in meditation. The only teachers I know of that teach pleasant oriented meditations are Shinzen Young and Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo. Shinzen teaches to focus on a pleasant sensation and to try and spread it throughout the body. Ajahn Lee teaches teaches something similar, but more breath oriented.

Here is a list of meditations that are oriented towards cultivating a pleasant sensation that I know of:

Metta.

Body scan, relaxing each part of the body then moving on to the next.

Focusing on a relaxing sensation in the body and trying to spread it.

Focusing on a breath related sensation in the body and trying to use to breath to spread it.

Taking a pleasant sensation as the object of meditation, and either trying to spread it or just letting it be.



Does anyone know of any other meditation techniques, hopefully more effective then these, centered around cultivating the pleasant? If you do please post a link or your own tutorial.

PS: Would the Zen practitioners, or rather those who would advise against "striving" / "goal" oriented meditations please refrain from posting repudiations. I'm trying to cultivate a positive feed back loop so as to strengthen the desire to meditate, instead of it feelings like a chore.

Comments

  • howhow Veteran Veteran
    Aauuuhh, maybe you could post a thread without placing qualifyers for who should or shouldn't respond or what they should say.
  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran
    Does anyone have instructions for cultivating pleasant sensations in meditation.
    I don't think I've ever set out to cultivate pleasant sensations in meditation, though on a good day they do sometimes arise.
  • GeminiVIGeminiVI
    Don't you mean you've never set out to cultivate pleasant sensations on porpoise?
  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran
    Don't you mean you've never set out to cultivate pleasant sensations on porpoise?
    :p
  • PrairieGhostPrairieGhost Veteran
    GeminiVI
    PS: Would the Zen practitioners, or rather those who would advise against "striving" / "goal" oriented meditations please refrain from posting repudiations.
    But - but -

    meh.
  • PrairieGhostPrairieGhost Veteran
    edited June 2012
    Ok, one possibility is, rather than doing 1 hour every day and finding it a chore, you could try, one time, to say to yourself, ok, I'm going to do this all day. Making a big effort to get through into bliss, even a little bliss or comfort in watching the breath, can be useful because after you've felt that, it becomes much easier to persuade your mind and body to meditate again. The big thing is making sure you feel ok with letting go of all the distractions for one day.
  • GeminiVIGeminiVI
    Thank you @PrairieGhost. I like that idea. I just listened, and posted in another thread, a dharma talk about Chan Master Hau, which took on a theme about effort.

    It sounds like I stifled something you had to say. Please, speak freely. I was just hoping to discourage repudiations without a constructive contribution to what I'm trying to achieve.
  • PrairieGhostPrairieGhost Veteran
    edited June 2012
    No, I was just being facetious.

    In my experience though, manipulating the experience of meditating, although it's taught by lots of teachers, doesn't work.
  • SabreSabre Veteran
    edited June 2012
    Hi!

    It seems like you are mainly talking about pleasant bodily sensations. These can arise in meditation, but how about pleasant mental sensations? So how about the jhanas?
    http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-samadhi/jhana.html

    But already before the jhanas, if the mind becomes still and focussed, that is so nice. In my opinion much nicer than any bodily sensation.

    Also the practice of metta provides lots of fun and joy to me.

    Metta!
    Sabre
  • SonghillSonghill Veteran
    According to Szu-hsin Wu-shin of Huang-lung (1044–1115) meditation or dhyâna is described as follows:

    "The practice consists in abandonments. ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it. As your self-reflection grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe. The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is."
  • genkakugenkaku Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
    Aauuuhh, maybe you could post a thread without placing qualifyers for who should or shouldn't respond or what they should say.
    @how -- What are you ... some kind of spoilsport?!

    Just tell me what I want to hear and my 'practice' will be as smooth and scrumptious as mayonnaise! :)
  • howhow Veteran Veteran
    edited June 2012
    Sorry Genkaku, it was either balloon popping or
    more meditative waxing of the dolphin.
    (no relation to Porpoise)
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