Encounter with feelings
mockeymind
Veteran
In mindfulness meditation we encounter rising and ceasing of feelings. Learning from it, I learned that if we simply acknowledge such as pain, anger, happiness, calmness etc., It somehow felt being just an observer of things. Even good feelings should be handled with care, avoiding clinging or attachment to it. Not a push and pull scenario but rather stay still.
I am following a session of talks about it and was mentioned that in deep states of meditation, one can actually see where or how thoughts are formed? the same thing when it will cease. Anybody had these experience of rising and ceasing of thought in detail? How does it feel knowing how it formed and manifested.
The Buddha didn't tell us to avoid suffering but welcome it as an experience to "know" its causes and eventually cessation.
When we practice this way, will it lead to wisdom and deeper understanding?
Comments
I am a beginner, but I'm excited to look forward to the day when I'm not so clingy or easily upset by negative happenings and thoughts. I wish I could say that I've had that experience, and yeah I don't see how it wouldn't lead to wisdom, etc. Are you following sessions on youtube or elsewhere?
Does it? Only one way to find out!
@mockeymind
Dependent origination is just meditations demonstration of the cycling and interconnections of all sense data.
Only our identification with this sense data prevents us from objectively observing this data's full birth, life and fadings away.
Ones success at achieving such equanimity simply depends on how high a priority you are prepared to make of it, over everything else.
@silver Are you following sessions on youtube or elsewhere?
It was talks given by Theravada monks - Forest tradition - downloaded most of the teaching.
Ajahn Chac mention it on his several dharma talks - Thoughts are just thoughts, nothing more nothing less. It's impermanence makes them undesirable to cling. Like when anger or pain arises we simply say anger, anger, anger - or pain we say pain pain pain. And eventually it will reveals its true nature. Nothing but rising and ceasing. I try not pass judgement to it.
We can welcome this thoughts as an experience of looking things, not complaining, not judging - just paying attention. I'm also new to meditation. May your meditation be fruitful.
@how - From what my limited knowledge understand it - Dependent origination is like an engine- dependent on various element to work. Are you saying it will eliminate or reduce its cycle? will it eventually shut down the fuelling and leads to freedom? lesser rebirth?
What is a lesser rebirth @mockeymind?
Our life events and everyday living shape our thoughts and emotions. When we sit with a thought or feeling all the way through, we don't feed it, enhance it, or identify with it. When we do this, we are in control, and nothing else is controlling us, not even our emotions. This is not a practice to become emotionless or anything like that. I see it as a way to keep up good karma, and it helps us avoid causing harm to ourselves or others.
correct me if i'm wrong - once we started to less desire/cling- would this rise to wisdom that will conquer Ignorance? since ignorance leads to formation, consciousness, name and form, six senses etc. in my understanding ignorance is a major reason of endless rebirth. So if one rises to wisdom by not cling/desire- would this be resulting less rebirths?
Your distractive correction does not answer my question @mockeymind...
But don't feel obliged to try to fill the gap, yet alone mind it...
DO has general and specific meanings which are fraught with potential disagreement, usually of minutia by those more interested in the scholarly than the experiential.
But....
For me it intimately describes the connections of any sense data's evolution or devolution. It is more of a meditative road map of often witnessed processes, not as an actual engine of those processes. I brought it up because your dissection of feelings can be aided by the study of DO just as it can do the same for what you see, hear, smell, taste or think.
Because it only describes how things link & unlink, it eliminates or reduces nothing.
You can follow this road map to see that linking or unlinking, just as you can build up or dissolve those links but DO does not do those things...you do.
As for less or more rebirth, my primary interest is to resolve what ever karmic inertia I have inherited.
Because I appear to be the compilation of many diverse streams of karma, what ever Karma that is not resolved is unlikely to remain any more cohesive after my death
as it was before my birth. As such, less rebirth or more rebirth, seems more ego descriptive than what I think I currently see.