Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Meditating on concepts
I struggle with this. I don't have much of a problem meditating on the breath anymore. I am able to still my thoughts quite well. I struggle, however, with meditation on other things like concepts. I can do analytical meditation, since this is basically contemplation which I do all the time anyways. But when it comes to focusing on the conclusion or main point I really struggle. It just seems so strange i'm just not used to it at all.
0
Comments
Let Go.
Don't grasp.
release.
I suggest: Read. Read. Read. Read. Until that concept you are studying can be incorporated (lit. taken into the body). Make it your own. So when you are in a state of concentration and calmness, and next you (seeking insight) bring to consciousness the particular concept, it will seem that much more familiar.
like what concept? what exactly are you doing when you say you are "meditating on the concept"?
Just do samadhi. The book knowledge can be a hindrance so don't worry so much about it. Analytical meditation in the Buddhist sense as I understand it is not actively thinking but allowing insight to arise (and clarify naturally) as the strength of samadhi takes place. In that case, you are not sitting there thinking. A friend once said 'If you want to think, do it after' which I found to be good advice. It's easy to worry that nothing is happening during meditation but if you are really doing the meditation (as per your tradition and teacher) then my experience that is enough.
To me, what you call "analytical meditation" seems to be the right way to go about it. You take a concept...say "world hunger" is the concept you want to meditate on. So you take that concept, and you focus on it...and you allow your brain to come up with thought after thought about world hunger. You don't try to focus on conclusion or on a main point, but instead you let your brain consider it from all angles.
So..in a way, you are analyzing, but also you are not analyzing because you are not trying to rationalize anything. You just let your brain explore the concept openly.
Does that help?
Edit: Just realized "world hunger" was a poor example...as its not really a concept. Its a fact. An unfortunate one at that.
I feel like so many people on here act like you're not supposed to use your mind at all. I've never read anything by a real buddhist teacher who suggests such a thing. The dalai lama makes clear that "insight" is gained, in part, by using your brain and thinking logically.
Partly what is necessary to do this is a good foundation in shamatha-- then your mind will be a bit more pliable and will stay on whatever you put it on. My advice is not to worry so much about the tendency to uncontrolled analysis. It will lessen over time as you get used to the practice. The most important thing is not to be too aggressive with the mind.
If you really find you can't stay with the feeling for any time, I would get up and walk around, stretch, etc. then sit down and just do shamatha for five or ten minutes. That should help to ground you enough to gain some pliability.
Including meditating on emptiness? I thought that was essentially what special insight was.
:uphand::uphand::uphand::uphand::uphand:
If you can tell me what emptiness is, perhaps I will try meditating on it. On the other hand, if you could tell me what emptiness was, that wouldn't be emptiness, would it? That would just be "emptiness."
Maybe the search for emptiness has to begin with "emptiness".
IMHO calm abiding is eventually insufficient, at that point there has to be a view.
But it still wouldn't be the eggroll.
Yes, I think that is probably true: What other option is there when seeking the truth than to address and penetrate the lies?
Use the rod to unplug the drain. But don't get the rod stuck in the drain.
First stabilizing the mind and making it strong enough for the endeavour of piercing the lies, for one. The Buddha laid out a very robust path in constantly unfolding waves of provisional and definitive meaning to lead sentient beings to freedom from disturbing concepts.
This seems more to do with what you understanding, but I am happy to explore teachings.
Here are a few Tibetan ones which you may be familiar with -
Ordinary shamatha and vipashyana are conceptual approaches. Indeed generation stage which is a form of shamatha is also conceptual. Completion stage, which is a form of vipashyana is conceptual. The first three stages of mahamudra are conceptual.
Not all concepts are bad, some actually help to purify ordinary conceptual grasping while being easy to see through. It is only after the mind has been purified and made strong that true non-conceptual meditation can take place. Saying that only the non-conceptual is important is biased and dismisses most of the important methods that Lord Shakyamuni and his heirs have given us to discover our natural state.
.
No they are not.
Sure if one mentally says 'I wish peace and well-being to all' that is one way they can use to direct their mind for the time being.
The mind is always pure.
It is the incorrect perception of what mind is that is the problem. Hence meditation, hence insight, hence non-clinging.
To say that one has to make the mind pure and strong first before non-conceptual meditation can take place, is a complete misdirection.
Sometimes teachers will teach one to do samatha first so that one has some base stability else it can be hard to see the nature of mind. But this is not to say that non-conceptual is a certain stage that can only be done after xyz. As Huang Po said above, some people can do this immediately, others require some years of practice. It all depends.
No-one said that only the non-conceptual is important.
But what is being pointed out is what the direction of Buddhist meditation is about.
Some people can understand.
And the quotes from all major teachers are available for anyone who cares to hear what they have to say.
Abu
You obviously have a different idea of concepts (prapanca) than I do. If you do shamatha with an object, it is conceptual. If you enter into vipashyana through analysis, that is conceptual. While you may uncover prajna through this, the approach itself is not the natural thought-free state. The approach is a skillful means to discover what goes beyond concepts, but it is not without concept itself. Please explain to me what you mean by saying that shamatha and vipashyana are non-conceptual.
Saying the mind is always pure is merely an opinion. Until one has exhausted all of the vasanas in dharmata so that everything arises as great purity, action is needed. One can of course do so by maintaining the recognition "The mind is always pure", but this is itself a gradual conceptual approach similar to generation stage in Vajrayana.
This is why the gradual approach was ascendant in the great Samye debate where Hva-shang was defeated. If you are going to quote scholars from my own tradition, at least understand the historical context their words were spoken in.
You don't make the mind pure, you purify the mind of the kleshas. In other words, you don't create wisdom. You remove confusion. As to strengthening the mind, this is the whole point of shamatha-- to make the mind strong and pliant and capable of being placed on any object without wavering. Shamatha is not liberation. It merely provides the space free from distraction to apply the higher teachings.
Yes, it depends on whether the mind has been trained before. In my own school, the view is introduced immediately and then additional means are applied as necessary to stabilize the view. Nobody is saying you need to proceed linearly. In fact, I have never stated that in this thread.
And my point from the beginning has not been that the non-conceptual is unimportant but rather that you can't seem to read what the original poster asked for and respond in kind without denigrating what they are asking for. The OP didn't ask for your opinion on non-conceptuality. If you are inclined to pontificate on the opposite of what they asked, start a new thread. All that was asked for was advice on a conceptual meditation.