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Metaphors, similies, and analogies for meditation.. anyone?
Jeffrey
Veteran
in Meditation
I thought of it as you are a stagnant pool and meditation is a spring feeding into the pool that cleans it.
Another thought was that your whole practice over a period is like sitting on your back waiting for shooting stars. Sometimes you see one or two but your time is mostly spent watching. But the few stars you see make a difference in shifting your feelings and attitude.
Another thought was that your whole practice over a period is like sitting on your back waiting for shooting stars. Sometimes you see one or two but your time is mostly spent watching. But the few stars you see make a difference in shifting your feelings and attitude.
1
Comments
A more traditional analogy that I like is one of a dirty pool of water. Our normally active mind is like stirring the water but when we sit and meditate its like we stop stirring and let the dirt settle until eventually the water becomes clear.
Posture
Object that we return to
How we work with our thoughts (unconditionally friendly)
It's like mahayana talks where they say at the beginning of the talk 'now cultivate bodhicitta'. If you could do that you wouldn't need to hear the talk!
Sorry, didn't mean to belittle your tradition or practice. I do think it's a valid approach, just too hard for me at the moment.
. . . like a lotus blossoming or opening/relaxing in its own radiance.
Like the sun always shining on all things when the clouds have cleared . . .
a stream we finally flow with, rather than against.
. . . maybe its just an empty cushion
We don't have to let go, we simply have to not hold on. Freedom is to be able to feel without the added notion of identification that "this is me," "this is who I am." Because it's not. A phrase one of my teachers used to describe the meditative experience is "empty phenomena rolling on." And that's really what's happening. It's empty phenomena with no one behind it, no one to whom it is happening. The problem is that we get attached or react in aversion and that's where we get caught in the story.
In the same way we are often lost in the movies of our mind. There's a Zen story about a hermit monk who painted a tiger on the walls of his cave. He painted it so realistically that when he finished, he looked at it and became frightened. It takes practice to wake up, to emerge from our mind-created worlds.
Kalakarama Sutta
Whatever is seen, heard, sensed or clung to,
is esteemed as truth by other folk,
Midst those who are entrenched in their own views
being 'Such' I hold none as true or false.
This barb I beheld, well in advance,
whereon mankind is hooked, impaled,
'I know, I see `tis verily so'---- no such clinging
for the Tathàgatas.