| | Author: JamesAlexander
I find this topic very interesting, since I'm currently attending a 4 day course/retreat that's based on the dzogchen method. However, I find the shamata and insight maps to be very clearcut and helpful and I'm therefore struggling a bit in terms of which maps to use.
It seems to me that the practice we're doing, which is divided into several levels, kinda fuses shamata and vipasana together. The 3 first stages are:
1. NEUTRAL AWARENESS (resting in awareness without judging, getting caught up) My teacher said that this can serve as shamata training, because resting in this state requires stability. Instead of having one object to focus attention on, it's more about just keeping the correct attention on whatever object that arises. 2. CHOICELESS AWARENESS (resting in the same awareness as mentioned in stage 1, but in addition to "turning of" the judging tendency, you're also turning of the tendency to bring one object to the foreground of awareness, while keeping others in the background. This seems to require a higher degree of stabilization and the ability to "let go" more, 3. TWO-WAY DIRECTED AWARENESS (continuing the type of attention developed through stages 1 and 2, but in addition paying attention to awareness itself ). I have experienced this to bring about some of the same insights as formal vipasana practice does, because when trying to pay attention to the faculty thats being attentive, your drilling holes in what used to be a solid conception of a "subject" a "perceiver" a "self" etc...
Does this actually line up with Dzogchen? I'm not very familiar with the maps used in that tradition, but I've been told that the method above draws on Dzogchen teachings.
JamesAlexander |