Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

Trent , modified 14 Years ago at 9/15/09 11:29 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/15/09 11:23 AM

Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

Posts: 361 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Hello everyone,

I am attempting to elicit outstanding questions/theories/wonderings about anything having to do with concentration. Notably, practical (or potentially practical) questions such as "what exactly is it that causes my concentration to become stronger?" Or questions regarding attaining/sustaining the first 8 Samatha Jhanas. If your question doesn't seem practical upon reflection, please ask about it anyway. The root of your question may lead to a practical answer/elucidation that may have not been previously apparent!

Potential leads to remembering/coming up with questions:

-What questions have you asked in the past that have gone unanswered?
-What about this territory seems confusing, vague, or ambiguous?
-Are there parts of this type of practice that seem to you to be "unspoken," and if so, what gives you that feeling?
-Do you have any questions you never asked because you feel they are "insignificant" or too "low level?"
-If you've never practiced Samatha, or stopped practicing Samatha, why is that the case or why did you stop?
-If you feel that the Samatha Jhanas are not useful to your insight practice, could you explain why?

I can't promise to answer these immediately, but I assure you that myself and others will (at least in time) answer any questions you have in this area. You can either post them here, make a new thread, or do both!

Best,
Trent
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Eric Alan Hansen, modified 14 Years ago at 9/15/09 4:26 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/15/09 4:26 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Trent, sure, I'll throw this one out there. It must have been in about 2003, so about 3 years after lay person ordination, 3 Gems, 5 Precepts, etc. daily sitting - mindfulness of breathing - that I developed fairly seamless concentration. Maybe it was access concentration, I don't really know. But is good solid, seamless focus on object right through most sessions. Good. Then nothing happened. I mean, after a while it became kind of boring because I got lots of initial results in my daily life right from day one, but having got to this stage, then nothing big changed. After a few more years all this did in fact change, but in general I still feel that once I had that level of concentration I could have done more than what I did with it. Still able to focus like this, I kept going on like this (another 6 years) knowing only this one sitting technique until the various factors of the jhanas began to manifest. Then I had to wise up, and now I have to get into the vipassana as well. I did this shamata right up to the point where I hit the crossroads with the three characteristics, and now the mode of practice is changing. Looking back on it, maybe it didn't have to be like that. Any comments?
p e a c e
h a n s e n
J Adam G, modified 14 Years ago at 9/15/09 7:48 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/15/09 7:48 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

Posts: 286 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Would a person with ADHD be able to achieve hard jhana states? Or, for that matter, any jhana states at all? Maybe it would be better phrased like this: Is it feasible for someone with moderate to severe ADHD to try and practice shamatha meditation, given that such a person's motivation requires some amount of effectiveness? In other words, if it takes twelve months of consistent, daily practice, it won't get done any time soon because of how miserable concentration practices are when there's never enough concentration to cause the arising of any pleasant jhana factors. I fall quite short of the ideal of "goal-less practice" that is sometimes praised, because I want concentration practice to produce concentration states. If I try to ignore goals, then the motivation is gone. How can a person practice something that they have to talk themselves out of caring about? (Clearly, I don't have any vipassana insight with an attitude like that, but I'm just trying to be honest about where I'm at with the hope of helping you create an effective answer.)

I suppose this could fall under the general heading of "I think I'm incapable of jhana" with a hoped for answer of something other than "If you practice long enough it will eventually happen, even if it takes two years." But, I'll trust you to say what you believe to be true, not what I hope to be true. After all, if a person just wanted to believe whatever was easiest to tell themselves, they wouldn't ask a hardcore dharma person =)

Much appreciation for your time!

On a completely unrelated note, I'm a psychology student right now and I have a lot of interest in cognition and in neuropsychology. Since concentration meditation is all about cognition, I've come up with a kind of theory about how the concentration states work. It's not as thoroughly thought out as the Visuddhimagga, but it does have the benefit of modern day research into how attention works.

It is known that in attention, which I'll define here as the selection of some stimuli for processing and the rejection of others, that both inhibitory and excitatory processes are involved. In other words, when you're paying attention to something (like food, because you're hungry), then at multiple levels of processing (thalamic, basal ganglia, and cortical probably) the stimuli marked as unimportant are attenuated (a good metaphor is that "the volume is turned down" on that stimulus). For example, the sound of someone talking about non-food stuff is turned down in the brain (at a surprisingly literal level) because the brain has marked food as important and that person's discussion of Britney Spears' children as unimportant. However, if that person were suddenly to start talking about this really good restaurant within walking distance that was having your favorite dish as the special today, suddenly that would get marked as "important" and the "volume" would get turned up. This applies at least to auditory, visual, and touch stimuli.

So, jhana. Concentration, which I'll define as the voluntary, conscious regulation of attention that is probably done by the cerebral cortex, is of course essential to the arising of jhana states. My somewhat-educated guess as to how it works, based on many different descriptions which all seem to agree on certain things, is as follows. The meditator attains access concentration. This is when voluntary attention regulation has become powerful enough to strongly block out (or "turn down") undesired stimuli, which are everything other than the object of meditation. At the same time, the conscious experience of the meditation object (let's say it's the sensation of breath at the nostrils) is very strongly "turned up in volume" by the excitatory nature of strong attention. Once you're in access concentration, many people say that you should shift the meditation to any pleasant feeling anywhere in the body, and there's bound to be something somewhere that feels better than neutral. The people who don't say anything about switching to a pleasant object seem to always have emphasized taking notice of the pleasant factors of the breath (or whatever) at the beginning of the meditation, before access concentration is reached. So, whichever path the meditator has followed, they are now very strongly inhibiting all sensations except for one pleasant thing which is strongly excited. At this point, it should be obvious why joy and ease arise: what began as a mildly pleasant sensation, not really anything strong enough to be clung to, now has the volume turned all the way up. So, pleasure pervades conscious experience.

Second jhana: concentration becomes stronger/more efficient. Either effort is no longer needed to sustain the attention on the object, or the perception of effort is inhibited (marked as unimportant) so it no longer becomes a part of conscious experience. So, either way, the meditator feels a fading of the experience of applying and sustaining the attention on the meditation object.

Third jhana: The high levels of arousal produced by the pleasant sensations go away. Since everyone who has gotten at least to the third jhana has described two different forms of "good feeling," piti and sukha, and piti is always described as somewhat irritating by this point because of its "activity" or "anxiety" or whatever, I think we could hypothesize that it's associated with forms of pleasure that are involved with motivation, such as sexual pleasure, the pleasure of eating when hungry, or the experience of cocaine. All of those stimulate dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens, which is pleasurable but is also associated with a certain sense of anxiety. Sukha would then be "somewhere else," a different type of pleasurable feeling that is not associated with anxiety. Sukha could either be the stimulation of another form of pleasure, or it could be the absence of any painful sensations. Piti would be inhibited by the third jhana, but sukha would not be inhibited until...

Fourth jhana: "the abandonment of pleasure and pain, as with the earlier abandonment of joy and anxiety." Whatever was active and felt good during 3J is now inhibited too. If it was another pleasure system, that's turned off. If it was the perception of not-pain, then that perception is turned off. The concentration is so strong at this point that the meditator can now think any thought (I use that term loosely, and I don't mean to imply VERBAL thought) and experience it as strongly as if it were a "real" sensory experience. What I mean by that is that the volume on the outside world is turned down very strongly, the exact amount according to how hard the jhana state is. Now concentration is strong enough that it could be turned onto, say, an visualized object, and it might be experienced just as strongly as if the object were standing in front of you in real life. The addition of sound and touch, smell and taste could make it indistinguishable from perception of actual objects. Might this explain the experience of the siddhis? Well, I'll leave that to you.

So, I'm new here, and I don't know if the above post contains too much off-topic, or too much speculation, or if for some other reason it's considered inappropriate here. If it is, then please just let me know and I'll delete whatever doesn't fit, or move it to a different thread, or whatever a more experienced member deems appropriate. I included it because you said you wanted to hear about theories about anything having to do with concentration. I hope it can be helpful, but my feelings won't be hurt if it's deemed unhelpful.
Trent , modified 14 Years ago at 9/16/09 5:16 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/16/09 5:13 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

Posts: 361 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Hey Hansen,

Very hard to tell what the reason could have been for the stagnation in your practice those years ago. And due to that, it's hard to say whether it "could have been" different. Essentially, jhanas arise due to various cause and effect relationships, as do enlightenment-style insights and the like. And so, if those things did not arise, it was because they were not prompted to arise by the necessary conditions. To equate my vague answer to an analogy: you cannot make a shot in basketball if you're aiming toward the benches, regardless of your good intentions. I'm not implying that was the case, but given the info provided, all I can say is that jhana stuff did not happen because it simply was not caused by your practice (for whatever reason).

So with that said, it sounds like everything is on the right track now, and that's good! Plus, years of disciplined practice likely has led to many benefits for your character, life and the like.

Adam, I will reply eventually; there is much I can say about what you wrote!

Best,
Trent
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Eric Alan Hansen, modified 14 Years ago at 9/16/09 5:17 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/16/09 5:17 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Eric Alan Hansen:
Trent, sure, I'll throw this one out there. It must have been in about 2003, so about 3 years after lay person ordination, 3 Gems, 5 Precepts, etc. daily sitting - mindfulness of breathing - that I developed fairly seamless concentration. Maybe it was access concentration, I don't really know. But is good solid, seamless focus on object right through most sessions. Good. Then nothing happened. I mean, after a while it became kind of boring because I got lots of initial results in my daily life right from day one, but having got to this stage, then nothing big changed. After a few more years all this did in fact change, but in general I still feel that once I had that level of concentration I could have done more than what I did with it. Still able to focus like this, I kept going on like this (another 6 years) knowing only this one sitting technique until the various factors of the jhanas began to manifest. Then I had to wise up, and now I have to get into the vipassana as well. I did this shamata right up to the point where I hit the crossroads with the three characteristics, and now the mode of practice is changing. Looking back on it, maybe it didn't have to be like that. Any comments?
p e a c e
h a n s e n


Trent: Greeson just tossed out a link to video by Shinzen Young "Traps on the Path" - I seem to identify with the "tranquility trap" - and could fall into the "enlightenment trap" as well - so that nuances my question - when on a path which is mostly shamata in the beginning how to avoid these traps
h a n s e n
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Eric Alan Hansen, modified 14 Years ago at 9/16/09 6:11 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/16/09 6:11 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

Posts: 128 Join Date: 9/9/09 Recent Posts
Trent: Also I ran across a essay at Washington Buddhist Vihara web site (Sri Lanka Theravadan) where teacher was saying there are 3 ways that happen: (1) one does vipassana alone first until one then begins shamata also, (2) one does shamata first until one then must do vipassana also, and then (3) there are those who have both vipassana and shamata in tandem from the get-go. I'd be like the second type. I think the need has existed for me for a long time to do something other than just tripping off into the shamata jhanas, something more based in a direct path to liberation.
T H A N K S
h a n s e n
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tarin greco, modified 14 Years ago at 9/18/09 2:09 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/18/09 2:09 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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hi
J Adam G:

Third jhana: The high levels of arousal produced by the pleasant sensations go away. Since everyone who has gotten at least to the third jhana has described two different forms of "good feeling," piti and sukha, and piti is always described as somewhat irritating by this point because of its "activity" or "anxiety" or whatever, I think we could hypothesize that it's associated with forms of pleasure that are involved with motivation, such as sexual pleasure, the pleasure of eating when hungry, or the experience of cocaine. All of those stimulate dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens, which is pleasurable but is also associated with a certain sense of anxiety. Sukha would then be "somewhere else," a different type of pleasurable feeling that is not associated with anxiety. Sukha could either be the stimulation of another form of pleasure, or it could be the absence of any painful sensations. Piti would be inhibited by the third jhana, but sukha would not be inhibited until...


hi adam,

just a couple quick notes here:

1- in my experience, the dopamine release feels anxious because of some kind of inability to process it cleanly. with practice, 2nd samatha jhana will transition into 3rd samatha jhana without that anxiety. however, 2nd vipassana jhana (arising and passing) generally transitions into 3rd vipassana jhana (dukkha nanas/dark night) with that same type of irritation/anxiety.. until one's gotten really good at/used to it. which leads me to my second point:

2- i think you should go ahead and get stream-entry first and worry about hard jhanas later. my experience and the experience of so many others has shown that getting 1st path makes jhana so much incredibly easier. i have also been diagnosed with add, and it was a source of frustration until i realised that having add was actually an asset in navigating the often turbulent, choppy, discontinuous territory native to insight practice (especially accentuated in burmese noting style). if the concentration/focus/jhana aspect of things frustrates you.. forget about that stuff and try playing to your strengths!

tarin
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 14 Years ago at 9/19/09 11:35 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/19/09 11:35 AM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Tarin is right. Get stream entry, then jhanas are a whole different world and much easier, as you then cycle through the 2nd through 4th (or maybe higher) vipassana jhanas, and you just have to samathafy them, which is much easier than going about it the other way, and a whole large number of questions suddenly disappear by seeing with clarity.

If you haven't already, check out MCTB (Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha), found in the wiki at the bottom, in print form from the standard sellers, and in PDF at www.interactivebuddha.com. While I did write it, many here have said they found it really useful, and it addresses things I think you might find useful.
Trent , modified 14 Years ago at 9/21/09 2:12 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/21/09 2:12 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

Posts: 361 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Adam,

Thanks for your thoughts on attention, good food for thought.

Along with what Dan and Tarin mentioned, I wanted to specifically highlight the bit you mentioned about goals.

First off, even the thought of "goal-less practice" is itself a bit of a contradiction. If you're practicing something, you're presumably doing it for a reason, and that reason is a "goal." But let's not even worry about that. Instead, look at meditation like a demystified task. Just something else to learn and do, like a sport, or a job, or whatever. Would you honestly expect to make consistent progress on a bridge construction project with no goals? Would you expect to become a 3-point shooting threat in basketball through "goal-less practice?" I don't think so! Proper goal setting is quintessential for getting anything done, whether it's "spiritual" or "mundane." In my opinion, goals are the single most important part of "getting it done," as opposed to "just doing the practice."

It may also be worth mentioning that the whole idea of goal-less practice seems to be based around the discussion of "effort vs acceptance," which seems to be an ongoing debate through many traditions and individuals. Some sides argue that effort, goals, wanting, etc is necessary for progress for the reasons I mentioned above. Others seem to argue that those "graspings" serve to perpetuate what practitioners are trying to eliminate in the first place, thus making such "efforts" counterproductive. The point I try to make is that effort vs acceptance is actually a false dichotomy, in that acceptance/surrender actually requires a degree of effort, often more than what is required to fulfill any other meditation goal. By seeing the debate in that light, it becomes rather apparent just how useless the whole silly debate is, and that effort is not (in and of itself) a problem. I believe the problem trying to be highlighted by the "anti-effort" thoughts is that an obsession with attainments, power, prestige, and the like is detrimental to gaining self liberation, helping our peers attain the same and so on. With that said, a zealous lust for freedom, insight and peace is, as far as I'm concerned, quite necessary to break free of one's suffering.

Best,
Trent
J Adam G, modified 14 Years ago at 9/22/09 11:52 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 9/22/09 11:47 AM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Thank all of you for your advice and contribution. I'll understand those jhanas yet, but like you said, it may take stream entry to even get to them in the first place.

MCTB was actually how I got started with meditation. Before that, most of my knowledge of Buddhism was from Wikipedia, and the only understanding that had enhanced my life was a philosophical understanding of emptiness/no-self. I decided to see if I could attain the jhanas because they sounded so cool, and searching for good instructions on how to practice jhana was how I found MCTB. It totally blew my mind and made me realize the importance of practicing for enlightenment, and how jhanas could help with that.

The plan to wait until stream entry to really work on the jhanas seems like the best plan to me. I had kind of given up on shamatha because it was quite fruitless, and I decided that vipassana would be the only practice that I could actuall benefit from. It's only a small cognitive reframing to get to "Shamatha can be done, and would be beneficial, after doing enough vipassana for stream entry." It's nice to hear that someone else with ADD/ADHD was able to do jhana, but it just took 1st path in order to do that. I'll just stick with that plan. Luckily, I happen to be enrolled in a 12-week vipassana program (I think it's 12 weeks) called the Dhamma Friend Program, hosted by vipassanadhura.com. It's pretty cool, though I have my doubts/wonders as to whether someone can really get stream entry without retreat time. Time will tell, and hopefully I'll be wrong to have doubted.

On a side note, maybe it's best that I can't do jhana now. In all honesty, if I could do shamatha now, I'd probably never do any vipassana. I'd just chill out in bliss, and lose all interest in insight. In other words, I'd be a bliss junkie. Would that be less of a danger after stream entry?
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 14 Years ago at 10/18/09 2:09 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 10/18/09 2:09 AM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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No great danger of bliss junkiedom after stream entry, as then the cycles always win, and more practice just makes this more true, meaning that, once in the stream, the dharma does you more and more, rather than you doing the dharma.

I know of at least two examples of those who got stream entry off retreat that I personally know, and at least one of them posts here on the DhO.
Derek, modified 13 Years ago at 7/23/10 4:06 AM
Created 13 Years ago at 7/23/10 4:06 AM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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In the section on the First Jhana, beginning of Chapter 21, p. 139, MCTB talks about using "the breath" as a basis for jhana. (Oh, and BTW, thanks for making the PDF available for free!)

All the other material I've encountered (e.g., Brasington, Ajahn Brahm, Snyder & Rasmussen) assumes one is concentrating on the breath at the nostrils.

My question is this:

Will the breath at the belly work equally well to form a basis for jhana?
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Eric B, modified 13 Years ago at 7/23/10 11:07 AM
Created 13 Years ago at 7/23/10 11:07 AM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Derek A Cameron:
Will the breath at the belly work equally well to form a basis for jhana?


The argument against this is that the breath at the belly is too much of a generalized, non-specific, large region to develop a focus exact enough to reach anapana samadhi.
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Jackson Wilshire, modified 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 12:57 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 12:57 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Derek A Cameron:
Will the breath at the belly work equally well to form a basis for jhana?


There are myriad choices for objects of meditation that are suitable for cultivating first jhana and beyond. One may use the breath at the belly if that's what works best for them. In my experience, working with the breath at the nostrils (the 'anapana' spot) is very effective, and should probably be given preference over other objects. This is especially true when one is learning to access states above and beyond first jhana, as not all objects are suitable for all jhanas. The breath at the anapana spot is object you can rely on to get you up through all of the jhanas. That being the case, it may be beneficial to get familiar with this object first, so you don't have to switch objects later.

~Jackson
Derek, modified 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 1:14 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 1:14 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Eric, Jackson, thank you for your responses. I'm impressed by Daniel's book and the high quality of the discussions on this site.
J Adam G, modified 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 3:06 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 3:06 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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I second the suggestion to focus mainly on the breath entering the nostrils. The breath entering the lips works well if you have congestion too bad to breathe through your nose, such as with the common cold.

One little tip for when awareness of bodily sensations is getting overwhelmed by mental sensations. (In other words, you can't pay attention to touch because the mind won't shut up for even a second.) Even if you aren't paying any attention to touch sensations, you still know when you've breathed in and when you've breathed out. In fact, you know at any given moment where you are in the respiratory cycle. You can use this knowing as the object for concentration.

Like the breath at the abdomen, it can be more slippery than breath at the nostrils or mouth. But if you just can't see bodily sensations, go with the mental sensation of knowing where in the breathing cycle you are.
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tarin greco, modified 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 7:35 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 7/24/10 7:35 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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Derek A Cameron:
In the section on the First Jhana, beginning of Chapter 21, p. 139, MCTB talks about using "the breath" as a basis for jhana. (Oh, and BTW, thanks for making the PDF available for free!)

All the other material I've encountered (e.g., Brasington, Ajahn Brahm, Snyder & Rasmussen) assumes one is concentrating on the breath at the nostrils.

My question is this:

Will the breath at the belly work equally well to form a basis for jhana?


a bit of history: mahasi sayadaw taught his students (who, over the decades, numbered in the thousands) to anchor their minds to the rise and fall of the abdomen while doing noting practice, but also allowed those who preferred to focus on their breath at their nostrils to do so. the reason he gave for teaching the breath at the abdomen was that it was a coarse, easily perceptible area, whereas the breath at the nostrils sometimes became too refined for meditators to detect changes thereat.. and without being able to perceive those motions, meditators would not be able to investigate well. as he had (and his tradition's students have) a very good track record for teaching people to get to stream entry[1], and as jhana[2] is required to reach this point, then it can be said without any doubt that focusing on the breath at the belly can work very well to form a basis for jhana.

furthermore, there are many soto zen teachers, and chi gong teachers, who teach breathing from the hara/tan tien, which is a spot a few fingers below the navel and in from the surface, which can be felt most easily gently feeling for a pressure thereabouts while breathing in and out from the belly (rather than just the chest). keeping the mind here in meditation is a demonstrably effective way of going into jhana.

further still, being attentive to the breath from the abdomen, rather than the nostrils, is one way of realising that the breath affects the entire body (and not just the abdomen). the awareness of this 'whole-body breathing' can lead a meditator into tranquility very quickly, and is a very good way to proceed in vipassana.

tarin

[1] in burma, it is acknowledged that a 2-3 month mahasi retreat is generally sufficient for the purpose, and one monk in the tradition has told me that 6 months ought to be enough for everyone (else they should consider finding another technique); in thailand, the mahasi method has rapidly spread throughout the country since its introduction from burma in the mid-20th century, and is colloquially known as the 'rising-falling technique'; in the west, the mahasi method was adopted as the principle mode of instruction at IMS (insight meditation society) due to its outstanding performance - people were getting stream entry - in trials the society conducted early on.

[2] one of u pandita's abbots has told me that the etymology of the word 'jhana' has to do with the notion of 'burning' or 'burning up', and as such, jhana should be understand as not merely a suppression of the hindrances but as a way of burning through them to arrive to their roots, at which point the roots can then be uprooted (the point at which path is attained). this perspective supports the notion that progress through the jhanas is identical to the progress of insight, and is a necessary feature of insight practice.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 9:04 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 9:04 PM

RE: Welcoming Absolutely Any Concentration Questions

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I have gotten jhana on both and insight on both, meaning nostrils and abdomen, and find that the nostrils are somewhat easier at times and the abdomen is somewhat easier at times, not sure why. So, not profound points, but that both work, and I would go with whichever is easier at that time, as the easiest thing will be easier to see the true nature of and also easier to concentrate on, so see for yourself at that time which is the most clear and use that.

Daniel

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