Richard Zen:
I found this talk to be interesting:
Contact, construction of a self. - Rob BurbeaKey strategies:
- Allowing contractions in the body. Don't be aversive to the aversion in your body. [Also, don't allow the body to distract you.]
- Simplify attention. Keep the mind from going into needless complexity.
- Stop feeding views and beliefs, especially self-evaluation.
- Reside at contact/bare attention. You can zoom to an object or expand including more objects.
The views part I'm sure is only unskillful views because all Buddhists have views and beliefs. ...
I'm sure others have their own favourite practices.And that last assumption would be correct. I prefer direct observation of phenomena and its effect on the mind and perception. In other words, what a person
thinks is true about any given phenomenon, is true for them
in that moment.
Long ago it occurred to me to first find out what Gotama taught, and then to follow that same pathway to awakening. Which is why I keep encouraging people to read the translated discourses of the Pali Nikayas.
If, in seeking your own awakening through the practice of insight meditation or observation, you read nothing other than the Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10) and/or the Mahasatipattana Sutta (DN22) and endeavor to understand what the practice of
satipatthana is all about (perhaps with the help of Ven. Analayo's now classic book by the same name on this practice), you will no doubt stumble upon the same path that Gotama took to achieve his awakening! And perhaps your awakening will be as deep as his was.
In brief,
satipatthana teaches one to observe one's experience (phenomena) at the level of the body (
rupa or matter), feeling (
vedana), mind states (
citta-nupassana), and mind objects/phenomena (
dhammas) in order to determine "things as they are." It sounds simple, doesn't it.
And yet people keep seeking for newer, faster, quicker ways to achieve this simple end, while digging themselves ever deeper into unnecessary complications and misunderstandings, and in some cases completely losing sight of the end goal of the cessation of
dukkha.
Of the four items mentioned above, by far the most important one to realize is the third one: stop seeing phenomena as belonging to a me (or "I"), mine, or myself. This is not a superficial realization; it must come from the depths of your ability to see truthfully into the causation of your own I-making, my-making mechanism within your mind.
If you have reached the requisite level of achievement in concentration and mindfulness, and are of a mind to explore causation at a very subtle level, you can watch how each of the middle eight elements of dependent co-arising arise and fall within your observation of their occurrence, and thereby confirm the absence of an enduring, substantive self at the center of this activity. Whatever self you perceive to be there is a fabrication of your own mind (and subtle conceit), and is therefore
anatta or "without self" in its true nature.