| | I'm behind a desk about twelve hours a day, and while i'd like to practice formally in that time, it's good to have clicking and typing noises coming from my direction during five hour hurry-up-and-wait intervals.
Now, I will admit a great deal of frustration with the models, save to say that they can be quite helpful for letting us realize that our practice can have a powerful developmental component.
More relevantly, I believe Kenneth has suggested that "enlightenment" has a correspondence with kundalini, so quite arguably discussing chakras or stele-like practices etc. is warranted. Likewise, shamatha is tremendously helpful in seeing through illusions and shamatha tends to give rise to weird-ass shit that may to be dealt with lest it give rise to too much "observer-bias". So again, discussion is warranted and not unwholesome.
What I suspect, however, is that you are giving the old Turn Off Your Mind / Stop Thinking line. To paraphrase a teacher, "The brain and the mind are an organ. Organs like the stomach secrete things. The mind secretes thoughts." In fact, the mind even secretes thoughts in my experience even in a hard fourth jhana. Oddly enough, despite the "thinking," investigation is still quite possible and insight arises. The suggestion elsewhere, I believe, is that even in the "no-dog," which I understand as the mahamudra (?), there's thinking. Fancy that.
So, I'd kindly suggest, turning the thoughts off is not what the practice is about. If you want to turn off your mind, that's fine. There are even some instructions on doing that here. |