Discussion Forum Discussion Forum

Practice Logs

RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log

Threads [ Previous | Next ]
RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log
Answer
5/24/14 7:46 PM as a reply to Pablo . P.
I copied the disc into Dropbox. Please let me know if you can download it. Otherwise, write down (temporarily) your private email so I can share it directly to you. 

RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log
Answer
5/26/14 7:10 AM as a reply to Pablo . P.
I have downloaded now, thank you emoticon I will give your low carb suggestions a try.

Are you continuing with any daily practice?

RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log
Answer
5/26/14 1:13 PM as a reply to d j.
Three weeks ago I stopped practicing meditation, I was (and am) sleeping less than 6 hours a day, so when I sat after 15 minutes I started to daydream. Before I had a longer than usual A&P and then a longer than usual too DN. Hopefully I two months time I'll be able to send my son to a nursery, and so get back to the sits. Nowadays I only practice Gone Noting or samatha, 15 minutes laying in bed before getting asleep. Funny enough, last week I had a 5 minutes no-thought & no-aversion/discrimination experience, which I had never gone through while actively practicing. Nothing blissful at all, just a silent consciousness of mare facts.  

Meanwhile, I got back to martial qigong, which is something I can do for 10', 20' o 30' during the day, in my noisy house, while sharing the living-room with wife and kid. Essentially, you first get tuned to a deep vibration (and amplify it just by being conscious), deal with the aversions it sparks, let the vibration get full body and then vanish going down to earth and finally wait for a energy rebound up to the neiwan and finally deliver through the limbs. Not only the buddhist tools can enhance my practice here, but in a broad sense there's a similarity with A&P, DN and EQ insight stages. In fact, the goal is to get to "a kind of cessation", in order to launch a strike. So, I'm entertained with this practice while waiting for a chance to resume meditation.

What about your practice?

 




RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log
Answer
6/26/14 7:05 AM as a reply to Pablo . P.
There's an interesting connection between the first 4 jhanas with the energetic strikes (jins) in chinese martial arts. As it's about a performing (martial) art, it's more related to vipassana jhanas (VJh) than straight jhanas. (Added:  To be fair, it may well be the case that all these 4 jhanas are in fact sub-jhanas of the 1st Jhana, following Daniel's terminology). 


The 1st and 2nd VJh are related to Ming Jin (明勁), usually defined as "training the Jing to transform into Qi", that is "training the body (muscles, bones, tendons, fascia) to transform into electric/hydraulic-like energy".  While the 1st VJh is about a whole-body cause/effect connection and the ability to be steadily aware of key body points (crown, three dantians and soles of the feet), the 2nd VJh is the direct release of a focused, linear electric-hydraulic energy that adds like a second wave to the muscle-tendon strike. All sorts of A&P phenomena happens here.

The 3rd VJh is related to An Jin (喑勁), usually defined as "training the Qi to transform into Shen", which can be rephrased as "training the electric/hydraulic-like energy to transform into mind-Intent". Here the energy release is not direct but indirect ( a pause plus a rebound from the ground -sort of emerging from a Shinzen Young's gone moment-), not focused but wide-spread, which exploits weak points of the opponent in the periphery as a back door to his center. It can be soft yet overwhelming, or sudden and disruptive and even scary. It generally affects the mind perception of the opponent (say Dukka Ñanas), triggering an aversion reaction that can be sensed and exploited.  

The 4th VJh is related to Hua Jin (化勁), that is "training the mind-Intent to return to emptiness". Notice here that is "return to" and not "transform into", addressing the Taoist goal. The aim here is to dissolve one's sense of body (sort of equanimous attraction/aversion free, light-body-walking-on water experience***) so that the opponent's deeper tension can be absorbed and directed to the ground (alike to starting a free-fall, stepping into a non-existant stair). You become a single unit with the opponent by dissolving oneself. You can either let him crush into the ground, or combine a Ming Jin + An Jin counterstrike, but this time using both masses to broaden the force exerted [ Force = ( m1 + m2 ) * acceleration ]. 

*** as the practice relies in spontaneity, much of the "experience" is a reconstruction of past events.

Disclaimer: there are different interpretations of what Ming Jin, An Jin and Hua Jin actually are. This is the one that fits my (unmatured) experience and goals. 

 
 

RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log
Answer
9/5/14 5:22 PM as a reply to Pablo . P.
Still I can`t allocate time for sittings, so I try to make the best out of my energetic practice. Luckilly, although it's a martial arts practice, a total relaxation is needed in order to succeed, so this pours more water to the meditation mill. It's akind to Shinzen's Flow practice or B.Vimalaramsi's SMILE method, but with more weigth in concentration. 

In my 15 minutes practice lying down in bed before sleep, I note vanishings. Nowadays, deeper and more frequent letting go's happen with vanishings. One thing I found is that once after the let go happens, I can incline the mind to choiceless noting (more of a broad uncathegorized noting). The thing is that triggers a deeper but wide concentration. So it's kind of a deeper samatha/vipassana at once.

This also resolves (I guess so) the focus/let go dilemma for concentration. Before, whenever I tried to focus on something, I ended up building excesive attention, stressing the mind. And when I did the let go thing, the subsequent calm state (or whatever) lasted short because of a lack of anchor. Nowadays, this anchor is wide enough not to get stressed. It's just the intention to be aware of everything. It's annica and anatta, if there's dukkha it's subtle enough not to be noticed yet.

Frequently, I wake up from sleep, and when not fully awake yet I can incline the mind to all kinds of visual stuff. They're not bright and colorful nowadays (as I presume I'm in the DÑ), but the exhibit 3D features, something I haven't seen in a while. When I stopped with regular sits, the A&P-DÑ cycle expanded from 3 weeks to 2 months.  This one seems to be the first mild DÑ since January.

Later today, I'll add the spinning ballerina  samatha/vipassana practice I'm playing with.

RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log
Answer
10/13/14 8:17 PM as a reply to Pablo . P.
I've been rereading Daniel's Three Doors MCTB Chapter and Shinzen's 10 Steps Towards Enlightenment: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5080083 . Daniel says that at Fruition there's (only) two Characteristics at play, one at the foreground the other at the background. And so, there are 6 different ways that Fruition may display. Shinzen seems to imply a specific two-stage paths, Impermanence & Dukkha and No-Self & Impermanence.

It's more of a linear-sequential model, where in Steps 1-6 it's all about Impermanence. As its focus is in noting vanishings, it seems to by-pass the Dukka Ñanas, or at least lessen them a lot. Then at Step 7, at first it looks like he's talking about Equanimity (dwelling in subtle preconcious experience).  He actually says the Nothingness where everything arises from and returns to "becomes rich providing tranquility, safety, fulfillment and love". The thing is that the transition from Step 7 (Passings become rich) to Step 8 (Arisings become rich) is where his famous "Ground Reversal" shift happens. This is actually Stream Entry, entered through Impermanence at the foreground, and Dukkha at the background. Then at Step 9, "all arisings tend to coalesce into a single polarization, all passings tend to coalesce into a single polarization". Here he's talking about a final Fruition, where No-Self is at the foreground and Impermanence at the background. 

In some way, Dukkha plays a different role to Theravada-DhO's model, not as a shitty place/phase/stage one has to walk through, but a natural renunciation / immersion into "tranquility, safety, fulfillment and love", a crucial step that let you walk into stream entry. Daniel talks that entering through the Dukka door is the more unsettling, death-like experience. Perhaps Shinzen's Dukkha build-up make a radical different experience.
 


 


RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log
Answer
10/18/14 6:23 PM as a reply to Pablo . P.
Just testing.